MediaWatch: January 1998
Table of Contents:
Dismissing Monica's Predecessors
As the allegations erupted that President Clinton told White House intern Monica Lewinsky to lie about their sexual relationship, the combination of sex and perjury charges jolted the media into action. But when questions of Clinton lying about his sex life arose in the past, the media suggested that whether Clinton was telling the truth was beside the point.
When the Gennifer Flowers story arrived in Time in 1992, writer Lance Morrow scolded: "If the public is going to behave like an idiot on the subject of sex, the candidate will naturally do almost anything to avoid telling the truth about any behavior less than impeccable." Morrow added: "Given the size of the job that needs to be done, it is time for America to get serious. At the very least, turn off the television set. And grow up about sex."
After the election, Morrow crowed in Time that Clinton "served to rehabilitate and restore the legitimacy of American politics" and that a Bush victory would have rewarded the use of "irrelevant or inflammatory issues...or dirty tricks and innuendo."
In December of 1993, The American Spectator broke the story of then-Governor Clinton using state troopers to secure sexual conquests. National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg noted: "When the American people hired Bill Clinton for this job, they knew he was no saint. He virtually told them he was a sinner." Newsweek’s Joe Klein argued: "As long as the peccadilloes remain within reason, the American people will have great tolerance" for Clinton.
Paula Jones’ 1994 allegation of earlier sexual harassment by Clinton got 16 seconds on ABC’s World News Tonight; zilch on CBS and NBC. Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift complained on C-SPAN: "It seems to me that the discussions about Bill Clinton’s sexual life came up during the campaign."
When Jones filed suit in May of 1994, Tom Brokaw defended NBC’s three-month smothering of the story by echoing Eleanor Clift, insisting on CNBC’s Tim Russert: "It didn’t seem to most people, entirely relevant to what was going on at the time. These are the kind of charges raised about the President before. They had been played out in the Gennifer Flowers episode." Had the American voters clairvoyantly known that Clinton would be accused of sexual harassment?
It shouldn’t have been surprising that the media’s most desperate Clinton defenders stuck to the same voters-don’t-care mantra in the Lewinsky case. On January 21, Clift defended Clinton in live coverage on MSNBC: "Well, he’s been elected twice with people knowing that he has had affairs. Now is the fact that this woman is 21, I mean she’s still of age I suppose." Besides, Clift argued, "libido and leadership is often linked."
