Do columnist really exert such power?? Not really... I don't buy it.

Walter Winchell also had a TV show for a while but it was more a talent thing.
"Mr and Mrs America and all the ships at sea"
What a corny intro he had.
Check out the The Josephine Baker Story
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102167/

Where Craig T. Nelson plays Walter


See some stars here
http://www.vbphoto.biz/

Hey! I am way old, and I can say for sure this, at least: things were very, very, VERY different back in the 50's and half the 60's. Very different, indeed. A celebrity always had to keep his or her nose clean and if not, had to maintain a good relationship with columnists. Giving them 'exclusive' interviews and such, to keep the dirt swept under the rug. Look up information on Confidential Magazine, which had a lot of power.

Now it's the talk show hosts - Limbaugh being the king at $400K/year. All GOP candidates genuflect at his altar. The next generation of gossip-mongers.

I don't think any one person wields the power Winchel did but the press is still a smelly business.

Sometimes journos are backed by their news editors, sometimes they are not.

Essentially there are limits to where an outlet will go. I've worked in journalism and can tell you that often the reader is in the Truman show. If for example a paper has shareholders w investment in say Burroughs Wellcome, they will not print a sober account of the early trials of AZT. They also fear a loss of sponsorship and even freelance journos face blacklisting if they publish too far out of the fold. Talk to people off-record, even staff at the NIH and you get an entirely different story. The business of medical science is cynical indeed.

Celebrities and the press: Where one dirty hand washes the other and angels weep
It has become commonplace for celebrities to peddle their children in front of a camera. This is not for the benefit of the child but to enhance the celebrity's image. Consider that Depp's kid's photos rarely appear in tabloids. It's a choice. The wrong choice can endanger the welfare of the child.

In '08 NYT reporter Brooks Barnes wrote an expose on Brangelina in which he drove that point home and even named the tabloid Jolie had an agreement with at the time and also the fact that they schedule UN visits to deflect bad press. He also had three solid sources attesting to a back-door deal they struck with People Magazine to only print favorable stories about the pair. People Mag threatened to sue the Times and Barnes nearly lost his job bc he wouldn't give up his sources to the editor who wouldn't back him otherwise. Of course the passing of time proved Barnes right.

Then there's the story about Jolie and the Cambodian adoption done thru a woman, Lauryn Galindo known to expedite matters via illegal channels selling babies whose mothers were tricked into handing them over for temporary safety. As a result of 100 illegal western adoptions thru Ms Galindo Cambodia slammed the door to western adoptions. There is so much more to this story but the short of it is that no one is looking into celebrity adoptions critically.

Sometimes only tabloids will print a story
A heartbreaking story is the one of Hugh Jackman's adopted kid's birth mother.

Four years after she gave up her child, the woman depressed with no way of reaching Jackman went to the Enquirer, the only people who would publish. *She claimed Jackman had promised to give her regular updates on the boy but sent only one set of photos the first year, then dropped her. Keep in mind one can do a blind adoption, most of them are. Insult upon injury she was forced to view a constant stream of photos of her son in tabloids.

Two years later Amber Sanders killed herself. The kick-in-the-head finale is HJ brags that he shot a camera into the vagina of (by his own account) a naive, shy young woman to record the birth of his baby. No law prohibits him from viewing Amber's private bits to this day.

Yeah.

So where are the LA/NY Times in all of this? Where are Barbara and Diane?

In the same place as People Magazine. They want their interviews, photos and their readers. There is a particular way you write about a particular subject based on what readers (or greased palms) will respond to favorably.

Ironically it's the ethically questionable (and avoidable) photos that are creating the false impression of the celebrity for the readers. The publication sites benefit from the tons of hits they get from women gushing about the cute tots and their wonderful parents. They believe they are seeing an intrusive press horning in on "family time." Sometimes they even bemoan the injustice.

It also works miracles for the celebrity by helping quash all sorts of rumors from drug addiction to infidelity to lies about sexual identity. And the deceived public is actually only seeing a favorably selected, carefully cropped hour of the star's day. It's a brilliant, if insidious tool. The kids unknowingly become the parent's de facto employees.

One of my favorite lines in a movie is from "His Gal Friday" when the Hildie character turns to a press room of hungry, exploitive reporters and says with disgust "Gentlemen of the press." That didn't come from nowhere.

The cat's in the bag, and the bag's in the river