Presswatch/No Runs, No Drips, No Errors
Eastland, Terry
PRESSWATCH NO RUNS, NO DRIPS, NO ERRORS by Terry Eastland G eorge Bush is succeeding where Ronald Reagan did not. His White House generally does not leak to the news media, at least not in the...
...This may be self-serving hyperbole: another journalist indicated he had been able to get answers to his questions...
...Before Edwards could introduce new legislation, however, At'See my "Gray Matter" in the September TAS...
...Frank liked the guy and says he decided he would try to reform him...
...The only possible explanation is that none of them provide for as stiff a penalty...
...On September 13, for example, the Times led the paper with the unsurprising decision by the House ethics committee to open an investigation...
...The result...
...Barrett and Harwood have the right focus...
...And there is one more factor: Frank's homosexuality...
...And some, including Rep...
...The ad read: "Hot bottom plus large endowment equals a great time...
...The Globe editorial and the Newsweek cover piece (a "wrecked political career," it said of Frank's) suggested to news editors that the end is near...
...Unofficial, but effective—so far...
...More problematic than the new Justice Department policy is the media's shoot-fromthe-hip mentality, often on the basis of unnamed sources.tion...
...so is engaging "the services of a prostitute...
...There already exists a body of laws and regulations that would seem to do the job...
...You can be imprisoned for up to ten years for violating the theft of property law...
...A cynic might say: as long as the current attorney general is in office...
...According to Frank, "a sexual relationship turned into a friendship...
...He hasn't locked the President in the Oval Office (as though this were possible) but has kept the door wide open...
...All by himself, Sununu is an anti-leak policy...
...His White House generally does not leak to the news media, at least not in the nasty, personal way the Reagan White House did...
...Let's start with the Washington Times...
...More than one reporter told me: "The place has clammed up...
...Meanwhile, Thornburgh's anti-leak effort has unfortunately diverted attention "from the press's recent habit of overplaying pseudosensational stories...
...Frank, one of whose specialties is "government ethics," is now scheduled for an investigation by the House ethics committee...
...Don Edwards, said new laws might be needed to prevent leaks in a criminal inquiry...
...Also, Frank is smart, and the media tend to like intelligent people...
...Even in crisis, Frank is witty...
...volving a criminal investigation...
...Sodomy is a felony in the District of Columbia...
...Barney Frank's political fate to one side for the moment, what's more interesting about the story is what it says about the national media...
...Some reservoir of good will in the media can prove helpful in a time of crisis, which the Thornburgh Justice Department has yet to experience...
...Here again, the idea behind subpoenaing media phone records in order to find a leaker may be rhetoric only, designed to influence behavior, at least in the short run...
...Individuals said to be under investigation may in fact be innocent...
...O n August 25, the Washington Times led its editions with: "Sex sold out of congressman's house...
...Using what he calls "personal funds," Frank hired Gobie as a personal aide and housekeeper (the two men dispute how much Gobie was paid), and let him use his Capitol Hill apartment and car...
...The story didn't rate that kind of play...
...But why must a law that governs the theft of government property, and was not intended to be applied in this context, be enlisted in the effort to prevent leaks...
...In early September, while the Times pursued the Frank story from every conceivable angle, other media in Wash- ington did not...
...As often happens with a "proprietary" story (i.e., one a paper breaks and regards as "its own"), the Times overplayed some parts of it...
...D olicy leaks are one kind, leaks personally attacking someone another...
...And it is working, perhaps too well...
...Still another kind are those inTerry Eastland is resident scholar at the National Legal Center for the Public Interest...
...The Times also ran advocacy stories—stories with a point of view the newspaper conceives and for which it then finds "sources" willing to offer supporting quotes...
...Gobie didn't reform, however, continuing to sell himself and others for sexual services, using Frank's house and car as sites of, well, engagement...
...Charles Schumer in a letter to Thornburgh, the department "should not be turning to measures that would infringe upon the First Amendment...
...Previous policy (found in the United States Attorneys Manual) did not permit this sort of prosecution...
...See my "House Foleys" in the August TAS...
...Barrett's September 11 piece inspired one by Richard Harwood, ombudsman for the Washington Post, titled "The Problem With Sources...
...The Times is different, and its difference attracts readers...
...What is going on here...
...They claim Thornburgh is trying to "manage" department news for his personal benefit...
...Ironically, the more reporters write about the new policy, on the theory that to publicize it is eventually to win its reversal, the more it works as a deterrent...
...What the Times was do- ing here was no different from what other media have done with govern- ment officials caught in scandal or ac- cused of malfeasance...
...One heavily relied-on source was a "key congres- sional aide...
...Frank fired Gobie in mid-1987 after learning that Gobie had been using his apartment for prostituTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1989 31 SARKES TARZIAN INC WRCB CH :4 1EL CHA'n-ANG0(-,1, El3,LSSEE P KTVN CH,'" Hr IL 2 RENO ADC WTTS, 92 008 IING-FON ,DoC WGCL 1373 C' ([COP HiviGTOr...
...Such a policy would force reporters to reveal their sources...
...The others spoke on "background...
...And he is good at media relations, and the media admire that...
...On September 17 the Boston Globe, a long-time supporter, called on the congressman to quit now rather than await the House ethics inquiry...
...Knowing this might happen, sources would quit being sources—at least over the phone...
...So now, in late September, the lemming-like quality of the media is on display, with the production of stories that taken together produce a conventional wisdom...
...The story had only one of Frank's colleagues on the record...
...Credit for this relatively high degree of tranquility goes to Chief of Staff John Sununu...
...On the day Archibald and Rodriguez broke the Frank story, the Times ran a companion piece explaining how they confirmed the prostitute's tale...
...It will be interesting to see whether the department ever prosecutes an official found to be leaking in a Gray-type situation...
...For example, the President's national drug strategy was so thoroughly (and for the most part intentionally) leaked during August that little of it was real news by the time it was officially released on September 5. But the top hands in this administration have tended to refrain from knocking each other anonymously through the media...
...As I write, there's been no subpoena...
...And his relationship with Gobie, whatever the truth of certain disputed claims, is an embarrassment to those Democrats who want to attract a constituency broader than the readership of the Washington Blade...
...The change in Justice policy came about after a CBS report in late May which suggested that Democratic Rep...
...The Justice Department actually threatened to subpoena CBS for telephone records in its investigation of the Gray leak...
...As good a place as any to find such is the Wall Street Journal's front-page "Washington Wire...
...Why such gentle, gingerly treatment...
...We'll see...
...As one columnist told me, "Barney always returns our phone calls, he always makes our prose more colorful with his quotes...
...The issue that was originally joined as Leakers v. Gray and became Thornburgh v. Leakers has changed again, to Reporters v. Thornburgh...
...But if not thoroughly clammed up, Justice is tighter-lipped than at any time in recent memory, and most reporters don't like it...
...And I doubt there'll be one, in this or any other leak investigation...
...The new policy, in short, proposes a sanction that is disproportionate to the wrong it seeks to remedy...
...Reporters object to Thornburgh for a related reason: he has said it would be appropriate for Justice to subpoena their telephone records in order to identify leakers...
...Only a handful of stories have been of this kind...
...At the time, Gobie, a convicted felon (possession of cocaine, among other things), not only sold himself for sex but also ran an "escort" service...
...The real purpose of the new policy seems to be deterrence, which can work only so long as the threat of prosecution is credible...
...Just this June it was Frank who, precisely because he washomosexual, could say explicitly what some thought the infamous RNC memo on Tom Foley suggested, name- ly that Foley, like Frank, was homosex- ual...
...A more interesting question is whether Frank or any of his numerous media sympathizers will recognize that what he did to get himself in such hot water was more than just "bad judgment...
...Popu- larity is a major factor...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1989 Justice will probably wind up saving the power to subpoena for more serious (and politically favorable) situations—a terrorist bombing, for example...
...He and other House Democrats demanded (and got) an investigation of the leak...
...Gobie had come to them...
...Reporters George Archibald and Paul M. Rodriguez had broken an amazing story that they continued to report in subsequent days...
...You will not find that kind of self-congratulation in the Post or any other paper in this town...
...WAJI, 931 Fr 1 FORT \ \WY 1,1iD141," CENTRAL OFFICE, BC) \ BLOON,111 JGIDI If -17102 TFLEPHOr .F 812 332 7251 Curiously, however, the Times also demonstrated that it has much in common with other media...
...The better course to take in such cases is not criminal at all but administrative—reprimands, suspensions, firings—which is already available under Justice Department guidelines...
...First of all, regrettable journalism, accompanied by unprofessional conduct on the part of government officials, has now led to questionable public policy...
...torney General Richard Thornburgh announced the new policy, which provoked reaction...
...We have to object strenuously...
...When the memo began to circulate on Capitol Hill, Frank convened numerous impromptu press confer- ences and attacked it, completely changing a dynamic that had put Democrats on the political defensive on the "ethics" question, and providing journalism an opportunity finally to deal with the Foley rumor...
...on August 26, both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran front-page (below the fold) stories...
...Instead, there were sympa- thetic portraits of Frank done by report- ers who've covered him over the years...
...But there's more to their handling of the Frank story than simple ideological compatibility...
...Suffice it to say, the media covering the Justice Department also objected strenuously...
...Of course, the story could not be ignored...
...Contrary to early speculations about his tenure, he has created few, if any, real enemies within the administration...
...It is possible to go a year or two, maybe three, without a prosecution and still maintain deterrence...
...The story confirmed the kind of paper the Times has become: a brash, shoot-at-the-Post, fun-to-read publication...
...Frank is a political liberal, and many Washington journalists are more in tune with his views than those of, say, Newt Gingrich...
...This is what brought Frank to Stephen Gobie for some paid gay sex ($80...
...32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1989...
...Bill Gray was under criminal investigation.' The story, based on unnamed "Justice Department sources," turned out to be not only incomplete but wrong in a key particular—Gray was not himself under investigation...
...The Globe editorial, together with a Newsweek cover story on Frank appearing the following week, has spurred the Washington media to take more interest in the Frank story, though not in any "fundamental shoe-leather" sense...
...The sex was of the homo- and bi-varieties, and the congressman was Democrat Rep...
...For now Thornburgh may be succeeding in his campaign to prevent leaks, but not without costs...
...I'm going to stay off astrology as well as politics," he quipped in response to a question about his future...
...The newsmen were skeptical, but they went to work...
...In one respect, at least, Sununu has proved the truth of old adage: personnel is policy...
...it should have gone below the fold, or inside (where the Post and others placed it...
...Barney Frank...
...In early 1985 Frank answered an "escort/ model" advertisement in the Washington Blade...
...The facts were uncovered at last," bragged the Times, "by the exercise of fundamental shoe-leather journalism...
...That's a lot of time—as much time as you can serve for disclosing classified national defense information, a far graver offense than leaking to CBS about Bill Gray...
...By mid-September, considerations like these moved important friends of Frank to urge him to resign...
...Far from discouraging conversation and argument within the Cabinet, he has positively encouraged it...
...R eporters who cover Justice say the new policy is preventing not only disclosures of unauthorized information but also conversations about everything else—unless it is the attorney general or one of his designees who speaks...
...On September 22, it let the world know, in italics no less: "Sentiment grows that Rep Frank ultimately will leave for political and personal reasons...
...While the media remain generally sympathetic toward Frank, they now believe they have something to "report" that in the past they have proved very good at reporting: the fall of a politician in "ethics trouble...
...Thus, it led its September 8 editions with "news" that "senior Democratic officials" believe Frank has embarrassed the Democratic party and should re- sign...
...When in 1987 he wanted to announce his homosexuali- ty, he planted a question with a reporter, to be asked in the presence of other reporters...
...The reason: to protect government whistleblowers...
...For those who don't live in the City of Scandal, here are the basics...
...But thereafter there was lit- tle new reporting by anyone other than the Times...
...W hatever Frank's future in Con- gress, it is doubtful whether he can ever again be an effective spokesman for his favorite causes, including (ironically) those of "government ethics" or homosexual rights...
...Those are the words of Time's Laurence Barrett, in reference to the Gray and Bloch stories, among others...
...Gobie claims that Frank knew all along what he was doing...
...In early August the Justice Department announced a new policy: under a statute covering theft of government property, it would henceforth consider prosecuting government employees who leak information obtained from a criminal investigation...
...My own guess is that itwill be a distant day in the twenty-first century before such a suit is ever brought...
...To be sure, tidbits about policy do trickle out, some authorized, some not...
...2 Reporters appreciated that...
...Frank has not been prosecuted and says he is guilty only of "bad judgment"-- allowing himself to be "conned," as he puts it, by Gobie...
...And the investigative enterprise itself may be compromised, as apparently happened in the Felix Bloch case (another "investigation" story that was reported on the basis of anonymous sources, by ABC...
...All in all, Sununu has not done the things that create the conditions under which backbiting leaks occur...
...Few in the media want to be accused of "gay" bashing...
...And without sources, modern journalism loses much of its power...
...To rely on anonymous sources in reporting criminal investigations can be dangerous...
...There was some anti-Sununu stuff, and the flare-up between Secretary of State James Baker and White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray...
...While we feel strongly about leaks," wrote Edwards and Rep...
...Frank is an always available source of credible in- formation and good quotes, and the media like that...
...These appeared early in the administration, and such stories have been the exception, not the rule...
Vol. 22 • November 1989 • No. 11
