Presswatch/In Bed With Bill

...This year the prestige press concluded that Clinton's adulterous behavior belonged to the past and thus required no further 58 The American Spectator April 1992 investigation...

...That's "a very high number," said ABC's Roberts, one of few mainstreamers to take this concern—or at least its political implications—seriously...

...An ABC poll in late January found that fully 26 percent of the respondents would not vote for a presidential candidate who has had an extramarital affair...

...The problem having been reluctantly posed in the practical terms of election impact, Clinton answered in kind: "I think it is highly unlikely . . . that you have anything to worry about on that score...

...A Washington Post, for instance, demands more than a he-said/she-said to justify an adultery charge...

...He stuck to this strategy during his post–Super Bowl appearance on CBS's "60 Minutes...

...By not replying to "have you ever," he in effect conceded adultery without setting himself up for the kind of inquiry that would examine whether he was being truthful...

...Acknowledging "wrongdoing" and "causing pain in my marriage," Clinton refused to say whether he had ever committed adultery, arguing that he and other politicians, like all Americans, deserve "a zone of privacy...

...In Bed With Bill by Terry Eastland However Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton fares in his party's primaries, he and the press managed in New Hampshire to lock themselves into a complicated relationship that will no doubt be the subject of postmortems at the Kennedy School, the Columbia School of Journalism, and other sites of lofty critique...

...Other reporters might have set the record straight, but it would have taken a while...

...The Star took a beating from the mainstream press for its shoddy reportorial ways...

...First it reported the lawsuit brought by Larry Nichols, a disgruntled Arkansas state employee who alleged that Clinton had had affairs with several women, including Gennifer Flowers...

...Clinton's purpose wasn't to influence the tabloid press, which is beyond anyone's influence, but to force the prestige press to retreat from the adultery story...

...Not exactly an A-1 feeding...

...Does the Public Have a Right to Know About a Candidate's Adultery...

...about the Adultery Question...

...Do Media Ever Talk About Sources...

...His conclusion: the press fed on Quayle and Tower to a far greater extent than it did here...

...Nonsense...

...That same day, ABC's Cokie Roberts, moderating the first televised Democratic debate, said to Clinton: "There is concern on the part of members of your party—that these allegations of womanizing—that the Republicans will find somebody and that she will come forward late and that you would lose the all-important-toDemocrats women's vote...

...but post–Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, the mainstream press has become more and more preoccupied with such matters...

...accompany order...

...It is a question of liberty from catchwords and headlines and hypnotic repetitions and all the plutocratic platitudes imposed on us by advertisement and journalism...

...But that day only NBC among the networks mentioned the new charges, and then only in brief...

...There was no reason for Koppel to talk about sourcing in his phone conversation with Clinton, but he was right to issue what amounted to a correction, precisely because his loose talk about the letter's origin had made him part of the story...

...No one's education is complete without this...

...On February 3, Don Kowet of the Washington Times—in a story that did make page A-1—pointed out that the mainstream press had "no appetite" for the adultery story...

...His behavior was compulsive and current—and thus implicitly judged by the press as falling under the public's right to know...

...As a result of price deregulation, the Classified Information by Cathy Young 60 The American Spectator April 1992...

...Koppel's task was eased by Jones's willingness to come forward, but I'd like to believe that he would have corrected his comments to Clinton in any event...

...The journalistic class war was amusing: the prestige press, as it likes to be called, has published its share of Nichols-like stories and has been known to pay cash for trash—and it may well have contributed to the Star's garbaging of the campaign...

...The other day, he let it be known that he will fully support Boris Yeltsin as long as Yeltsin stays the course of democracy and reform—an almost exact reiteration of what Yeltsin said of Gorbachev during Yeltsin's visit to the United States eight months ago...

...It's true that the Roberts-Clinton exchange occurred before the Star's Part II on Flowers and that, after it broke, reporters in New Hampshire asked Clinton about it as he toured a paintbrush factory...

...Releasing a copy of the letter, he attacked its leak to ABC as part of a "dirty tricks" campaign by "George Bush and the Republican Party...

...But all this prowling helped create a market tailor-made for the Star...

...it needs to catch the Lothario in the act, so to speak, as when Gary Hart was discovered with Donna Rice...

...It could only have been Clinton himself...

...Still, Gorby's chances for re-election may have lessened with the disclosure by an investigative commission of the Russian parliament that a month before the August coup, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union quietly signed a decree authorizing party organizations to invest their funds in private businesses...

...If the story was at all to be pursued, Clinton wanted to make sure it would center on Flowers and her ilk, subjects he knew full well the mainstream had little appetite for...

...It reported that Clinton and his wife had been asked about extramarital affairs at a town meeting, and cited Hillary Clinton's bland answer...

...In the modern world it is no longer a question of liberty from kings and captains and inquisitors...

...In 1987 Gary Hart denied womanizing but was caught red-handed in the early stages of the campaign...

...Kowet compared the mainstreamers' treatment of the womanizing charge this time to their handling of similar charges against Republican vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle in 1988 and John Tower in 1989...

...Proof is found in an article by V. Sanatin in Komsomolskaya Pravda (January 24, 1992), "The Nomenklatura Comes Out of the Trenches—And Tackles the Market...

...Child Psychiatrist Developed by Dr...

...I./An Amazing Preparation for Life...

...This non-question was network television's first reference to the adultery story...

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...G. K. Chesterton virA Magnificent First...

...When the adultery charge finally crept onto A-1 a few days later, reporters typically connected it to the pulse of the Clinton campaign...

...Was There a Feeding Frenzy...

...Then it published Flowers's own story that she and the governor had carried on a 12-year affair...

...This role reversal of sorts was predicted on the very day of Gorbachev's resignation, December 25, by Komsomolskaya Pravda commentator Oleg Pshenichny, who even speculated that Gorbachev might someday shock everyone by defeating Yeltsin at the polls...

...As one reporter told me, "The draft story wouldn't have had the impact without the adultery story...

...Finding itWA Work of Art that Teaches...

...He told the governor that he could not reveal his source but that his impression was that the source had received it from someone at the Pentagon...

...As the rumors floated and reporters chased them last summer, our strategist no doubt sensed that the adultery story would become public...

...The prestige press used to say no but now says maybe...

...The most important educational task is to help youth recognize the lies in the press and media...

...So much for Communist ideals...

...But they could not prove it, nor did they want to...

...That night, on national television, a defensive Koppel apprised Clinton of these facts...

...I don't think that's very likely, but then such criteria may not apply to the former Cathy Young is the author of Growing Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields) and our regular Russian Presswatch (formerly Soviet Presswatch) columnist . Who Devised Clinton's Anti-GOP PR...

...Over and over, pundits and media experts said the press was feeding on the adultery story...

...Is it just that Republicans taste better...

...This one work of art will provide a critical format for students offsetting contemporary gullability...

...And on adultery questions, don't think there's not a concerned pub-lic...

...the New York Times buried this event in a single graph within a larger story...

...The Washington Post's first reference came in two paragraphs at the bottom of an A-14 story on January 19, headlined "Democrats Pit Pay, Perks in Grope for High Ground...

...First came last fall's preemptive strike, in which Clinton and his wife told mainstream reporters that there were some questions an elected official shouldn't have to answer...

...What to do...

...Our media democracy includes both the New York Times and the Star (as we've seen, such papers are yoked together in ways the uppercrust press is loath to admit), which means we'll continue to see more dirty laundry being hung out...

...In an interview with the Washington Post, the Times's executive editor, Max Frankel, denounced the prestige press's supposed tabloid-like behavior: "I'm quite ashamed of my profession...

...Who Devised Clinton's PR...

...If he ever becomes President, I anticipate a highly partisan Democrat who'll try to work and spin the press, and whose politics, on social and moral issues at least, come right out of the cultural divide that opened in the late sixties—libertarian on matters of sex and personal behavior, opposed to institutional authority, and sanctimonious about opposing the Vietnam war...

...Samuel A. Nigro, M.D...

...In both cases we're talking about credibility...

...Clinton had achieved his purpose—at least for a few days...

...Paul Johnson has come up with the term "media democracy" to describe the present state of Western governments, in which media not only transmit politics but transform it...

...Planning a program for February 12, Koppel called Clinton...

...Shrewdly, he also said that this issue "will test the character of the press...

...The Star, the supermarket tabloid weekly that circulates 3.2 million copies, broke the adultery story in two stages in the second half of January...

...A press that could not prove the adultery story now had every reason to zero in on Clinton's fishiness with the draft...

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...The day after Clinton's "60 Minutes" appearance, Flowers held her own press conference to call him a liar...

...If Clinton himself did, he was a clever man—and too clever by half...

...For all the encouragement it gave the...

...ABC's source then called up "Nightline" to say that his copy of the letter had not come from anyone at the Pentagon...

...As might have been expected, the carpetbagging reporters struck out in Arkansas...

...The great moderate hope of the 1992 race," the New York Times called him on August 13...

...But given the presence of the Star and its ilk, mainstreamers are naive to think that the public will not be told about allegations of adultery, even those from the distant past, so long as there's someone around willing to step forward and make them...

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...The Star says yes...

...The report is from Ekaterinburg, Yeltsin's domain back when it was still Sverdlovsk and he still a Communist, and the city that, as the president's home base, was supposed to become a showcase of reform...

...Just one hour reflecting and discussing this art will provide an incredibly accurate awareness of the press and media...

...The next day, the New York Times noted the story on its inside pages...

...Hijacking Granny As I noted last month, the combination of commercialism and state controls gives bureaucrats unprecedented opportunities for self-enrichment, and they are not about to let go of such a lucrative arrangement without a fight...

...Nigro, this humorous-provocative item can be used as a classroom discussion catalyst or as a focus for creative classroom projects...

...Clinton immediately held a press conference...

...In late January, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported that reporters from the vaunted mainstream had descended upon Arkansas months ago to check out rumors generated by Clinton's local political opponents Terry Eastland is resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C...

...The Post led its report with Clinton's paintbrush-factory statement that Flowers's story was "just nbt true," and did so deep inside the paper...

...Total Enclosed Is $ The American Spectator April 1992 59 self on the defensive, the press quickly lost whatever interest it still had in the Flowers story...

...A healthy scepticism about the press and media is essential to everyone's menial health...

...A few phone calls later, ABC determined that its information came from Col...

...Clinton Jones, a Democrat and former officer in the University of Arkansas ROTC unit who now was willing to be publicly identified...

...Thirty years ago, journalism would not have given such rumors the time of day, much less serious inquiry...

...Perhaps, but Gorby is not acting like a man over the hill...

...Why Burn A Flag When You can Burn A Newsp ape41 . . is the title of this astounding work of art that provides all the vocabulary and i form ton needed to understand and cope better with the press and media...

...That depends on which ostensible keeper of the public's right to know you ask...

...Among the questions that Moderator Cuomo will want to pursue: Did the Star Act Alone...

...n the last 1991 issue of the Russian weekly Novoye Vremya ("New Time"), émigré Kronid Lubarsky wrote that with Mikhail Gorbachev's retirement, the twentieth century itself was receding into the past...

...VA Matching Quiz that Informs...

...I'm inclined to believe that the mainstream press was right to distinguish between Hart's and Clinton's adulteries (assuming Clinton has cleaned up his act), and that the rule that's now evolved—distinguishing between ongoing and past affairs—is correct...

...CI Soviet Union...

...Not every 'have you ever' question should necessarily be answered," Clinton said...

...Some reporters felt Clinton was close to a lie: they were convinced Clinton and Flowers had had at least a dalliance or two...

...Nichols dropped his lawsuit, saying he had no evidence of the alleged affairs, and Flowers admitted she had been paid for her story—between $130,000 and $175,000, according to the Wall Street Journal...

...Instead, they found a perfect surrogate in the draft story broken by the Wall Street Journal on February 6. A too-clever Clinton added to the concern over his character by violating his own refusal to discuss Flowers: "A woman I never slept with and a draft I never dodged," he said of the accusations against him...

...It's gospel that the press never does, but ABC's Ted Koppel did after Clinton's 22year-old letter to an ROTC recruiter was leaked to "Nightline...

...This much, if nothing else, is what New Hampshire revealed about Bill Clinton...

...Ordinarily, the prestige press responds to issues that interest a large segment of the population, but don't expect it to do so here, especially since the candidate is one many reporters favor...

...No right to know here...

...Star, the main- stream press showed little interest in pursuing the story once it broke...