MediaWatch: January 1994

Conscientious Objectors to Trooper Allegations Jumped on Tower

"Holier-Than-Thou" Hypocrisy

The revelations of four Arkansas state troopers who declared that then-Gov. Bill Clinton used them to set up liaisons with women received a nearly identical amount of coverage as Clinton's last "bimbo eruption." The Gennifer Flowers story drew only 14 stories on the four network evening news shows in a six-day period. Likewise, the trooper story attracted only 22 stories in a 12-day period, nine of them on CNN.

Liberals often fend off charges of bias by suggesting critics are conspiracy theorists. When David Brock's American Spectator article spurred the Los Angeles Times to publish its trooper story, it was Times Washington Bureau Chief Jack Nelson who cried foul on the PBS show Washington Week in Review on December 24: "There was a conspiracy, in my opinion, by right-wingers, including some right-wing journalists, to press this newspaper into running this story before it was ready to." Nelson named ABC's Brit Hume and New Republic writer Fred Barnes: "They were all promoting this story."

Some media outlets tried to avoid the story as tasteless and unsourced. Many of those conscientious objectors had taken a decidedly different approach when the targets of leaks and gossip were conservatives.

Media outlets did not ignore unproven charges of personal behavior made against Sen. John Tower in his failed nomination for defense secretary; or Kitty Kelley's gossipy book about Nancy Reagan and her sex life, including lesbian affairs, fellatio with Hollywood directors, and supposed White House liaisons between the First Lady and Frank Sinatra; or Anita Hill's charges against Justice Clarence Thomas, despite, as Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot put it, "Ms. Flowers now has more corroboration than Anita Hill ever did." Here's a small sample of the hypocrisy:

CBS. CBS Evening News failed to mention the story until Mrs. Clinton denounced it, two days after the other networks, and then only in passing. Executive Producer Erik Sorenson downplayed the story because he found it was just "circumstantial evidence. No women have come forward. I don't want to put these guys on the air because everyone else is doing it." He told The Boston Globe December 23: "I don't want to act holier-than-thou, but the walls are definitely tumbling down."

But on March 2, 1989, CBS Evening News aired allegations of John Tower fondling women and abusing alcohol based solely on a source, Bob Jackson, who was discharged from the military for "mixed personality disorder and anti-social and hysterical features." On April 8, 1990, CBS reporter Mark Phillips did an entire story on Kitty Kelley's Nancy Reagan book, concluding: "Is the stuff in the book true or just vindictive tales? Who knows? Who cares?"

Last August, CBS This Morning interviewed, Susan Trento, whose book contained a footnote about a dead ambassador who guessed George Bush had an affair. CBS This Morning did mention the trooper story in an interview with political experts Bob Beckel and Fred Barnes, but did not secure any of the principals for an interview.

The New York Times. As in the Gennifer Flowers case, the Times initially buried Clinton's sex scandal in small wire stories on the back pages. Washington Bureau Chief R.W. Apple proclaimed "The New York Times is not a supermarket tabloid." But the Times ran a front-page Maureen Dowd story the day before the release of Kitty Kelley's book -- without any of Kelley's critics, or any attempt to prove Kelley's allegations. The Times also ran a 1991 Fox Butterfield article which revealed the name of William Kennedy Smith's accuser and described her "wild streak," her fondness for drinking, and her speeding tickets.

The Wall Street Journal. Washington Bureau Chief Alan Murray also disdained the story. "It's two troopers who are trying to get a book deal. Without a great deal more corroboration, we wouldn't touch it." Indeed, the Journal buried the scandal deep within stories on other subjects. But they didn't spike the Hill story. Two of Murray's reporters, Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer, have sold movie rights to their forthcoming book on the uncorroborated charges against Clarence Thomas, titled Strange Justice.

Newsweek. Newsweek ran the trooper story, but accompanied it with attacks by the magazine's "Conventional Wisdom Watch," which said David Brock "swallows any pond scum that fits his right-wing agenda," called Cliff Jackson an "obsessed Clinton hater," and the troopers "slimy fibbers peddling stale fascinatin' tales. One-third true?" Columnist Joe Klein suggested: "As long as the peccadilloes remain within reason, the American people will have great tolerance for a President who has not only seen the sunshine of Oxford, but the dusky Dunkin' Donuts of the soul."

On The McLaughlin Group, Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift denounced the Brock article: "It is full of innuendo and bias... You have to look at the credibility and the motives of the people making the charges instead of just the President's credibility."

But Jonathan Alter, Newsweek's media critic and "Conventional Wisdom" writer, wrote a long cover story on Kitty Kelley's book on April 22, 1991, concluding: "If even a small fraction of the material amassed and borrowed here turns out to be true, Ronald Reagan and his wife had to be among the most hypocritical people ever to live in the White House." In Newsweek the week before, Clift hailed the Kelley book: "If privacy ends where hypocrisy begins, Kitty Kelley's steamy exposé of Nancy Reagan is a contribution to contemporary history."

PBS/NPR. National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg, who publicized Hill's unproven charges, decried the trooper story on Inside Washington December 25. "You get allegations that are printed in a fringe magazine, or at least a magazine with a very definite political agenda, and then you see...how long it takes the rest of the press to come and bite." Paul Duke, the moderator of Washington Week in Review, declared on December 31: "One of my losers of the year is David Brock, who wrote that slimy magazine article that revived all those old charges about Bill Clinton's personal behavior, and I regarded that as journalism which is truly out of bounds."

But during PBS coverage of the Hill-Thomas hearings on October 12, 1991, when Sen. John Danforth criticized the role of liberal groups in pressing Anita Hill to come forward, Duke disagreed: "There's criticism being directed at these groups but it seems to me this is in the American spirit. This is in the oldest American tradition of lobbying, where people organize for their causes and they band together....and so I think some of the critics are off base when they condemn this so strenuously, because these groups are representing significant segments of the population."

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