On Television

...Eve to Eye with Connie Chung, gained a mere two-tenths of a percentage point over the previous week The news magazines are always doing things to boost their ratings lately to no avail) There is a strong desire among the pundits, especially in Washington, to escape the traditional raffish image of journalism They aspire to be Walter Lippmann, for many years the country's leading intellectual, global issues columnist, who as a young man helped Woodrow Wilson write the Fouiteen Points and later was a founder of the New Republic His column in the New York Herald Tribune was the most influential journalism of its day, although in one decade he thought Mussolini was a good idea, and in another that the founding of Israel was a bad one He died in 1974 at the age of 85, probably never having used That Word in his life Did Gingrich'' Things being as they are, we shall probably never know Does anyone care any more'' Did they ever...

...OnTelevision CELEBRITY JOURNALISM BY REUVEN FRANK NEWT GINGRICH'S mother telling Connie Chung about her son using the same word to describe Hillary Rodham Clinton that, more than a decade earlier, Barbara Bush almost used for Geral-dine Ferraro, is no longer news But it is useful history The occasion was a television interview with the Republican leader's mother, Kathleen Gingrich, his stepfather, Robert Gingrich, and his three stepsisters It was taped in the Gingrich home in Dauphin, Pennsylvania, on December 20, to be edited into a 12-minute profile of the incoming Speaker for one of those network news magazines that barely manage not to sink as low as the syndicated TV tabloids The program was scheduled to run Thursday, January 5, the day after his swearing-in Television news magazines are supported with aggressive promotion and publicity campaigns The promotion consists of announcing and exalting upcoming shows on the air, the publicity focuses on exposing and praising them to other media On the Tuesday before the swear-ring-in, CBS' publicity department sent around the following exchange—as a printed transcript to newspapers, magazines and wire services, as audiotape to radio stations andnetworks, and as videotape to TV stations, networks and cable outlets, such as CNN Chung Mrs Gingrich, what has Newt told you about President Clinton'' Mrs Gingrich The only thing he ever told me is that he's smart That he's an intelligent man That he's not very practical, but he's intelligent [Pause] I can't tell you what he said about Hillary Chung You can't...

...No matter Newt Gingrich will always be great copy He will berate the press and they will revel in it He will make those convincing arguments, ad-libbing sentences that parse, paragraphs that cohere And then he will suddenly say something that makes everything stop, like the hero of H G Wells'"The Man Who Could Work Miracles " Early in the whole affan, emerging from the White House to face that staggering array of cameras, he said Edward R Murrow would never have lied to somebody's mother...

...You would think these famous, serious, solemn opmionaters had nothing else to write about (and you might be right) As to whether Mrs Gingrich was tricked, lured or misled, all those who thought so were reacting to the words, to the printed transcript On the videotape it was clear that if Connie Chung had not asked Mrs Gingrich what Newt thought of Hillary, she would have burst She wanted to be asked The original question, you will recall, was not about Newt Gingrich's view of Mrs Clinton but what he thought of the President What better question to ask concerning the incoming Speaker, the self-described leader and progenitor of a Republican "revolution"—his word?than his view of his antagonist, his enemy, the Democratic President7 The answer was innocuous until Mother Gingrich added, unasked, "I can't tell you what he said about Hillary " Well, maybe she wanted to be asked but didn't think it was going to be used Hardly Mrs Gingrich said what she said to three television cameras There was a microphone pinned to her sweater and lights were shining in her eyes There were cameramen, sound and light technicians, all typically large, loutish men in work boots who soil the Axminster, endanger the Daum and chip the Chippendale There was certainly a producer in the crowd, and probably an associate producer Moreover, she was talking to Connie Chung, who is on television every night?with pictures of people saying provocative things to her It is disingenuous to maintain that Mrs Gingrich did not expect her words to be used on television Still, nothing could stop the torrent of criticism Not even the fact that the night after the CBS broadcast, Mother Gingrich told one of the syndicated tabloids the same thing, usmg the same word Television's talk factories scouted for guests on the subject One show that I saw on cable featured a self-described 25-year veteran of the New York Times, now a teacher of journalism He lamented that the holiest of journalism's covenants, confidentiality of sources, had been breached "I have taken a tape recorder on an interview and not told them," he said, "and that was all right" But what Connie Chung had done was beneath contempt NEWT GINGRICH seized on the incident when he saw the press clearing the way for him By that point the story was beginning to build, and it was about Connie Chung, not about whether he had used an inelegant term to describe the President's wife He went on CNN to demand that CBS apologize, he termed the interview "unprofessional" and "despicable " No reporter, no columnist, no editorial writer asked him precisely how he had described Mrs Clinton They were too busy debating whether it was ethical to use Mrs Gingrich's quote on television Actually, they were afraid for themselves The press is already unpopular and this could make it worse They saw themselves looking bad, even losing lecture fees An interview on television reveals not only the answers but the questions, not only the news but how it is obtained Other news media do not share that burden As Bismarck said about sausages, the public is better off not seeing them made In the St Louis Post-Dispatch a columnist named Gregory Freeman wrote "Thanks to Connie Chung, my job as a journalist just got harder" The Los Angeles Times ventured that CBS appears to have played into the fears and accusations of media critics and average citizens who behave either that the'liberal'media are out to get conservatives or that reporters are simply uncivil and tasteless " USA Today headlined one of its reports on the matter ' Chung-Gingrich And We Wonder Why They Hate Us' Everette E Dermis executive director of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University, told Broadcasting magazine, "What we have heie is a short-term rating gain for CBS and a long-term black mark for media credibility" (In the event the program...

...Mrs Gingrich I can't Chung Why don't you whisper it to me, just between you and me7 Mrs Gingrich "She's a bitch "About the only thing he ever said about her Releasing just that excerpt m advance, especially on videotape, is about as unconscionable as you can get Although it cannot be excused, it can be explained The fountainhead of today's celebrity journalism is the network news magazine, and this is how celebrity journalism is currently practiced Also, the Speaker is now a celebrity along with Shaquille O'Neal and Cmdy Crawford and Connie Chung—who became a celebrity by interviewing celebrities like Tonya Harding and Roger Clinton, like Faye Resmck, Nicole Brown Simpson's friend and chronicler, and like Marlon Brando, who went on and on about watching the ants crawling in his sink It wasn't Chung, however, who released the videotape, it was the system It was?dare one use the word?—the culture The culture governs not only the media but the media-savvy It is what prompted the Speaker or someone on his staff to suggest, or at least to accept the suggestion, that the interview would be a nice touch For Speakers as for rock stars, prime time network television is the goal The networks broadcast almost a dozen magazine programs each week None is aparagon of taste, a treasure house of wit, a monument to style Whoever was involved in arranging Mrs Gingrich's interview could not have been surprised by the result Indeed, it was not Gingrich or his staff or the Republican outriders who raised the fuss after his mother became the biggest story on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday overshadowed the House ceremonies and the very launching of the Congressional Hundred Days That is, they made only a small fuss until the press picked up the scent and fell upon Chung and CBS and all of television with the zest and belling of a pack of top-rated foxhounds The press was outraged It was appalled Rules had been broken Covenants had been disregarded Tradition had been flouted When Connie Chung had said "between you and me' she had implied it would be off the record She had broken a promise as old as journalism People had gone to j ail rather than reveal The outrage did not come from all the press Mostly it was manifested by what might be called the pundit press—the columnists, the editorial writers, the Op-Ed contributors, the academics Columnist Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune feared that Chung had given "undeserved credence" to Janet Malcolm's biting conclusion that everyjour-nalist is "a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse " In the Chicago Sun-Times Mike Royko, of all people, accused Connie of "tricking" Mother Gingrich Another Pulitzer Prize columnist, Edwin Yoder, judged the incident "symptomatic of a continuing collapse of the private mto the public realm that may ultimately do more damage than all the runaway budgets in creation " The Washington Post's Colman McCarthy declared "Connie Chung lied 'Between you and me' ought to mean exactly that It's the equivalent of 'We're off the record now "' William Raspberry said Connie Chung "used her wiles on a woman hardly experienced in the devices of network reporters "He called Mrs Gingnchan "obviously reluctant source " And Barbara Ehrenreich, in Time magazine, charged that Chung had "lured" her One advantage to considering the brouhaha when it is no longer news is the perspective time provides What was all the noise about...