The Herald and the National Enquirer Were Tight

As the mainstream media continues to apologize for completely missing the John Edwards love child story, the National Enquirer is celebrating getting a scoop that didn’t involve space aliens or cellulite. But as the tabloid revels its big story, it’s also eating crow for running a piece in 2006 that falsely claimed that Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy fathered a love child back in 1984.

The Smoking Gun reports that the Enquirer will pay a “significant payment” to Caroline Bilodeau-Allen for running with the erroneous item, and the site posts documents from the case.

Included in the legal filings were emails that showed our favorite local tabloid, the Boston Herald, was first in line to “get the scoop“.

In emails between the former Enquirer editor-in-chief Paul Field and the magazine’s PR people, the consensus was to give the Herald first dibs on the Kennedy bombshell bogus report, then to hit up FOX News and the Drudge Report, among others, with the story.

Field writes:

“I have spoken to [former Herald editor] Ken Chandler at Boston Herald who will run it big (possibly page one) and we’ll send him the material directly. He’ll also be doing our Bobby divorcing Whitney story[.]”

Sure enough, an item referencing the Enquirer’s report ran the next day in the Inside Track, and became the paper’s fifth most popular story of 2006. The January 18 item was indeed followed by the news of Bobby Brown’s desire to divorce Whitney Houston.

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