Presswatch/The New McCarthyism

...For starters, such a requirement would violate the First Amendment, and, by depriving the press of its important investigatory role, would undoubtedly encourage favoritism among prosecutors and judges...

...please pont) ^ MasterCard...

...The terror that threatens the American media tomorrow will take as its slogan, "10, 100, 1,000 Huntington Indianas...

...It also appears that the publicity has been enough to kill off the Armtec company...

...was only telling half the story...

...If damaging articles or broadcasts turn out to be false, the person should have the ability to recover damages...

...But the impact was such that Chappell said he felt "trampled" by all the publicity...

...Unbelievably, it required a full year after that decision for the wretched Meese to issue an apology to Beggs...

...But one also wants to avoid besmirching innocent parties...

...The people are angry, and they are getting angrier about the media...

...W e may have reached a turning point, thanks to the spectacular and embarrassing spectacle of themedia lynch mob going after Dan Quayle in New Orleans, and the honest reaction of the citizens of the Hoosier State...

...On July 26, Times reporter David Johnston wrote that Chappell's "ties to military contractors were known to have come under scrutiny in the Pentagon fraud and bribery investigation...

...The ominous headline read "Rep...

...It is generally sufficient for the odor of scandal to attach itself to a person for the process of ostracism and decline to begin...

...The people wish to see things for themselves, and draw their own conclusions...

...The inquisitioners, now as in the fifties, generally come from the Congress, but the organizers of the witchhunts, the leaders of the lynch mob, the Red Queens of this murderous pack of cards, come from the media...

...John Lehman has been named in article after article as a potential target of some investigation or other...

...I believe this would stop many of the false stories...

...Chappell's relationship with Armtec indicate that the lawmaker had a complex relationship with the company...

...If the publication or broadcast is found to be false and damaging, then the plaintiff wins...

...LI 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1988...

...This is just too much to ask...

...But court documents, Pentagon records, interviews with people familiar with the case and news reports suggest that the activities of the Florida Democrat continue to interest investigators...

...It is a warning sign, a symptom of the possible degeneration of democracy into mob rule...

...This dangerous process is catalyzed by the media and fueled by the lawyers and investigators that make up such a large part of the population of the nation's capital...

...Pretty weak stuff, to put it mildly...

...date Signature Please send reprints of Warren Brookes' "The Silent Boom...

...The networks wanted the people to hear the network geniuses explain the speeches that they wouldn't let the people hear for themselves (one elegant and dignified exception: Bernard Shaw, the best anchorman in America, and simultaneously the toughest and fairest interviewer, did a great job for CNN at both Atlanta and New Orleans...

...Isn't it better to reform...

...The pendulum is beginning to swing back in the other direction, where concernabout truth and fairness counterbalances the absolutist demand for total freedom to publish anything about anyone...

...This message will not be lost on the people and their elected representatives...

...And just to cover its flagrantly exposed derriere, the Times puts in all that stuff warning its readers that there's really no evidence at all...

...can ruin whomever they wish, because the leak is mightier than the courtroom...

...I wonder if there is any real hope of bringing it back until the cycle has run its full course...

...I would favor, for example, permitting the media to defend themselves by demonstrating that they were misled by one or more sources...

...Wrong...

...News added that chief investigator Henry Hudson—the same man who seems to have leaked the disinformation that some Libyans in Northern Virginia were planning the assassination of Oliver North (another of those charges for which no known evidence exists)doesn't expect indictments for some time...

...However, investigators have declined to discuss the specific areas of Mr...

...That is the reasoning behind anti-defamation laws...

...We must move closer to this position...

...News & World Re- 1 port correctly announced in its August 22 edition, the great Pentagon scandal of 1988 looks more and more like a balloon with air whistling out of a thousand holes...

...For many victims of the new McCarthyism, the ability to find work and earn money is also very much at stake...

...No matter...

...And while the odor comes from many places—the investigators, colleagues, enemies, "informed sources'!—it invariably arrives through the media...

...Like the original .version, the new McCarthyism is wrong, vicious, and un-American...

...His picture has been on the front pages...

...Journalist, edit thyself before the Senate Select Committee on the Media arrives to do it for you...

...a strong-willed manager like former Navy Secretary John Lehman and his cohorts could ride rough-shod over Congress and the other armed services...

...And the people are tired of the media terror that destroys so many public figures, all too often without just cause...

...But then the second paragraph reads: In the six weeks since Mr...

...It is time to enforce professional standards in the media, a need as obvious to concerned citizens as it is distasteful to the media practitioners...

...Even if they are eventually "cleared," it is often too late for them to resume their lives at anything like the level at which they functioned prior to the scandals...

...A month earlier, Aviation Week & Space Technology announced that the Navy had reversed temporary suspensions on no less than nine contracts that had allegedly been 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1988 involved in the FBI investigations, and US...

...PRESSWATCH THE NEW McCARTHYISM by Michael Ledeen T he great evil of McCarthyism was 1 the political witchhunt, in which innocent people were smeared and ruined on the basis of rumor and innuendo rather than solid evidence of wrongdoing...

...Box 10448 Arlington, VA 22210 Name...

...The second paragraph revealed that "Federal court documents, Florida corporate records, campaign spending reports and interviews with people familiar with Mr...

...Bill Chappell of Florida that make me gasp...

...One fact that took quite a while to emerge from the coverage of this very big story is that more and more American companies are refusing to do business with the United States government because of the seemingly infinite levels of bureaucracy, green-eyeshade types, and the inevitable barristers, that consume time and energy in any contractual relationship with the Department of Defense...

...Way down in paragraph six, we get the bottom line: Mr...

...Second, the set of rules should require that we make an effort to put stories about individuals in some sort of overall context...

...Clients run away, job opportunities vanish, friends are hard to find, telephone calls don't get answered, children are subjected to ridicule even by their teachers, wives develop homicidal tendencies...

...They wanted to hear Kirkpatrick speak, and they wanted to hear Dole speak, but the networks did not permit the people to hear these speeches...

...The people want the reporters to report, and not constantly to interpret...

...A satisfactory compromise must be found...

...They turned on the media, asking some journalists to account for their own activities in the Vietnam period, shouting insults at others, and vocally supporting Quayle...

...At the same time, one does not have to insist that only "truth" can save the media from paying damages...

...It is also not surprising that the current bribery investigation centers on many of these same people...

...Chappell appears to have acted lawfully in these dealings...

...The stories of the victims of the new McCarthyism now fill a good-sized volume: from Raymond Donovan to Hamilton Jordan to Robert L. Green (the former president of the University of the District of Columbia, who was hounded out of town on the basis of charges that were found to be false), from James Beggs to Anne Burford, Les Lenkowsky and Bert Lance, people are damaged—even ruined—on the basis of unsubstantiated, anonymous allegations...

...But rather than run the risk of our faithful readers being thrown in jail for copyright infringement, the SPECTATOR is offering reprints of this testament to the triumph of the Reagan boom, at special bulk prices, as well as the single copy price of $1.50 The August 1988 article is an ideal pie-in-the-face for nonbelieying _Mends, professors, and slow-witted family members...

...One wants good investigative journalism, for it is sometimes the only way to uncover wrongdoing...

...Q o we have two important principles of American life in conflict...

...Yet today, the ruination of a person in public life takes place long before (and often without) any finding of guilt...

...Louis Post-Dispatch, for example, ran an editorial about the Pentagon scandal which included the following "thoughts...

...Yet John Lehman has been accused of nothing, and, so far as I can tell, no evidence of any wrongdoing on his part has been introduced by anyone...

...What is generally accepted as proper behavior, and what is universally frowned upon...

...When Raymond Donovan asked where he could get his reputation restored, he Michael Ledeen is author of the new book, Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair (Charles Scribner's Sons...

...In the conflict between "innocent until proven guilty" and the First Amendment, the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of protecting media that are not only free but all too frequently licentious, unaccountable, and irresponsible...

...But in that case, the sources should automatically become the defendants in the suit (and the media could not refuse to identify the sources, while using the sources to protect themselves from libel accusation...

...Do not forget that the great Robespierre, the architect of the terror during the French Revolution who gleefully sent his enemies to the guillotine, eventually was beheaded by his own favorite instrument...

...And keep in mind that the New York Times is the most ethically concerned of the major newspapers (which is one reason why papers with less concern—like the Washington Post—so often scoop the Times, which demands a higher standard of evidence...

...Typically, as I write, the latest news from the networks is that even the few in-house groups charged with monitoring professional standards on television are being shut down...

...So, for example, at the political conventions, they want to hear the speeches—all of the speeches,beginning to end—rather than the constant ruminations of the commentators...

...The main requirement is that, if the media are going to publish or broadcast damaging information about a person, the information should be true...

...They do not believe that Rather, Jennings, Brokaw, and the others are reliable guides to the world...

...If one is truly to be held innocent until proven guilty, then unsubstantiated allegations should not be published...

...Chappell's name appeared in connection with the investigation, he has repeatedly asserted his innocence on procurement matters and has not been charged with wrongdoing...

...Chappell's relationship with the company that are being investigated...

...although there is a distinct bias to the media, the terror has been bipartisan, destroying across the political landscape...

...The first paragraph told us that Chappell had successfully urged a military contractor to open a plant in his district...

...No Armtec officials have been charged in connection with the inquiry...

...Less than a month later, on August 12, David Johnston unloaded again...

...REAGAN'S SILENT BOOM TAS REPRINT Right now, across the nation, photocopy machines are humming as AMERICAN SPECTATOR subscribers make copies of Warren T Brookes' article, "The Silent Boom': the definitive piece on the economic successes of the Reagan years...

...That leaves us with the question of accountability and enforcement, a drum which has been beating steadily in this column for some months...

...The country can ill afford a situation in which only those who can't make it inthe open market will agree to do work for the government...

...6 4T nnocent until proven guilty" is 1 something precious, and a real rarity on this planet...

...In the rest of the world, the only defense against a libel suit is . . . truth...

...Some publications seem to make it a point of honor to slander public figures...

...Thanks to their willing accomplices in the media, Hudson & Co...

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...And the tone of the questioning, the endless repetition of the accusations-masked-as-questions, and the rudeness of the questioners all served to enrage the citizens of Huntington...

...Unless I've missed something, this means that the Times is trampling poor Chappell, even though its investigatory Mr...

...They really do want the facts...

...Look at Jim Beggs, the NASA chief whose distinguished career was destroyed by a misguided investigation from the Justice Department, duly leaked to the press, which raised such a ruckus that Beggs had, to leave town...

...The media should be required to wait until wrongdoing has been established, or, as the Founding Fathers wished, until an indictment has been handed down by a grand jury (that is the reason why grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, in order to protect the good names of innocent persons...

...McCarthyism thrives in Washington, D.C., a city in which, once you have been attacked in the media, you are widely held guilty until proven innocent, in which guilt by association is commonplace, and where political witchhunts are now so frequent as to escape comment...

...Chappell's Ties to a Contractor...

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...For example, in stories about defense contractors allegedly involved in illegal or even unethical behavior, it would help readers—and probably temper the often excessive zeal of the reporters—to describe the ethical standards of the industry at large...

...Once destroyed in the media, a clean bill of health from a court is pretty meager consolation, like bestowing a medal on a dead soldier...

...The media folks don't like it at all, but the clock is ticking on their free ride with the American public...

...After the Republican Convention, the media continued their assault on Senator Quayle in his home town of Huntington, Indiana...

...With the defeat of McCarthy and the triumph of liberal democracy in the mid-fifties, such things were supposed to have been driven from American political life...

...In those parts of Europe where Napoleonic law still rules, the burden of proof is on the accused, not the accusers...

...It has already produced a terrifying result: the most fundamental principle of our legal system—a person is innocent until proven guilty—has been driven out of town on a rail...

...He has said he adhered to a high ethical standard of conduct in his dealings with Armtec...

...The lawmaker has not been charged with any wrongdoing...

...But the American people are not so stupid as to fail to understand what is going on...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1988 35 If the journalists are going to write off this unpleasant experience as some sort of clever operation by the Bush organization (an organization that has been described as one of the most ham-handed in history by some of the same journalists who now seem to suspect it of Machiavellian cunning), they will have missed a very important fact about contemporary America...

...From the moment the allegations are published, the curtain falls...

...In order to work, that compromise will have to provide satisfactory answers to two questions: Can we devise a reasonable set of rules that will safeguard the media's right to free expression and also the individual's right against mischievous and damaging attacks from the press...

...Last week Armtec laid off its 89 employees and shut down its operations...

...His name has been pronounced in close proximity to other words like "bribery," "illegal," and "scandal...

...This anger will eventually take institutional form, and the Congress will react to it, to the great detriment of the free press...

...We can certainly make a set of rules that would, if observed, restore some sense of calm and orderliness to our political life...

...And in most of the rest of the world, the same basic principle applies...

...Unless you get awfully lucky, the mob that you have so often unleashed on your enemies will one day devour you in a feeding frenzy of its own...

...Requiring that wrongdoing has been established before writing about it would do wonders to calm the currently superheated atmosphere in which media and government officials operate, but it has some serious problems...

...To be sure, a good prosecutor can, as the saying goes, get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, but waiting for indictments is a lot better than the present situation, in which a prosecutor can indict someone in the media, and doesn't have to bother with the rather slower tempo of due process...

...Yet the current interpretation of libel requires that a plaintiff establish not only that the offending articles or broadcasts were false and damaging, but that they were created, in full knowledge that they were false, precisely to damage him...

...The St...

...So context is very important indeed, and should be given in any of these stories...

...A year or two later, Justice decided it had all been a mistake...

...We and the British, along with those countries that go by British tradition, maintain the opposite approach, firm in our conviction that it is better for some of the guilty to go unpunished than for the innocent to be sent to prison...

...So why publish the story, when there's no story there...

...Many of the same reporters who took great pride in delegitimizing the war in Vietnam, now had the chutzpah to accuse Quayle of moral turpitude in looking for alternatives to Army service during the war years...

...Johnston has come up empty-handed in his efforts to pin something on Chappell...

...This reaction, which has been building for years, is not a partisan matter...

...Even the New York Times, which is straining nobly to develop internal rules that require higher standards of evidence before publishing allegations that people are under investigation, has run two very long articles about Rep...

...I ndeed, as US...

...The American Spectator P.O...

...Many of the journalists believed they had been "set up" by the Bush organization, and as much as said so in their articles and reportage...

...The disgraceful Post-Dispatch speaks of "many of these same people," yet names only Lehman...

...Is there some method of accountability that can be enforced on those who flagrantly violate those rules...