Events are setting a fine trap for the news media and, once again, we’re taking the bait and riding for our biggest fall.
No sooner had President Clinton announced Thursday that U.S. armed forces had attacked terrorist facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan than TV anchor-analysts began making sneering references to the movie “Wag the Dog.” In short order they would be joined in this cynicism by newspaper “analysts,” and, by the time you read this, the opinion magazine ax grinders.
But the American people are not nearly so cynical as the news business has become.
Opinion polls show the majority of Americans were ready months ago to forgive and forget Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. Many reckoned, given Clinton’s history of womanizing, that there indeed had been hanky-panky in the White House. Nor were they all that amazed that Clinton chose to deny all last January on national TV. That’s what married men (and sometimes women) tend to do in similar circumstances: Deny, deny, deny.
The more perceptive among us are coming to understand the Monica Lewinsky saga for what it really is–this year’s O.J. Simpson story. With the advent of CNN, cable talk shows and Internet scandal sheets, there must always, from now on, be an “O.J.” story. There must be a national non-fiction soap drama to fill the 24-hour electronic maw. Last year it was the death of Princess Di. This year it’s all Monica, all the time. Next year?
To people outside the Beltway and the media, what’s disturbing about this year’s soap is the extent to which the plot is driven by a not-so-independent prosecutor who will stop at nothing to get his man. After four years and 40 million (and counting) dollars, Kenneth Starr has steered his “gotcha” game from Whitewater (remember Whitewater?), to Castle Grande, to Travelgate, to Filegate, all without success, only to corner his target, finally, in a had-sex-and-lied-about-it trap. On the way Starr has made use of seemingly illegal tape recordings of private conversations, subpoenaed bookstores to find out what kind of literature his prey were reading and, all the while, held the prospect of jail and/or financial ruin over anyone who would not go before his grand jury to rat on friends and colleagues.
None of these tactics has much bothered the press. For many reporters on the case, Starr’s Darth Vader image just makes it a better story. (And staking out the grand jury sure beats covering boring congressional budget hearings.) For many anti-Clinton editorialists, especially those who fancy themselves guardians of individual liberty against the all-encroaching welfare state, the only thing that seems to matter this time is nailing that cad from Little Rock.
Last week many of the self-righteous thought they had treed their quarry. They relished the opportunity to shake their editorial fists at him for a few weeks while the grand inquisitor readied his long-awaited report to Congress. They trusted this would be the coup de grace, the grounds for impeachment, spiced perhaps with DNA evidence and proof that Clinton or one of his friends begged or bribed Lewinsky not to kiss and tell.
Then along comes Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire who allegedly has been financing the bombings of U.S. overseas embassies and barracks. Last Thursday, just when newspapers like this one were editorializing whether a distracted Clinton still had the presence of mind to go on running and defending the country, just when profiles of bin Laden and his bloody doings finally hit the front pages, wham! Bill Clinton, commander-in-chief, steps up and orders bin Laden’s operation smacked like a sand flea.
Maybe it’s the roar of those Navy FA-18s practicing for the weekend Air and Water Show as I write this. Maybe it’s my long-ago deployment overseas on the carrier USS Saratoga (CVA-60), where I saw what it takes to keep our real enemies at bay. Whatever it is, I’m glad Bill Clinton ordered last week’s attack and I hope Mr. bin Laden was at ground zero.
Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be many people in my business who feel that way (the way, I suspect, most Americans feel.) No, the media cynics just weave Clinton’s bold and unexpected action onto the Monica Lewinsky story line. They don’t even have to be creative about it. They just roll their eyes knowingly and make reference to “Wag the Dog,” the Dustin Hoffman/Al Pacino movie in which a fictional, philandering president deflects the heat by provoking a small war.
How did we get this cynical? That’s easy. Since Watergate, the fastest track to career success in journalism has been to uncover, or at least stay on top of, conspiracies in high places. Young reporters-on-the-make often push it too far (CIA-sponsored crack epidemics; nerve gas attacks against U.S. defectors in Indochina; black church-burning conspiracies in the South) and today’s editors and producers are often too callow to spot and spike an unfounded attack. Public ownership of media companies, meanwhile, has brought a new emphasis on ratings, focus group research, titillation and a blurring of news and entertainment.
And so, it has come to this: A president orders military strikes against murderous enemies of the United States; and the news media, or at least a goodly number of us, play it like the next sensational chapter in this year’s O.J. story.
Sooner or later, if enough of you complain loud enough, we will get better. We can’t get any worse.
