Weekly World News - free archive available online

I wonder if some of our American members can offer some insight into the "Weekly World News", the infamous newspaper of "bat boy" fame.

The archive of that publication is now available online at:

HERE

The Weekly World News included numerous UFO stories on its front covers, as can be seen at the link above.

The UFO stories were probably amongst the more believable ones included in that publication. It appeared to take a delight in inventing the silliest stories it could create. I have in mind front page stories about Abraham Lincoln being revived and another story suggesting that JFK was alive and had just been reunited with Jackie...


From this side of the pond, it is certainly difficult to believe it was taken seriously or was expected to be taken seriously.

The Weekly World News makes the National Enquirer (which I wrote about in my thread Best cases - National Enquirer Panel look positively scholarly...


Wikipedia includes the following about Weekly World News:

en.wikipedia.org...

The WWN traditionally claimed that it always printed the truth (typical slogan: "Nothing but the truth: The Weekly World News!"). Many stories, however, appeared to have comedic intent. Confirming this, in Batboy Lives! a semi-serious introduction admitted that while Reader A reads the tabloid for real news, Reader B will read it for laughs. While the tabloid's main rival, Sun, carried a fine print disclaimer, the WWN never publicly questioned the accuracy of its own stories until 2004, when the paper began stating that "the reader should suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoyment".

So, was the Weekly World News considered an obvious joke in America?

Oh god...crash it...CRASH IT QUICK before people outside of America think this is what our actual news is...

Which actually makes a bit more sense than what the real news has been in the last 10 years...hmm...

Incidently, this needs to be moved to media or something...really to hoax considering thats all the WWN is, a list of hoaxes and tripe..like all the rejected stories of ATS made into a paper format.

an obvious joke indeed...these sorts of mags have been the source of late show monologues for decades...

these aren't considered a news source at all....more of an entertainment source...

much like the Jerry Springer Show....

not real American news....

Insight:

My grandmother loved wrestling. Not greco-roman...but "rassling", with Ric Flair.

She read Weekly World News religiously.

Loved Springer.

Attended church faithfully.

As you can see, she enjoyed the obvious fake stuff for its entertainment value.

The Weekly World News was a spin off when the National Enquirer changed from a news of the weird format to a gossip rag.

During the later part of the 1980's, the Publisher appeared on a news magazine, I no longer remember if it was 60 Minutes or 20/20. I remember the interviewer trying to trap him with a question about whether he really expected readers to believe the obvious fiction and he replied, "The Weekly World News is an Adult Comic Book" and that "It is not our fault" if people choose to believe it. He went on to say they never represented it as factual.

I've met a few, but very few who actually did not know it was fiction for fun. It is a satire of Tabloid Journalism.

Originally posted by IsaacKoi
So, was the Weekly World News considered an obvious joke in America?

There's a scene in the "Men in Black" movie about this. Tommy Lee Jones' character buys up the tabloids (including I think the WWN) and Will Smith's character asks what he's looking at that garbage for.

Of course it's a fictional movie so he replies it's where he looks for the "real news" to find reports about aliens. But the incredulity portrayed by Will Smith would be more typical.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say that nobody believes any of it, since 20% of Americans think the sun revolves around the Earth (slightly more in the UK I think), so there's no telling what some people will believe that seems ridiculous to the rest of us.

Then there's Michael Jackson's song "tabloid Junkie" saying they aren't factual:

While looking on the Internet for some reassurance about the way in which the Weekly World News was perceived, I found an article on the website of Time magazine, which includes the following:

www.time.com...

The main audience for this satire was not those who might laugh at it but those who might take it as true. "It is my belief," Derek Clontz told the Post, "that in the '80s and into the '90s, most people believed most of the material most of the time."

Originally posted by IsaacKoi

Derek Clontz told the Post,

Is that the same Derek Clontz blogging about Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley still being alive (and the moon landing was a hoax, etc)?

derekclontz.wordpress.com...

Copyright (c) 2009 Derek Clontz/4-Page Media, Inc../Your World Report.

Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley together in Heaven? Not a chance, say sources - both superstars are alive...
---------
Copyright (c) 2009 Derek Clontz/4-Page Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

NASA claims to have sent astronauts to the moon six times between 1969 and 1972 but dramatic new evidence proves that the $30 billion program was a hoax-filmed on a movie set in the Nevada desert.

So unless you believe Elvis is alive and the moon landing was a hoax, I don't know why anyone would believe anything the guy says about anything.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Derek Clontz told the Post,

Is that the same Derek Clontz blogging about Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley still being alive (and the moon landing was a hoax, etc)?

derekclontz.wordpress.com...


It looks like this is the same Derek Clontz quoted by Time Magazine.

Derek Clontz the blogger has a webpage that says:

derekclontz.wordpress.com...

He served on staff as a lead writer or top editor at notable mainstream and mass-market newspapers, including Freedom Newspapers and Media General titles, GLOBE, Star, National Examiner, and The National Enquirer’s iconic Weekly World News.

Arbitrageur commented:

So unless you believe Elvis is alive and the moon landing was a hoax, I don't know why anyone would believe anything the guy says about anything.

I already had more than a bit of trouble believing that many purchasers of the Weekly World News could have anything other than pure entertainment in mind when buying it - hence my wondering what some of the American readers of ATS remembered of Weekly World News and its readers.

All the best,

Isaac

Originally posted by IsaacKoi
hence my wondering what some of the American readers of ATS remembered of Weekly World News and its readers.

I found the National Enquirer in a poll, and my guess is the WWN would be considered even less credible than the enquirer:

See question 23-m

people-press.org...

The 2002 poll showed 61% didn't believe any of it, 4% believed all of it, with 15% somewhere in-between. I think that should give you some idea about the WWN except I suspect it would fare somewhat worse for credibility.

Contrast that to the preceding result for Newsweek for example, where the poll showed 9% didn't believe any of it, 14% believed all of it, with 54% somewhere in-between.