Pure theory, I’m betting they thought since they are journalists they’d be protected by saying its research for a story.
I did hear some people on MSNBC warm that press freedoms are very important and they weren’t sure what to feel about this case because if it can be argued the National Inquirer isn’t press what about bloggers or people who have YouTube channels.
I’m sure they have done similar things to dozens of other people. They’ve always gotten away with it.
Be interesting if this goes to court to see how many celebrities and/or socialites have been made an offer like this.
I don’t get this line of reasoning so much. To me the national enquirer is absolutely part of the press, at least in many of its functions. Journalists aren’t allowed to extort people either though and the first amendment doesn’t protect extortion.
As others have said I suspect what they did to Bezos is the same thing they do all the time to other celebrities, they just didn’t stop and think that Bezos was rich enough and didn’t give enough of a shit to call their bluff. I also suspect many of these ‘deals’ are more journalism-y than this was. Like trading not publishing the photos for an interview or something. This was just straight out ‘don’t publish bad info about us or else’.