MediaWatch: July 1991
Table of Contents:
Double Standard For Sununu
Since the days of Watergate, the national news media have assigned more importance to the executive branch than to the legislative. The media's logic is largely numerical: the President is elected nationwide, the legislators in much smaller groups. But this can lead to a double standard in news judgment concerning scandals, leaving perceptions of an executive "sleaze factor" while the transgressions of legislators are just local news.
This double standard is clearly illustrated in the recent hubbub over the travel of White House Chief of Staff John Sununu. From April 21, when The Washington Post published its investigation of Sununu's travel records, to the end of June, MediaWatch analysts found that the Post published 27 stories, and put 11 of those stories on the front page. Using the Nexis news data retrieval system, MediaWatch analysts looked at four recent controversies involving major abuses of travel privileges by key congressional leaders and found a glaring double standard:
1. WAYS AND MEANS BARBADOS JUNKET: On October 25, 1990, ABC's Prime Time Live
aired an investigative report on a House Ways and Means
Committee junket to Barbados, authorized by powerful Ways and
Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski. ABC estimated that the trip
cost the taxpayers at least $42,000. Two days later, the Post
mentioned the report in paragraphs 25 and 26 of a story on
Congress wrapping up its session. Reporter Tom Kenworthy
introduced the item with the sentence: "But not every piece of
business was so weighty as business adjourned." Two days later,
the Post ran a short 646-word piece on Page A13. Total number of entire news stories: one.
2. BILL ALEXANDER:
When the House Democrats' then-Deputy Whip, Rep. Bill Alexander
of Arkansas, cost the taxpayers an estimated $60,000 to fly
with his family to Rio de Janeiro in mid-August 1985, the Post
did one story -- on September 23, more than four weeks after the trip
was first reported by the Associated Press. In fact, AP had
already sent out 11 news stories on the trip before the Post got around to it. The New York Times ran three news stories and an editorial before the end of August. Total number of entire news stories: one.
3. LES ASPIN: On February 17, 1991, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-WI) returned from Denver to Washington with his girlfriend, Sharon Sarton. The military plane ride back from his ski trip cost the taxpayers $28,000. Aspin paid nothing in reimbursement; his girlfriend paid $178. The parallel to Sununu is remarkable, but the Post never wrote a word about it.
In fact, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times both carried an Associated Press report on June 2 noting that Aspin, "who is leading efforts for more M-1 tanks than the Pentagon requested, is dating a steel executive [Sarton] whose company obtained more than $6 million in M-1 contracts." The Post didn't cover that story, either. Total number of entire news stories: zero.
4. PARIS AIR SHOW: Despite a number of knowing references to the annual Paris Air Show as a legendary congressional junket in the past 14 years, the Post only once put together an investigative story detailing the flight costs -- on June 15, 1989. (When the Post did target individual legislators, it mostly stuck to Republicans; for instance, an entire 1987 news story on Sen. Strom Thurmond.) But the Post also twice reported controversies involving Reagan Administration officials: an entire news story on Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler in 1985, and a mention of Deputy Transportation Secretary Darrell Trent in 1983. Total number of entire news stories in 14 years: four.
MediaWatch Publisher L. Brent Bozell III made these results public in a June 27 Washington press conference. In a "Style" section story the next day, Post media reporter Howard Kurtz looked at the study, but did not grasp the point -- that the MediaWatch study focused only on travel scandals.
Kurtz included quotes in the Post's defense from soon-to-be Executive Editor Leonard Downie, who noted that Post reporter Charles Babcock broke stories about Jim Wright's lucrative book deal and Tony Coelho's junk-bond purchases. But the Post had no day-after-day drumbeat after these revelations, either. Babcock broke the Wright story on September 24, 1987 -- and then didn't do another story on Wright for months. Congressman Newt Gingrich repeatedly raised the issue, but the Post didn't jump on the story until Common Cause focused on Wright in 1988. Babcock wrote only two investigative stories on Coelho -- on April 13 and May 14, 1989 -- before Coelho stepped down in late May.
The Post also noted that Babcock wrote a recent front-page story on congressional use of corporate jets. That makes it 27 to 1 in favor of the Sununu story in the last two months. Kurtz added that "Babcock's stories on travel abuses date to 1983, when he wrote about the 89th Military Airlift Wing providing flights to at least 34 senators and 200 House members." The February 8 story focused almost completely on Republicans. Babcock spent 18 paragraphs (including the first five) detailing junkets by Barry Goldwater. He worked in mentions of Rep. Jamie Quillen (paragraph 9), Sen. Paul Laxalt (paragraphs 12 and 13), Federal Aviation Administrator J. Lynn Helms (paragraph 20), and Sen. Jake Garn (paragraph 37). Babcock mentioned Democrats in paragraphs 36 and 39. That's hardly a convincing defense for the Post.
If Sununu's travels strike the Post as offensive, readers might expect them to report or editorialize on possible reforms in travel policy. In fact, Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-MI) has been introducing a bill for years that would require all three branches of government to disclose travel information, but the Post has only given it one offhanded mention in the last two months. The Post's approach to Sunuu may be exemplified by retiring Executive Editor Ben Bradlee's 1989 opinion of how the New Hampshire Governor would be received in Washington: "A jack-leg Governor from a horse's ass state. How could he play with us in the big leagues?"
