Presswatch/Crossing the Line
Eastland, Terry
"Presswatch/Crossing the Line" Confronted with information showing that the three major networks gave George Bush a tougher time than Bill Clinton, NBC's political director, Bill Wheatley, told the Washington Post that there...
...I'll mention two big ones, the first involving Gennifer Flowers's tapes of her conversations with Governor Clinton...
...T his said, however, the press coverage was so uneven that it is obtuse to deny any active or conscious bias...
...But obviously there was no oversupply of negative pieces about Clinton...
...71...
...I don't buy the self-serving one, that a new President would be a better story to cover...
...On the Post's front page, Bush was portrayed negatively more than twice as often...
...It included "the construction of a new image for Mr...
...while treating Clinton as if he had, well, The Aura...
...Is the whole show going to be about Iran-contra...
...The charitable explanation is that most reporters have yet to sample it...
...Just as he would have refused to hire James Brosnahan, a partisan Democrat who opposed the Rehnquist, Bork, and Thomas nominations, and the Gulf War, to prosecute Weinberger...
...There's also the media's conduct during the presidential debates...
...The press and the Clinton campaign seized on a note in the indictment as the latest and best evidence that Bush had not been telling the truth about when he first knew the Reagan Administration was swapping arms for hostages...
...Then there was the PBS election night special, "The Finish Line," which included Hodding Carter, Kenneth Walker, Daniel Schorr, Terry Gross, and Nancy Dickerson...
...But Bush was the target¡ªthe only target...
...Ombudsman Joann Byrd went so far as to call the paper's coverage "very lopsided...
...Indeed, I agree with my predecessor of some years ago in this space, Fred Barnes, who says that in 1992 the press crossed an important line, casting off even the pretense of fairness that in campaign years past had restrained them, making their work much more "actively" biased...
...Imagine if the press had aggressively asked Clinton about whether he had told Flowers to lie...
...Of course, the Clintons followed the memo almost to a tee...
...Moreover, as Byrd pointed out, the Post published positively beatific articles about Clinton...
...Reporters could have perused a vast literature on the limits of social and economic policy...
...Fundamentally, the press (with all the usual qualifications about how the press is not a monolith) accepted the notion that the fate of the nation rides on the fate of a presidency...
...Ten days after the election, Michael Kelly of the New York Times reported the contents of a confidential memorandum (fourteen pages, single-spaced) co-authored last April by Clinton campaign manager James Carville...
...C onfronted with information showing that the three major networks gave George Bush a tougher time than Bill Clinton, NBC's political director, Bill Wheatley, told the Washington Post that there hadn't been any "active bias at work...
...At least he agrees there was bias, and in that respect, he was more right than he knew...
...And more industrious reporters will discover that on September 24 the Times carried a front-page story in which Hillary Clinton "dismiss[ed] the notion that there was ever a strategy to warm her up...
...Its most simplistic expression¡ªvisible in the questions reporters asked of the candidates this year¡ªis the belief that the President is responsible for the nation's social and economic conditions...
...A special place in the 1992 Hall of Shame goes to ABC's Carole Simpson, the moderator of the "Oprah"-style second debate in Richmond, for mocking Bush ("Who would like to begin, the 'Education President...
...Clinton: an honest, plain-folks idealist and his loving wife...
...Closer to the mark is what some reporters were saying when the snow was falling last February in New Hampshire¡ªthat they think Bill Clinton will be a good President, and good for the country...
...Kelly bent over backwards in the Clintons' favor: "What the memorandum told the Clintons to do, and what they did, does not show chicanery," he wrote...
...This year was no exception, as witness the abundance of stories about the United States from 1980 to 1992, effectively tying the state of the nation to the state of the presidency...
...Where was the much vaunted press skepticism when we needed it...
...What's important here is not so much the press's total lack of curiosity about any link between Walsh's office and the Clinton campaign, whose press release attacking Bush was dated the day before the indictment was returned (a misprint, said the folks in Little Rock, and the press asked nothing more...
...the President asked his inquisitor, Frank Sesno, on CNN's "Newsmaker Sunday...
...My guess is that Bush would come out on the short end of a positive-negative count at every major newspaper other than the strongly anti-Clinton Washington Times...
...Included within the idea of presidential nation is the notion of the President (again, traceable to Wilson) constantly explaining to the people what they really want and how to achieve it...
...Less credulous reporters may come to think that they¡ªand the American people¡ªwere had...
...But the question of bias is not exhausted by this kind of inquiry...
...Consider the Washington Post, a major sinner...
...It recommended that Bill Clinton appear on a television talk show to play the saxophone and make fun of himself for saying he'd tried marijuana but not inhaled...
...in his body language, casual yet commanding...
...Certain ideas did influence the press, but in some cases reporters probably were not aware of them...
...He was bound to rack up a lot of negative stories...
...There was something generational taking place as well¡ªthat like most of those covering him, Clinton and his wife are boomers whose sensibility was shaped by the political and cultural left of the 1960s...
...Reviewing seventy-three days' worth of pictures, headlines, and news stories, Byrd found about the same number of "positives" for both (175 for Bush, 195 for Clinton...
...stitutionality or policy, what the government ought to do...
...and Mrs...
...And, about whether she had ever talked to him about the state job he gave her: "If they ever ask if you talked to me about it, you can just say no...
...This idea of "presidential nation," as it has been called, dates to Woodrow Wilson and is basic Democratic doctrine, the writers on the "imperial presidency" of Richard Nixon notwithstanding...
...We taxpayers pay for this...
...Worse, cheers broke out when it was announced that Ohio had put Clinton over the electoral top...
...Down through the years, Republican nominees often have accepted the idea, but never to the extent that Democratic candidates¡ªor journalists¡ªhave...
...Bush's late surge in the polls would not have been enough to put him over the top, but his momentum quickly stopped as he faced endless press inquiries about the Weinberger note, which was no "smoking gun...
...Print- and picture-heads alike were agog about Clinton and spiteful about Bush, treating the candidates in ways that will merit the attention of dispassionate scholars...
...They have him saying, about the alleged affair: "If everybody's on the record denying it, you've got no problem...
...A more scrupulous prosecutor would have avoided even the appearance of plunging his office into politics on the eve of a presidential vote...
...Having absorbed this perspective, the press reported accordingly...
...Ordinarily, the press is profoundly interested in exposing people who traffic in lies¡ªthe Clinton presidency likely will test the White House press corps¡ªbut few news organizations pursued this story, some newspapers (including the Post) even failing to print a full transcript of Flowers's tapes, on the grounds that the recordings were unverified¡ªan absurd technicality, since Clinton didn't deny that it was his voice on the tapes, and he actually apologized to Mario Cuomo for the bad things he'd said about him during the taped conversation...
...Will the honeymoon last...
...Then there were the stories barely if at all pursued...
...And there was a touch of hubris¡ªthat, like us, he's smart, a product of all the right schools, a man just for our time, and, you know, our time has come...
...have heard the various explanations for the pro-Clinton, anti-Bush bias...
...This particular bias had to help Bill Clinton, a policy wonk whose ability to speak in complete and complex sentences drew constant (and predictable) notice, even as it worked against George Bush, whose Bushisms were the subject of constant (and pre- dictable) lampooning...
...One declared that Clinton has "The Aura," which is to be found in "his eyes...
...No, what's most important is the complete lack of inquiry into political motivation on Walsh's part...
...Granted, Bush ran a lousy campaign, and as an incumbent had to answer, for more than his challengers did...
...For this reason, part of the bias really might have been unpremeditated...
...This rationale holds not only that the President must do something about what putatively ails us, but also that what is done¡ªby the federal government¡ªwill do the trick...
...But Bush racked up 184 negatives, compared to only 52 for Clinton...
...The memo proposed "one of the most ambitious campaigns of political rehabilitation ever attempted...
...The other story concerns the indictment of Caspar Weinberger issued by Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh on the Friday before Election Day...
...And it put forth ideas designed to counter the perception of Hillary Clinton as unaffectionate and preoccupied with power and career...
...Any fair reading of the Weinberger indictments (as well as other principal papers in this case) suggests that Walsh believes Reagan and Bush conspired to cover up as much as they could about Iran-contra, a case he cannot prove...
...The goal [as stated by the Clinton camp] was not to present a false image of the couple...
...No balance there...
...The idea of "presidential nation" makes a hash of any (typically Republican) effort to limit, either for reasons of con Terry Eastland is a resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C...
...Had Kelly pulled up this bit of reporting from his paper's files (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt), he could have pursued a question that seems to recur with our new White House inhabitants: Were they telling the truth...
...imagine, too, if the press had pursued the story of how Clinton put Flowers on the state payroll, bumping a black employee named Charlotte Perry...
...There were therefore many good reasons for the press to go after Walsh...
Vol. 26 • January 1993 • No. 1
