Voting Station

David Pecker

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Publisher

The Resume

    (September 24, 1951- )
    Born in the Bronx, New York
    Former accountant for Price Waterhouse
    Chair and CEO of American Media, Inc. (AMI)
    Publishes the National Enquirer, Star, Sun, Globe, Weekly World News, Men’s Fitness, Muscle and Fitness, Flex, and Shape

Why he might be annoying:

    During a meeting with Donald Trump, he offered to use the National Enquirer to ‘catch and kill’ stories that could damage his presidential campaign (2015).
    He paid Karen McDougal $150,000 for exclusive rights to her story about an affair with Trump, then never ran the story.
    The $150,000 was significantly more than AMI would normally pay for a story, but Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had agreed to pay them $125,000 as reimbursement.
    AMI paid former Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin $30,000 for rights to his story that Donald Trump had fathered a child with one his housekeepers in the late 1980s, then never ran the story.
    He initially denied that this was spiked in a ‘catch and kill’ operation, claiming that Sajudin’s story never ran because it lacked credibility.
    Oddly, he did not seem to have the same worries about credibility when putting the story that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of JFK on the cover of the Enquirer -- a story that several AMI employees privately called ‘bullshit.’
    He ordered coverage of the election that was so biased that one National Enquirer reporter noted, ‘It just got tedious…. It became difficult each week to come up with a way to kill Hilary and make Trump look good all at the same time.’
    His ‘catch and kill’ payments may have violated campaign finance laws.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He went to work as a bookkeeper at age sixteen to help support the family after his father died.
    Before joining AMI, he teamed up with John F. Kennedy, Jr., to launch the political magazine ‘George.’ (1995)
    When a letter containing anthrax was sent to AMI headquarters, he offered to pay out of his own pocket for doctors to treat employees with Cipro (2001).
    He negotiated a deal for AMI to handle Playboy’s advertising and distribution (2010).
    A colleague said about his ability to make money in publishing, ‘David clearly had energy and a sort of fearlessness. He was willing to do things that other people wouldn’t.’
    He was smart enough to negotiate an immunity deal with investigator Robert Mueller.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 8 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 15 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 7 Votes: 71.43% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 10 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 5 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 28 Votes: 53.57% Annoying