Errol Morris: Tabloid

She had battling tabloids, some making her out to be as pure as a nun and others calling her a slut. Has tabloid coverage become more uniform now? For example, every coverage of Lindsay Lohan has the same point of view.

Right. I don’t know. There was something about this story that led to that kind of ambiguity. The claims that Joyce had made, the story that Joyce had told versus the investigation that was done by Kent Gavin. Maybe it was the peculiarities of this particular case that led to that. I think that had to be part of it.

That makes me think that legal issues get covered with uniformity now too, whether it’s O.J. or Casey Anthony? What creates media ambiguity in a story?

This story seems to have genuine ambiguity. I would go so far as to make that claim. O.J., Casey Anthony, seem to be a different kind of story altogether. They seem to be stories of strong public feelings about underlying guilt and the jury’s reluctance to provide a conviction based on what they felt was insufficient evidence. That seems to be at the heart of both of those stories, correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t think you have many, many people saying, “I’m absolutely convinced that O.J. is innocent” or many people saying, “I’m absolutely convinced that Casey Anthony is innocent.” But we do live in a country where reasonable doubt is a standard in the courts of law, if the jury feels that the case has not been made sufficiently to provide a conviction under those circumstances. But those are controversies. This story, part of the reason why I became obsessed with the story, is all of these ambiguities and the impossibility. It’s like GSK. GSK is a good example of a story that does have elements in common with Joyce McKinney and Tabloid because will we ever know what happened in that hotel room? We have a kind of he said/she said deal. We have the possible ex-president of France versus a hotel maid. Will that evidence ever sort itself out clearly so that we can say it was one thing rather than another? The papers of course play out both and flip flop between them and you get all kinds of variants on that theme.

In my lifetime, I’ve always assumed a tabloid was false. That’s why they call them tabloids.

Why false?

It started with The National Enquirer posting cover stories about aliens.

Bill Clinton is an Alien, etc.

What makes something a tabloid now?

It’s clear that there’s lots of different kinds of tabloid stories. There isn’t one kind of tabloid story. It’s interesting, why did this become a huge story in Great Britain but a non story over here in the ‘70s. The difference between the Weekly World News and the National Enquirer or The National Enquirer and The Post, all these different versions of tabloid journalism. I think at the heart of it is that it’s a story which is almost like a sketch of a story. It’s a summary of a story that in four or five, six words pulls us in. It just grabs a hold of us and drags us kicking and screaming into the story.

In entertainment journalism, Us Magazine and People used to be considered legitimate magazines. Now they’re referred to as tabloids. What makes them tabloids now?

I don’t really know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s the sudden abandonment of truth, that we just don’t care anymore whether something is true or false. We just care whether it’s interesting. That is against the deep interests of journalism because journalism should always ultimately be concerned with seeking the truth of something. The recent Murdock story involving News of the World seems to be a really different kind of story. It’s a truly ugly story because here you have people not just merely interpreting the news but simply creating the news. At the same time, in a kind of callous way, I would go so far as to say even attacking the people that you’re writing about. It’s one thing for Joyce McKinney to come to England with chloroform, a fake gun and a pair of Smith and Wesson handcuffs and to either kidnap or not kidnap Kirk Anderson. She is a participant in all this. It’s not as if somehow she was an innocent victim just preyed upon by the press. But if you talk about a girl who’s been abducted and murdered and the parents don’t know whether she’s alive or dead and the newspapers are tampering with her cell phone, that’s a different kind of thing altogether.

Wouldn’t that actually be illegal?

I think that is the good point, because they’re actually doing stuff that is illegal. They are committing, I believe, felonies.

The issue of what is a tabloid also made me think of how I am referred to as a blogger now. I do not write a blog. I do interviews and report news that is published online. Now they call anything online a blog. Why does that happen?

I’ll give you another example. I write longform pieces for The New York Times. I write on the Opinion pages of the Times. The last piece that I wrote was in five parts. It’s 21,000 words. Am I a blogger? I don’t really think so. I see myself as a kind of essayist who puts this stuff up on the opinion pages of the New York Times. That’s not really a blog.

Are people calling it that?

People have on occasion called it blogging. I just don’t quite see it as blogging at all.

So you feel my pain.

I feel your pain. I think I agree, absolutely.

Is there a way our industries can educate our audience into what is what?

I don’t know. I think that we’re living in a world where everything is shifting and changing so rapidly, no one knows really what to call what, what. What’s print journalism, what’s electronic journalism, what’s a blog, what’s not a blog? It’s all going to change. Probably turn around in another couple of months and it’ll be different again.

You’ve said not all tabloids are bad. What is an example of a good kind of tabloid?

I love reading lots and lots of tabloid stories. I love for example The Weekly World News. Reading about “Bat Boy Escapes From Cave,” was that a terrible thing? Was I defaming Bat Boy? Bat Boy doesn’t even exist. It was funny. It was fun to read. I use The Weekly World News to teach my son how to read.

So it’s good entertainment.

Yeah, it’s fantastic entertainment.

What does it mean that the Mormon Church is now the subject of a hit Broadway musical comedy?

It’s an accident. I certainly wasn’t aware of The Book of Mormon when I started to make this movie.

But it’s been growing, Big Love was popular, and they’ve become more well known than at the time when Joyce was dealing with them. Is it relevant that they’ve become more public?

Well, it’s certainly socially relevant in the fact that we have two people, two major candidates who are running for president who are Mormon. That in itself makes it relevant.

Could it have happened before?

I don’t know. I don’t know if I have a simple answer to that. Certainly Romney has been a presidential candidate for a while now. He’s not new but the idea that there are two, maybe more, Mormon’s vying for the presidency is an interesting phenomenon and it is something new.

Do you feel the lessons of SOP and The Fog of War been taken since your movies came out?

No. Not really. I think everything I do is connected. It’s not as if these are separate discreet [topics]. They are, but they aren’t. There’s the same kind of concerns and interests in this movie as in The Fog of War or SOP .

If you were still working on
SOP when you found out Seal Team 6 killed bin Laden, would that have affected the film?

Not really. What is interesting is that Eric Holder, the attorney general of the United States, last week has opened an inquiry into the death of al-Jamadi which is the central murder in the middle of SOP. So that is still ongoing.

Tabloid opens July 15.