THE BIRTH OF

TABLOID MEDIA

The prurient nature of their saga propelled them into the headlines and the bylines of the nation’s tabloid press for a brief moment in time, but their legacy is one of an enduring contribution to the cultural landscape of a turbulent country. The rampaging newspaper coverage of Peaches and Daddy, is brought to life through the devilish eye of “Gauv,” Emile Gauvreau, the managing editor of the New York Evening Graphic. A descriptive tour is given, via the rolling presses of the Peaches and Daddy publishing apparatus, of the vibrant and chaotic Graphic newsroom, feverishly crafting “sex-sational” headlines and eye-popping photographic creations. New York tabloids such as the Daily News, the Mirror, and the Graphic, engaged in ferocious battles for headlines and topped each other’s coverage with lurid details, often provided by Peaches and Daddy themselves. Readers of the nation’s newspapers followed every slanderous detail of the romance and breakup with lip-licking intensity. They were outraged – and they loved it! Journalistic treatment of the case was the most daring ever seen, and set a new benchmark for newspaper coverage, which had entered for the first time, into the matrimonial bedroom.

The reporting to some was so distasteful, that Yonkers, New York actually banned the sale of the Graphic within its borders. The paper became known as the Porno – Graphic. Newspapers would never be the same. The sex-slanted and often tactless newspaper coverage of the Peaches and Daddy saga, led to the inevitable cultural backlash. Judges and jurists would question the wisdom of news reporters in courtrooms for years to come. Calls for government censorship of the print media, and legal action taken by groups such as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice sought to curb First Amendment rights of the press. The convulsive shock waves of the Peaches and Daddy story would be felt across the moral landscape of the country for years to come.