The Media and Impeachment
Wiener, Jon
TWO TIME-HONORED beliefs about the media were dented by our impeachment year: the right-wing notion that the press has a "liberal bias" and the left-wing theory that the media control public...
...Some have argued that the Times's editorial writers sincerely thought that the president's sexual misconduct required the paper's fullest criticism...
...Yet in the Monica Lewinsky matter, when Starr's abuse of power posed a far greater threat to liberal principles than anything the president did, the New York Times repeatedly devoted its editorial page to scathing denunciations of the president—more scathing than anything it had previously published about presidents Reagan and Bush...
...it has been obsessed with bringing him down since the New Hampshire primary...
...The Times ran DISSENT / Spring 1999 n 17 THOUGHTS AFTER IMPEACHMENT a front-page story, the first to accuse him of financial misconduct as governor in a real estate development called Whitewater...
...Since that day, the paper has run an incredible 349 stories, columns, or editorials on Whitewater, suggesting presidential misconduct in almost every one...
...A final explanation is that the Times is still trying to overcome its late start on Watergate, which enabled the arch-rival Washington Post to win the Pulitzer Prize and claim credit for Nixon's resignation...
...18 n DISSENT / Spring 1999...
...Time-Warner...
...But many of the papers calling for Clinton's resignation had not endorsed him for president and always leaned toward the Republicans in editorials...
...Never again, the Times apparently vowed, would it be outdone by another paper in exposing presidential misconduct...
...Only two Times editorials were devoted to questioning Starr's investigative techniques (while occasional sentences in other editorials also did so...
...TWO TIME-HONORED beliefs about the media were dented by our impeachment year: the right-wing notion that the press has a "liberal bias" and the left-wing theory that the media control public consciousness...
...Ordinary people made up their minds promptly in the first week or two, and then resolutely stuck with their position, refusing to be budged by the most intense and prolonged media spectacle of the decade...
...and Viacom...
...JON WIENER teaches American history at UC Irvine and is a contributing editor of the Nation...
...Westinghouse, which owns CBS...
...But this is not a terribly convincing argument, since the principles at stake in Ken Starr's pursuit of the president go far beyond Bill Clinton as an individual: they include government abuse of power, the rights of those accused, prosecutorial misconduct, and due process—fundamental issues for all liberals...
...Television, film, newspapers, and publishing are dominated by seven corporationsMurdoch's News Corp., which owns Fox...
...An example: "Until it was measured by Kenneth Starr, no citizen—indeed, perhaps no member of his own family—could have grasped the completeness of President Clinton's mendacity or the magnitude of his recklessness...
...GE, which owns NBC...
...ASECOND theory about the media and politics has also been undermined by our impeachment year: the argument that the media shape public consciousness...
...In 1998, their thoroughness and zeal brought us all-Monica, all the time...
...The corporate super-powers . . . impose their Market-think with thoroughness and zeal," Mark Crispin Miller wrote...
...So it's wrong to say the Times has opposed Clinton because of his sexual misconduct...
...The president's approval ratings, measured with the precision of science, remained in the sixties virtually from the beginning to the end of this matter...
...Indeed it's true that a few giant multinationals control our media, as the Nation magazine documented in its special issue on "The National Entertainment State" (June 3, 1996...
...So WE must ask why the Times would repeatedly denounce the president for his personal conduct while failing to criticize the independent counsel...
...Disney-ABC...
...Other newspapers went farther than the Times: 140 newspapers ran editorials calling on the president to resign—including USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Seattle Times, and the Denver News...
...September 12) Between the first revelations of the president's affair with Lewinsky, and the last day of the House proceedings on impeachment, the Times devoted fifty-five editorials to the topic (see Michael Tomasky, the Nation, January 4, 1999...
...No doubt there is some truth in this interpretation— the Times is indeed obsessed with the Washington Post...
...But the Times's criticism of Clinton began years before Lewinsky appeared on page one, starting in 1992, when then-Governor Clinton was running for the Democratic nomination in the first primary—New Hampshire...
...The Times remains the target of critics on the right complaining about "liberal bias" in the media...
...This undeniable fact of public resistance to the media agenda, this overwhelming evidence that the great majority are capable of independent and appropriate judgment about vital political issues, provides the only happy ending to this otherwise miserable political year...
...The administration and the independent counsel battled on many issues of law—whether Secret Service agents should be compelled to testify, whether White House lawyers could be subpoenaed, and so on—and on every one of these issues, the Times urged the courts to side with Starr...
...This argument comes from the left—that the media, increasingly centralized in a few global corporations, sets the agenda for public attention, defines the range of permissible and impermissible arguments, and silences alternative views...
...Thanks to independent counsel Kenneth Starr, both now require fundamental rethinking...
...ASECOND explanation for the striking absence of "liberal bias" in the Times's coverage of Clinton is more complex: it's precisely the Times's reputation as a liberal paper that has led its editors to bend over backwards to prove they can be critical of a Democratic president...
...But there is another explanation for the paper's editorial policies: its failure to make Starr's misconduct the central issue suggest that the Times may not be a paper with a "liberal bias...
...That's why the Times started on Whitewater and then moved on to Lewinsky...
...Criticism of Bill Clinton's conduct in this view is fully compatible with liberal principles...
...The one exception, Tomasky points out, came when Sidney Blumenthal was compelled to testify about his contacts with the press, but that issue involved the paper's own self-interest...
...For the right, the epitome of the "liberal press" is the New York Times, which endorsed Clinton in both elections, preferring him to George Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996, and has supported most of his policy initiatives...
...But despite virtual media unanimity that the Lewinsky scandal was a terrible thing, the public famously failed to agree...
Vol. 46 • April 1999 • No. 2
