Madoff Doesn't Have Cancer; David Blaine Can Swim

Yesterday's New York Post was chockablock with exclusives and shocking tales of celebrity near-death encounters. What more could you want from a big-city tabloid?

On the cover was "Bernie's Cancer Cell," which claimed Ponzi-scheming felon Bernie Madoff is dying of cancer in prison. The Post's Rich Calder quoted an unnamed "fellow inmate" of Madoff's who said, "He's been taking about 20 pills a day for his cancer…. He talks about it all the time. He's not doing very well." (The Wall Street Journal, which, like the Post, is owned by News Corp., picked up the story.)

What a scoop! Later yesterday, the Washington Post (among others) followed up with "U.S. Denies Reports of Madoff Cancer." (Does that mean that the other bombshell in Calder's article—that "various 'gangs' at the prison are trying to recruit Bernie to their crews" might also be too good to be true?) Even Fox Business, also owned by News Corp., threw some cold water on the report later in the day, quoting a prison official as saying, "the New York Post story is full of inaccuracies…Bernie Madoff is not terminally ill and has not been diagnosed with cancer." (And, for the record, John Kerry is not picking Dick Gephardt as his running mate.)

Well, there's always Lachlan Cartwright's (Exclusive!) "High Line Is a Lust Cause," all about how guests of the Standard Hotel in Manhattan are flashing passersby on the High Line with the hotel's consent. As NYMag.com's Daily Intel blog pointed out, that's hardly exclusive since they've been covering the same thing since June. (The tone of moral outrage from the Post, however, is all the paper's own.)

Surely the story of magician David Blaine nearly drowning in the Hamptons—which was not tagged as "Exclusive" but had all the Post's proprietary elements (celebrities, hubris, near-death)—holds up as a piece of crackerjack reporting, right?

Not so, according to a Tuesday followup headlined "David Blaine: Rescue Talk All Wet." It quoted the magician as saying of his alleged rescue by lifeguards: "I did swim back by myself…. There were cameramen all around. If they saved me, wouldn't there have been pictures?"

Who would dare impugn the Post's reporting like that? The New York Post's Page Six, that's who. Haven't these people heard of synergy?