Apparently there's a limit...

... even to the depths to which the Weekly World News will sink. It seems the tabloid ran a story on the "10 ugliest people in the world." That's offensive enough, but for the rag that printed this and this just in the last month, it's all in a day's degeneracy work. Unfortunately for the WWN, one of the "uglies" was Jason Schechterle, a Phoenix police officer who had been disfigured on duty. The word "lawsuit" was whispered, and the News was apparently smart enough to see that they couldn't possibly win. Rather, they donated a "significant" sum of money to the Arizona Burn Center at Maricopa Medical Center.

Stuart Zakim, a spokesman for American Media, Inc., which owns Weekly World News, as well as the National Enquirer, the Globe, and magazines such as Shape and Men's Fitness, acknowledged that the story was a mistake and said that the editors responsible for the story were fired.

"American Media stands for quality journalism," Zakim said.

I wonder how he said that without gagging.

(Akubra tip to Jim Romanesko.)

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the Arizona Republic page about the settlement also showed this ad when I clicked on it:

Ironic, what?