Renting the Fourth Estate
Willrich, Michael
Renting the Fourth Estate Why won't the George Wills and Sam Donaldsons disclose the speaking fees that have made celebrity journalism such a growth industry? by Michael Willrich Within the...
...make a big enough mark on TV to secure far more lucrative speaking jobs...
...Cases in which the appearance of a conflict actually reflects wrongdoing are infinitesimally rare...
...The Periodical Press Gallery's disclosure policy was the right idea, but the gallery was the wrong forum...
...Although few actually sell out in order to deliver a group's party line, journalists are hardly immune to committing sins of omission, leaving out details or even whole stories as a result of their paid association with these organizations...
...We don't want him.' We hear that a lot...
...The pressure on journalists to trim their sails this way is real: According to Joe Cosby, head of Cosby Bureau International, one of the "top five" speaking bureaus in the nation, "It is not unusual for an industry group to say about a Senator John Glenn asked, "Do you pledge that you and your fellow journalists will continue to demand that all politicians reveal their incomes and stop taking honoraria—while steadfastly, sanctimoniously refusing to do any of those things yourselves...
...to lesser-known journalists, who may give only a few talks each year but are as open to potential conflicts of interest as their more renowned colleagues...
...The public learned that the $2,000 honoraria then routinely accepted by congressmen were peanuts compared with the speaking fees landed by their critics in the Fourth Estate...
...and journalists, like senators, are people—and therefore subject to temptation and influence...
...They do a marvelous job," says Cosby, who books the Kondracke-Barnes debates...
...p. 20...
...By making journalists more vulnerable to public scrutiny, universal disclosure would not only tend to deter conflicts-of-interest...
...David Brinkley, R.W...
...Just a few months after defending himself on honoraria, Kondracke wrote a story in which he criticized Lloyd Bentsen for wanting to charge business lobbyists $10,000 a head to have breakfast with him—a perfectly legal activity, although one that would have created apparent conflicts of interest...
...Hard work made Barnes and Kondracke prominent journalists...
...While it's fine to let our suspicions be aroused when David Whitman accepts a speaking fee from the Heritage Foundation, we owe him the respect of listening to his explanation, presuming the mere appearance of a conflict of interest until it's proven to be the real thing...
...It's name recognition," he explains...
...The main impact of this on journalism is a general decrease in intellectual honesty and careful reasoning...
...So, through disclosure, buckrakers will be deterred and villains will be caught—or, more likely, opportunistic villains will be denied their opportunity...
...So why shouldn't the subtle force fields of power and influence analyzed so closely in politics and government be mapped in the case of journalists too...
...Sure, disclosure might be embarrassing for Donaldson, but why should famous journalists, unlike other stars, be able to enjoy the benefits of celebrity while suffering none of the costs...
...Joseph C. Goulden, the author and former Philadelphia Inquirer bureau chief, is director of media analysis for Accuracy In Media: . . . "Reporters seem to have lost any grasp of the frustrations of blue collar workers and the lower middle-class...
...Sam Donaldson gave away a big piece of the antidisclosure game when he told Jonathan Alter that disclosing his income would hurt his credibility as "the guy in the trenchcoat...
...Who can doubt that today's tough coverage has accelerated the government's HUD investigation...
...But a lot of gallery members didn't much like the idea...
...The show reduces journalism to sound bites—the very practice journalists often deride when the soundbiter is a politician...
...That's the whole point...
...asks Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen...
...Not just any journalist is welcome in Cosby's stable...
...Keeping watch over the gallery is an elected Executive Committee of Correspondents, whose primary mission is to make sure the passes don't fall into the hands of lobbyists and other influence-peddlers...
...News & World Report has been reconsidering its laissez-faire honoraria policy for the past six months...
...Last year I made more than my salary in speech fees," the columnist wrote...
...The AARP refused to disclose the fee...
...for the Post's David Broder, a speech to the American Stock Exchange was worth at least $5,000...
...There are only five well-known quarterbacks at any given time...
...By contrast, wouldn't Epstein immediately think the worst in a similar case involving public officials or, ugh, paving contractors...
...Frank Mankiewicz, vice chairman of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, says, "Consider the fact that the drafting and the debate on the 1986 Tax Reform Act was covered for the first time by journalists, most of whom had a serious stake in the outcome...
...John Herbers, contributing editor at Governing magazine and a distinguished Washington correspondent for The New York Times until his retirement two years ago, wrote, "The prevailing orientation of Washington journalists began to change from populistworking middle class to moneyed elite in the early seventies...
...And if you want to come off on TV as an expert, you'd better skip the thorny pros and cons of Social Security and instead discourse on the latest Gallup Poll on Social Security or today's vote on the Social Security bill...
...For a clear example of this double standard, how about this: Rowland Evans and Robert Novak's twice-yearly forums usually feature several government officials—this year's roster included Speaker of the House Thomas Foley...
...Last year, Cosby's firm dispatched 130 speakers to more than 1,000 conventions, seminars, and conferences around the country...
...Maybe that's why most celebrity journalists have such a hard time dealing thoughtfully and logically with the issue of honoraria...
...Further suppose that there is enough substance to her charges that the powerful figure settles the suit for a six-figure sum...
...but the lawsuit really happened and the man was not a senator but John McLaughlin...
...The case of R. Foster Winans—the Wall Street Journal writer who got $31,000 (and eventually 18 months in jail) for keeping a broker apprised of the upcoming subjects of his influential column—comes to mind...
...And despite snippy comments made by some reporters who jetted to Morocco at Malcolm Forbes's expense, how many of them will ever write a meaningful tough story about him...
...The Media's Impact in Shaping Public Policy...
...In short, even though most Washington journalists are just as much public figures as the senators they frequently sit in judgment on, hardly any of them want to be judged that way...
...The idea is that readers can decide for themselves if their leaders are being bought...
...But when I called Whitman up, it didn't take him long to convince me that the money hadn't warped his viewpoint: for one thing, he informed me that the fee was only $250...
...Donaldson isn't just an average reporter in a trenchcoat...
...he calls it to the attention of the journalist or his editor...
...By the time the dust had settled, four members of the committee had been ousted—their seats filled by dissenters—and the revamped disclosure form had been chucked out the window...
...they should be policed by their readers...
...No one suggested it might be a good idea, even for consideration," Herbers reports...
...the Miami Herald did it in one weekend...
...It seems never to have occurred to Kondracke that there was nothing wrong with Bentsen sharing a breakfast table with a lobbyist as long as nothing was going on under it...
...Here's Robert Novak's "analysis" of the issue: "I'll tell you what it is...
...The top journalists, the column said, "move in packs with the affluent and powerful to Washington (just doing their job, of course), then swarm with them in the summer to every agreeable spot on the eastern seaboard between Canada and New Jersey...
...It also made them hot commodities for Cosby Bureau International...
...Robert Novak and James J. Kilpatrick were particularly adamant on this point...
...To sustain celebrity status, journalists change their roles as reporters...
...Can one be so comfortable, living among such wealth, and not avert one's eyes and professional attention from the problems of the less affluent...
...As is the case with politicians and industrialists, private interest money can bend the work of journalists in inappropriate ways—not necessarily through overt quid pro quos, but more subtly, particularly through the enticements and distractions of fame...
...For magazine and newsletter journalists covering the Hill, gallery membership is a necessary privilege...
...It's always possible to conclude the worst about a reporter covering the president who decides to attend a White House dance or a reporter on the Treasury beat who buys Savings Bonds...
...It's the George Wills with their secret White House connections (Will helped prepare Ronald Reagan for the debates in 1980 and then on television commented favorably on Reagan's performance, never letting on that he'd had this inside role) and the James Bakers with their hidden financial commitments who should draw our criticism...
...Will did not return several phone calls...
...The trouble started when the Executive Committee issued new disclosure forms requiring the 1,500 members to list the sources (not amounts) of their nonsalary income, including honoraria for appearances on governmentMichael Willrich is associate editor of Washington City Paper...
...the major rise of journalist honoraria is associated with the invention of the tie-clipped microphone, as George Will's career attests...
...That's why chat show discussions tend to revolve around the politics of an issue, rather than the issue itself...
...The page regularly runs an "Honoraria Scorecard" that charts the honoraria— amounts and sources—accepted by a rotating roster of congressmen and senators...
...That's probably why in my research on honoraria, I couldn't find a real conflict...
...Because such officials fear the power of these columnists, they're typically afraid not to come, and they're afraid to accept a fee...
...We're not living on public money...
...Is this why journalists have not pressed an agenda that would focus oni the economic problems of many Americans—including a generation of immigrants not offered the same opportunities as my parents and me...
...The journalists' fees range from $4,000 to $25,000, their customers from the Washington Antique Show to IBM...
...I see two problems in Washington journalism," says Lars-Erik Nelson, bureau chief of the New York Daily News, "This city has no white working class, no industries, no factories...
...Lewis and William Schneider, wrote in Public Opinion magazine, "What we end up with is an impression of newspaper journalists as something like 'super yuppies.' They are emphatically liberal on social issues and foreign affairs, distrustful of establishment institutions (government, business, labor), and protective of their own economic interests...
...Even if journalists don't cop to their power, the organizations that hire them to speak are aware of it...
...Journalists try to use this paucity of troubling cases of conflict of interest to torpedo the idea of disclosure...
...Apple, Ed Bradley, Jack Germond, Kondracke, and Barnes are on Cosby's roster of speakers-for-hire...
...With a few exceptions, the journalists who command the highest speaking fees are familiar faces on shows like the "McLaughlin Group," "Crossfire," and "Washington Week in Review...
...Kaiser, the paper's national editor, says the Post still hasn't decided what to do but insists that a total ban on honoraria is not one of the options on the table...
...The real problem, almost all agreed, has to do with work habits and the absence of plain old shoe leather...
...In my research, I did come across one apparent conflict of interest: David Whitman, a senior editor at US News and World Report, seemed to have adopted a more conservative bent in his reporting on homelessness after he accepted an honorarium for a panel discussion held by the Heritage Foundation...
...What Randolph didn't point out, however, was that the speaking fees trickle down "We're not elected," says Washington Post National Editor Robert Kaiser...
...The subtext of Epstein's reply was: Literary people are special...
...Richard Harwood, the Post ombudsman, says he has devised a cure: banning speaking honoraria entirely...
...Tell that to Richard Nixon...
...But, like congressmen and publishers, journalists aren't immune to money...
...Time's Hugh Sidey and columnist Jack Anderson reportedly earned $10,000 a pop...
...Kondracke's response pointed to the heart of the matter, but never reached it...
...The outside fees controversy reached a boil last April, when Eleanor Randolph, the Post's media reporter, wrote a front-page story revealing the speaking fees of many of Washington's most sought-after journalists...
...asks Ronald Ostrow of the Los Angeles Times...
...No, it only means that reporters have to be prepared to own up to their deeds...
...There is also the relentlessly political tone of Washington reporting which leads—except at places like The Washington Monthly and The New Republic—to a woeful lack of interest in the social, cultural, not to mention economic and class dimensions of what they are writing about...
...David Gergen of U.S...
...The American Association of Retired Persons, the formidable old-folks lobby, has booked ABC News correspondent Carole Simpson for a June convention in Orlando...
...Suppose that a major Washington figure is sued by a former female employee for verbal and physical sexual harassment...
...We are a celebrity lecture bureau...
...Shows like "Crossfire" demand a Left versus Right framework for issues that's increasingly cliched...
...Celebrity journalists may not fret about knee injuries, but they do have to hustle to keep on top of their game...
...William Safire of The New York Times made $18,000 for a single speech to Southeastern Electric...
...ing"—was coined by The New Republic, where several buckrakers mold their office hours around their camera calls and speaking engagements...
...The top brass at The Washington Post are in a similar quandary...
...Like Baker and Epstein, a journalist should have to confront hard questions about an apparent conflict of interest...
...A more telling assessment came from Patrick Buchanan when, arguing against the propriety of sex on television, he told "Crossfire" viewers, "The suggestion that this powerful medium doesn't influence behavior is absurd...
...or, if the conflict isn't adequately explained, the journalist is hung out to dry...
...As are Joyce Carol Oates, John Tower, and Bud McFarlane...
...On TV panels like McLaughlin's, vital issues of the day are given the sort of thumbs-up, thumbs-down treatment people expect from Siskel and Ebert...
...He offers a personal benchmark for the change, from his days covering urban affairs: "One day a group of us were discussing the government's efforts to bring about a better order of eco nomic justice—people really did talk about things like that back then...
...Will made his mark as a columnist during the Watergate scandal with tough and insightful commentary on Richard Nixon, but he made himself a celebrity on the pundits' roundtable, "Agronsky and Company," by skewering opponents with baroque one-liners...
...a lot of the time, trade associations and the like invite bigname journalists not out of sinister motives but merely because they think the journalists are the kinds of speakers their members want to hear...
...National Suppress Club There's nothing inherently corrupting about imparting wit and wisdom to the AARP, or anyone else...
...Salinger's rate: $25,000 plus a ticket on the Concorde to fly him in from London...
...But a more general effect of honoraria on the Washington press corps has been the creation of a new class: the celebrity journalists...
...We have people that are clamoring to do this, and we can't do anything for them," he says...
...For a more sensible solution, Kaiser, Harwood, and the rest of the top management at the Post might look to their own Federal Page...
...So they come for free...
...Author J. Anthony Lukas writes, "I suspect it is the ability, nay eagerness, of many Washington reporters to socialize with the powerful, to dine at their Georgetown tables and natter at their McLean garden parties, which drains their skepticism and blunts the edge of their reporting...
...It didn't used to be so...
...The topic of Simpson's speech...
...These outside activities take away from the time Clift can dedicate to her primary responsibility—reporting...
...We have no state power to exercise...
...You don't have to equate Morton Kondracke with Alan Cranston to see that the same sort of disclosure would be good for journalism...
...In 1971 when I returned home after years abroad, the national editor of The Washington Post said to me: `There are 25 members of the Post national staff and 25 members of The New York Times Washington bureau and we are the most powerful people in America.' What hubris...
...Journalists, Inc...
...I wonder if there is a moral kondratieff wave soon to wash over us for our sins of omission, sweeping away our authority and prestige, if not our wealth...
...But maybe there truly are no real conflicts of interest...
...Journalists should not be policed by the government...
...Kondracke, who refused to reveal his own earnings, condemned financial disclosure for journalists as "an exercise in voyeurism and an invasion of privacy...
...Sounds simple, but no one's doing it...
...by Michael Willrich Within the genteel caste system of Washington journalism, the Periodical Press Gallery at the Capitol is a bracingly democratic institution, where wellknown journalists like Newsweek's Eleanor Clift share the membership rolls with the rank-and-file from Communications Daily and Food Chemical News...
...Most estimates place Will's annual income at $1 million or more...
...Chamber of Commerce's television show, participation in a panel before the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, four speeches made to the Congressional Youth Leadership Council, and eight appearances on the United States Information Agency's roundtable "America Today...
...In the past most everything we had written affected other people, other places...
...BusinessWeek and the National Journal are alone among the Washington media outlets in forbidding the practice...
...Perhaps the public will have its confidence in the media boosted by the discovery that, as some buckrakers insist, journalist honoraria in no way compromise reporting...
...But does this mean the first man should turn down all such invitations or that the second should stay away from all such investments...
...News and World Report took home up to $5,000 for speaking to groups like SRI International and United Technologies Atlantic & Pacific Advisory Councils...
...As a depression baby I look at the new affluence, indifference, and excess and it scares me...
...by James S. Doyle Sam Donaldson: What is your salary...
...Although reporters have accepted speaking fees for decades (remember Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner...
...If the man in our lawsuit were a senator, there would be a pool of reporters camped outside his house and sifting through his garbage...
...And some years ago, when it was pointed out to Jason Epstein that the magazine he founded (The New York Review of Books) ran a disproportionate number of reviews of titles published by the firm of which he was vice president (Random House), he responded not with a simple explanation but with a torrent of famous authors' names and a question: "Do you understand how deeply your article offends those writers...
...but Ted Koppel can wreak equal havoc on the Widget-makers by focusing a Nightline episode on the hazards of this year's model...
...But why should he think that he, unlike these less elegant types, was above being questioned about it...
...Where's the crime...
...Habeus corpus, baby...
...As Post National Editor Robert Kaiser puts it, "I'm not prepared to accept a total equating of us and them...
...And surely playing with the reported truth can be a greater evil than playing some of the political games that journalists attack so vehemently...
...Reverend Jerry Falwell: My salary is $100,000, Sam...
...Suitably, the best term for this practice—"buckrakSam Donaldson gave away a big piece of the game when he told Jonathan Alter that disclosing his income would hurt his credibility as "the guy in the trenchcoat...
...It shouldn't be an option...
...When any three or four sit down together on a television talk show to discuss the meaning of current events, it is not difficult to remember that the least well paid of these pontificators (in whose rank I occasionally fall) makes at least six times more each year than the average American family . . . The truth is that there is not a hell of a lot of tolerance or empathy among the leading figures of national journalism for outsiders, losers, nonconformists, or seriously provocative political figures or causes...
...Securities regulation, restoration of capital gains tax favoritism, government attitudes toward real estate, student loans—all of these matters are no longer academic and no longer neutral for almost all our colleagues who cover these stories...
...The unspoken argument is that some people are just above that sort of thing...
...But Kondracke's anger blinded him to something important: The very thing he doesn't like done to him, he blithely does to politicians all the time...
...Either way, the profession—and the public—wins...
...Readers (and editors) deserve to know how thin she's spreading herself...
...The reports on the 'urban poor' and 'farmers' I read in The Washington Post and elsewhere remind me of a sociologist's field notes...
...Where was all Kondracke's righteous anger about unfair assumptions when they were applied not to himself but to a politician...
...But there are other, more legitimate considerations at work that demand the disclosure of journalists' outside income...
...An entire school of journalists has mimicked Will's two-step approach to inside-the-Beltway stardom: Make a big enough mark in your column to secure TV appearances...
...In December 1988, the gallery erupted...
...Certainly the celebrity journalist's desire to play the double game of pretending to be an ordinary person subject to only ordinary pressures, while secretly raking in huge sums from all sorts of sources, is not a good reason...
...Sure, Ted Kennedy can vote on a product liability bill that could make or break the Widget industry...
...television made them stars...
...I think it's a fantasy of little weenies around this town, who can't hardly pay their rent and who are a little bit jealous...
...Bafflingly, many of the high-profile journalists I spoke with denied that journalists have much power...
...You'd be mad too if people automatically assumed that anyone who paid you owned you...
...Accepting speaking fees from interest groups without disclosing them is still routine at most news organizations with Washington outposts, including the Miami Herald, the Richmond Times Dispatch, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, NBC, National Public Radio, Time, Newsweek, and The New Republic...
...Now higher salaries, television appearances, book contracts, and speaking fees, "put us securely with the haves...
...Journalists, like senators, are people with great influence...
...Now quick, how many stories about the episode have you seen...
...James Fallows, the Atlantic editor just returned from a tour in Asia, remarked on public radio that American cities are like Manila 'in the degrees of homelessness and poverty evident on their streets...
...James Doyle, a veteran Washington correspondent who is now vice president of the Times Journal Co., recently unearthed evidence of this when he polled a slew of Washington journalists for a piece in Neiman Reports [see "Journalists, Inc...
...The world of the have-nots is a world we no longer know...
...For the most part they made a sharp distinction between the journalist as celebrity and the journalist as wealthy...
...Reporter or flasher...
...An idea discussed seriously in academic circles was broached—taking away some of the home mortgage tax write-off and using the money for low-income housing...
...Of course voyeurism alone could never justify the intrusion of disclosure, in the same way it could never justify riffling through a senator's checkbook...
...Maybe he could easily have explained away the apparent impropriety in his situation...
...Over the past 20 years, journalists have learned to pump up their speaking fees, not by pandering to different trade groups, but by pandering to television...
...McLaughlin Group"ies Kondracke and Fred Barnes regularly take their TV personas on the road, recreating their ornery made-forTV debates before packed houses...
...I've charged liberal groups for speaking to them, too...
...That would be fine—except that the standards for achieving and maintaining fame are not necessarily the standards for producing good journalism...
...That's why they're objecting now to the prospect of disclosure...
...We're not elected...
...Maaaaarvelous...
...Compare that performance to the way rough-hewn Bert Lance was ridden out of town for much more paltry banking sins...
...Bill Yelverton provided research assistance for this article...
...I think it's fair to say, although I can't prove it, that many print journalists in Washington earn more than Supreme Court justices, cabinet officials, goverJames S. Doyle, a veteran Washington, D.C., correspondent, is now vice president of The Times Journal Company of Springfield, Virginia, and editorial director of the Times group...
...Where's the body...
...Fa/well: How much do you make, Sam...
...Cosby is not forthcoming when asked what his celebrities make, but he gushes when asked what makes a celebrity...
...After all, if you don't tell me about your apparent conflicts, how can I determine which ones are real...
...A journalist has a longer lifespan than a quarterback...
...Gallery credentials entitle the holders to brush past Capitol security, observe Senate and House debates from the press gallery, and have phone messages taken for them by congressional employees...
...It's not necessary to conjure up hypothetical cases...
...Donaldson: Well, I make quite a bit, Reverend Falwell...
...in order to ask those questions, the rest of us need to know when that appearance exists...
...And could it be that journalists avoid doing tough stories about their peers because they fear tough stories in return about themselves...
...Hodding Carter III sent along a five-year-old Wall Street Journal "Viewpoint" he had written, noting that it "understates how strongly I feel about the subject...
...Virtually any relationship between journalists and others can create the appearance of conflict of interest to those who don't adequately understand what's behind that appearance...
...I wrote to a number of reporters and writers, most in Washington, and asked if they thought this new affluence, and the celebrity status of many talk show contributors and other journalists, affected the quality and scope of the reporting from Washington...
...In swearing in the new president of the National Press Club recently, Senator John Glenn asked, "Do you pledge that you and your fellow journalists will continue to demand that all politicians get no pay raise, reveal their incomes, and stop taking honoraria—while steadfastly, sanctimoniously refusing to do any of those things yourselves...
...Morton Kondracke, a New Republic writer and a regular performer on the "McLaughlin Group," scoffed at the honoraria debate in a TNR column...
...The New Republic reported in 1986 that Will earned between $12,000 and $15,000 a speech for an estimated 40 speeches per year...
...Stanley Karnow said, "The real danger is the feeling of self-importance among many reporters...
...Kilpatrick's disclaimer is remarkable, since in his role as an anti-integration editor at the Richmond News Leader he almost singlehandedly delayed by several years the extension of civil rights to Virginia's blacks...
...In journalism, such influence can make columns and broadcasts less truthful...
...One unnamed columnist confessed to Doyle that TV and speaking engagements gradually altered his (or her) journalism...
...On the morning of our interview, Cosby had been dealing with a "big Boston financial group" who wanted ABC's Pierre Salinger to spice up a private meeting...
...Evidence of widespread corruption at HUD was available for years before the press finally gave the problem full treatment...
...We have no state power to exercise...
...Where is the Izzy Stone of the homeless...
...Celebrity status affects reporting...
...And when reporters lie down on the job, society suffers...
...Most of the speeches arise from long, familiar tenure on a television panel show . . . . As for my column it is less and less about my area and more about national affairs that are right for the television show and speeches . • . . It is quite possible that the net result is a wider gap between me and my readers...
...Ronald Reagan could never have denied Gary Hart the Democratic nomination and turned him into a laughingstock...
...Aware that the details would be published, Deborah Norville probably would not have read "news" about tobacco sales plans and interviewed company "guests" for a Phillip Morris sales conference in Hawaii...
...Could it be that there's this consensus silence because Washington is lousy with would-be celebrity journalists who would sooner cover Interior than hurt their chances to someday get on "McLaughlin Group...
...I did find one apparent conflict, which I'll get to in a moment...
...Thoughtfulness and logic just are not highly valued when the little red light goes on...
...As you can tell from the fact that I've told you all this, I also don't feel that it's terrible to disclose who I get money from...
...Typically, before committing , to an outside appearance, most journalists must get permission from their editor or bureau chief, and they can't take fees from organizations or individuals they cover...
...We're not living on public money...
...It took well into the eighties to be fully evident...
...So to say that honoraria are never acceptable is, in effect, to side with the ill-informed...
...Of course, there's something fishy about this argument coming from any journalist who's against disclosure...
...There's just no good reason not to make this information public...
...Once subject to mandatory disclosure, some journalists will completely forgo honoraria they would have accepted before...
...Following Will's model, the newcomers to buckraking know that a $250 or $500 appearance on a TV panel may lead to a $5,000 speaking fee...
...nors, mayors, full professors, school superintendents, and other community leaders...
...There are 25 journalists who are known well at any given time...
...This influence shows up in other ways as well...
...You can't say the same for Evans and Novak—they get a fee all right, and they won't tell you what it is...
...it would also deter the more insidious effects of the buckraker culture...
...But disclosure would place an equally heavy burden on the rest of us...
...Ban the ban Ideally, that's how disclosure would work: some nit-picking watchdog, sifting through the public record, detects an apparent conflict...
...Money talks, everyone talks Despite the possibilities for wrongdoing presented by honoraria, the truth is that the great quid pro quo—for the case of a journalist who sold his soul for an honorarium—is pretty much a red herring...
...On the forms she filled out for the Periodical Press Gallery during its brief reign of disclosure, Newsweek's Clift listed appearances on "The McLaughlin Group," three appearances on the U.S...
...No sting for the WASPs A point raised by disclosure's opponents and proponents alike is that journalists are not government officials...
...The pollsters, I.A...
...The normal stresses of American life are barely visible here, and apply mostly to a black population on the other side of town...
...commentator Patrick Buchanan pulled in $10,000 for each of "24 to 30" speeches a year...
...News organizations should annually disclose the amounts and sources of honoraria to the public—an honoraria scorecard printed in the publication or kept in an accessible file at television and radio stations would serve the purpose well (see "The Washington Monthly Discloses," p. 16...
...journalist, 'This person did an article that is not favorable to our industry...
...Virtually no press criticism was aimed at the elegant and WASPy Baker while he was making decisions as treasury secretary regarding Third World debt that protected his multimillion dollar holdings in Chemical Bank...
...If I have to prepare a speech, which takes me time, I feel I ought to be paid an honorarium," he says...
...And maybe celebrity journalists can bear the burdens of stardom without lowering their standards for reporting and writing...
...Though journalists have no "state power," they do possess awesome power of their own...
...Tell that to Nixon...
...For some reason, journalists accept the idea that they are the kind of people insulated from money's subtle influences even though they wouldn't buy that line from, say, the president of the United States...
...Whitman didn't suggest for a moment that he was angry to be asked about his fee...
...It's an attitude shared by "classy" people everywhere—from politicians like James Baker to members of the New York literati...
...As does the case of the hundreds of journalists who flew to Disney World for, essentially, a luxury vacation at Disney's expense—and then wrote favorable stories about it...
...Kaiser's paper drove a president from office...
...Depending on who you talk to, the issue was professionalism, privacy, or the First Amendment...
...That attitude is earning Washington's journalists a reputation for hypocrisy...
...In other words, celebrity journalism degrades the whole realm of political writing by injecting it with extra doses of TV-caliber superficiality...
...Congress had handed down the disclosure rule years before, and the committee, concerned that gallery journalists were earning more and more of their income from honoraria, voted to enforce the measure...
...making over a million dollars a year affects your outlook on life and could affect your reporting...
...The confession is telling...
...A Los Angeles Times poll showed in 1985 that almost half of newspaper journalists but only 18 percent of the general public had incomes over $40,000...
...funded broadcast programs like Voice of America and fees for speeches to industry groups, labor unions, and lobbies...
...Sure, Kondracke was ticked-off...
...Many journalists didn't take kindly to the scrutiny they received last winter...
...the conflict is explained away, and the watchdog, slightly sheepish, concludes the interview...
...This article is excerpted from Nieman Reports of winter, 1989...
...But while journalists will assume the worst as they hound a Bert Lance to the ends of the earth at the slightest whiff of scandal, most still bristle when you want to chat about their finances...
...Their answers are worth sharing...
...for another, he directed me to a story he had written before he spoke at the Heritage Foundation that displayed the same bent...
...Celebrity journalists, aware that their readers know the details of their heavy moonlighting schedules, might feel obliged to put a little more time, thought, and kick into their reporting and columns...
...That Barnes and Tower—the journalist and the public figure he has covered—can be rented through the same bureau is yet another odd feature of celebrity journalism...
Vol. 22 • March 1990 • No. 2
