Presswatch: Unchained Melodies
Cony, John
by John Corry Unchained Melodies The Clintons feel under siege—from the little ol' rightwing press. In their hearts they must know who's right. C redit Mrs. Clinton for the honesty of her...
...n fact, the White House knew what I it was doing when it drew up the report...
...Clinton was suggesting that the mainstream press—though it "tries to be objective and tries to be thoughtful"—too often got snookered...
...It noted that British tabloids had been interested in Paula Jones right from the start, and that this was "a sign of things to come...
...there is no there there...
...In Behind the Oval Office, his campaign memoir, Dick Morris writes that virtually every decision Clinton ever made—from where to go on vacation to what to do about Bosnia —was determined by polls...
...He may be a resilient man, the House...
...Appropriately, Mrs...
...White secretly, great concern would have been House documents had disclosed only three expressed over the privacy issue...
...It showed "well-funded right-wing think tanks and individuals" —the report's own words—at the top of the food chain, and underneath them conservative publications, including The American Spectator, which fed stories to the Internet and to the British tabloids, which passed them on to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, and New York Post, where they led to congressional investi-gations, which then were reported on by the Washington Post and the New York Times at the bottom of the food chain...
...Obviously it was effective, and Mrs...
...Perhaps it will be Clinwho also overturned Democratic rule of ton himself...
...The press can pretend disturbed even White House aides...
...Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce" was a silly title, but it had a sound theory behind it...
...The story stayed around for a day or two, and then it disappeared...
...The smarmy couple, however, pedarms dealer to the White House for coffee, dled the tape around among Democratic but Newt Gingrich misleads the ethics congressmen, and eventually it washed committee about the support his college up at the Times...
...The report said the press was right to ignore the question...
...pay the $300,000 fine—the approximate He seemed to have crossed a line, and it equivalent of his life's savings—out of his may be he had gone too far...
...A new scan-Party's financial chairman with some of dal seems to arise every day, while the the nation's leading bankers...
...Few news organizations even mentioned the report...
...The New York Times it pursued a vendetta against Gingrich...
...Mainstream journalism was being overwhelmed: "You've got a conservative and/or right-wing press presence, with really nothing on the other end of the political spectrum...
...The Washington Times picked up the story then, and put it on page one, along with a chart illustrating how the White House thought the food chain worked...
...Saycally speaking, moral equivalence was aging Gingrich and other conservatives being strained...
...It was getting personal funds and not by using campaign harder to blame the right wing...
...The Washington Post (or conservative publications) is a kind of reported that the meeting with the bankers compensatory act...
...Bill Clinton had not dropped his pants, but even if he had, it did not matter...
...A conservative source, or a story in a conservative publication, was not to be given credence...
...The report said the food chain was run by the right wing, and that this was why the press was saying so many bad things about the Clintons...
...There is a kind of innocence about her...
...put the story about the Republican con- This was irresponsible, even despicable, tributors' getting access to congressional although few in the media seemed to care...
...The DemocratTo the White House it did not matter if a story was true...
...She said on C-Span that "friends in the press" tell her they "get constant faxes from the, you know, right-wing think tanks and the right-wing publications, and there's a, you know, real concerted advocacy effort, which is quite effective...
...Worse, he was lying very badly...
...Right wingers were leading it astray...
...Clinton's view of the media was similar to one that had been expressed in a White House report on the "media food chain...
...Clinton knew why...
...The Times wanted him to step was not true, and it was apparent that he down as Speaker, and it insisted that he was lying...
...Telephone taps are illegal, and Americans have the right to expect that their conversations are priic National Committee invites a Chinese vate...
...A smarmy Florida couple had taped the conversation—Gingrich or one of the others had used a cellular phone—after they picked it up on their police scanner...
...days before, however, that the Democra- There is a connection here between tic National Committee had arranged a the desire to protect a Democratic presimeeting between Clinton, his top three dent, and the realization that protecting financial appointees and the Democratic him has become impossible...
...the headline asked, while the story presented evidence that she should...
...Imagine if the Bush or Reagan White House had produced a document that said well-funded liberal think tanks and their benefactors were feeding stories to the Nation and Mother Jones, which passed them on to NPR, PBS, and the British New Statesman, which then reported them, which March 1997 • The American Spectator contributions...
...what mattered was its source...
...staffers on page one, and tried to equate If a liberal Democrat had been taped this with Democratic malfeasances...
...Clinton for the honesty of her belief: She truly believes she and her husband are victims of a right-wing media conspiracy...
...Minority Leader Dick but recently the strain has been showing...
...Gingrich got ference if he knew that Indonesian busia reprimand and a $300,000 fine for more nessmen had paid Webb Hubbell more or less doing the same...
...Just before she was interviewed, Newsweek had a cover story on Paula Jones...
...The American Spectator • March 1997 caught the attention of certain congressmen, who called for hearings, which were covered by the New York Times...
...Roughly translated, this meant that the White House wanted the journalists to understand that it did not matter if a story was true...
...The Times had published the transcript of a conversation in which Gingrich and his advisers had discussed how they might answer the ethics' committee charges...
...In other words, the New York Times, say, or the Washington Post, or ABC or CBS, may do their best, but they are unable to cope with the concerted advocacy and all its faxes...
...Clinton's sincerity is palpable...
...Actually, none of that would have been farfetched...
...Gephardt got a letter of rebuke for filing When he was asked at a January press con-false financial statements...
...what mattered was its source...
...The problem, however, is that M eanwhile, there is Gingrich...
...This violated federal law, as well as fundamental decency...
...He also denied, was a feeling that his punishment was not or seemed to deny, that anyone else in the commensurate with the severity of the White House knew about it, either...
...It has been in existence for years, and it is not likely to go away now, even though Clinton is making it harder for the press to observe it...
...There was some stunning sanctimony here...
...The press would like to protect a liberal Democratic president, but this becomes hard to do if it doesn't really like or admire him...
...to even-handedness while it reports on the scandals...
...But there was no sign of any of that for the Democratic White House...
...McCurry noted that the report "doesn't say enemies," and apparently that was enough...
...Too many lies have not for what he did, but for what been told, and surely something has to he is: a sometimes over-bearing figure, give sooner or later...
...Clinton's husband really had JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...In other words, Clinton is an empty man...
...Indeed the bias was evident even in the way the press covered the report...
...This crime...
...48 dropped his pants and made an indecent proposal...
...He denied that Gingrich was intense...
...Reporting on it would serve conservative interests, and therefore it should be ignored...
...Prescient as this was, though, the report, entitled "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce," did not attract attention until this January, when Micah Morrison wrote about it on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal...
...Should She Be Heard...
...And sure enough, the report found, when Jones eventually "filed her suit against Bill Clinton...it was widely covered in the mainstream media...
...The media barely than $200,000 before he went to jail, his reported on Gephardt, but the coverage of composure simply fled...
...Clinton offered no details, but you knew the kind of thing she had in mind...
...The president is intelligent, energetic and often charming, but he is also amoral and hollow, and the White House press must know this...
...Morris is self-serving, but even so, according to the Washington Post his account "has gone essentially unchallenged by administration officials either publicly or speaking under condition of anonymity...
...Press secretary Mike McCurry explained that the White House counsel's office had drawn up the report "to really help journalists understand that they shouldn't be used by those who are really concocting their own conspiracies and their own theories...
...it wanted to confirm the press's own bias...
...If the press knew about a document like that, Dan Rather would have turned very solemn, and Peter Jennings would have had a serious snit...
...Morris also writes that Clinton's "self-image comes from the feelings reflected by others around him" in a room, and that he thinks of polls of the electorate as "the ultimate room...
...Without apology then, it course got from a PAC, and so on...
...Journalisti- White House sinks in its own squalor...
...Clinton might think of as objective and thoughtful—does not want to deal with...
...Moreover, there he knew about the money...
...49...
...It is unlikely he believes that, or much of anything else, for that matter, but Mrs...
...The New York Times did not mention it at all...
...So, yes, there is a double standard...
...The best it can do is to fall back on the doctrine of moral equivalence: The White House auctions off nights in the Lincoln bedroom, but the Republicans offer big contributors access to congressional staffers...
...published the transcript...
...Obviously this gives the press a problem, and as scandals keep engulfing the White House the problem can only get worse...
...Night-line" and the New York Times would have said the First Amendment was threatened, and there would have been many stories about a Republican enemies' list...
...Thus the Times The fits are not perfect, but the press helped to facilitate a federal crime while will do what it can...
...There are subjects that the press—or at least that part of it that Mrs...
...This was all a fantasy, of course, but it ought not to be dismissed out of hand...
...He the administration's ethics problem is now has been savaged by the media reaching critical mass...
...Indeed, even though the report was drawn up in 1995, it seemed to anticipate the Newsweek cover...
...The principal example here is the character issue: Is the president a moral man...
Vol. 30 • March 1997 • No. 3
