MediaWatch: June 1, 1998
Table of Contents:
If you Impugn, You Are Immune
Two months ago, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz reported that National Journal
writer Stuart Taylor was considering a job offer from
Whitewater counsel Ken Starr as he wrote about the Lewinsky
affair. All the interviews Taylor gave in the weeks that
followed (including ABC's April 5 This Week and April 13 Good Morning America) raised the issue of his professional conduct. PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
dropped Taylor as a regular over the flap, but kept liberal
historian Doris Kearns Goodwin despite her appearance in an ad for
Al Checchi, a Democrat running for Governor in California.
Taylor was a reporter, Lehrer claimed, while Goodwin was a
commentator.
But when media ethics controversies
arise over supporters of Clinton instead of media critics,
the rest of the national media fail to ask questions. The New York Times
reported journalists bought champagne for Clinton aides
upon the dismissal of the Paula Jones case. (One journalist
buying was New York Times reporter R.W. Apple.) But
no one made an issue of that. Similarly, ABC reporter
Linda Douglass's close friendship with Clinton crony
Webster Hubbell and his wife Suzanna (noted in the last MediaWatch)
was never raised as an ethical controversy. Here are some
of the other neglected scoops about the ethics of Clinton
allies:
1. KENNETH BACON LAYS AN EGG.
The news media jumped on the story that Linda Tripp, who
taped Monica Lewinsky, failed to disclose to the Defense Department
an arrest on her public record, according to New Yorker writer Jane Mayer. The Weekly Standard's
Tucker Carlson first questioned the propriety of the
Pentagon's release of Tripp's federal security-clearance form
in the March 30 issue ("Linda Tripp's Pentagon Papers"),
followed up in the May 18 issue by Jay Nordlinger ("Bacon
Tripps Up"). The New York Post's new columnist, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, also pushed the story.
The scandal centers on Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon, who joined the
Clinton administration after spending decades as a reporter
for The Wall Street Journal (where Jane Mayer was a
colleague). Pentagon aide Clifford Bernath told investigators
for Judicial Watch, the conservative legal foundation, that
Bacon ordered the leaking of the Tripp file to Mayer.
On May 21, Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon
noted not only had Bacon admitted to Judicial Watch that he
orchestrated the Tripp release - a violation of the Privacy Act - but
that Bill Clinton promised in 1992, when the Bush State
Department investigated Clinton's passport file, that "If I
catch anyone using the State Department like that when I'm
President, I'll fire them the next day." TV coverage? Zero.
2. HAIR-RAISING FACTS ABOUT SALON.
The Web site Salon drew notoriety for repeated attacks on Whitewater counsel Ken Starr, The American Spectator,
and conservative philanthropist Richard Scaife. Howard Kurtz
filed a long Style section profile on the Web-zine in the April
24 Washington Post. But Philip Terzian reminded readers in the May 11 Weekly Standard: "In March 1988, Jonathan Broder was fired from his job as Middle East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune because he had plagiarized a story by Joel Greenberg in the Jerusalem Post."
Terzian also recalled that seven years earlier, he found Broder had plagiarized a Newsweek
profile of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi. "I asked Howard
Kurtz if he was aware of Jonathan Broder's history as a
plagiarist, and he said that he knew about it, but had, after
some reflection, decided it was not relevant to the present
story." Tim Russert did not ask Broder about it when he appeared on the
April 26 Meet the Press, and neither did PBS host Ken Bode when Broder came on Washington Week in Review May 8 to discuss the Middle East.
The national media, which picked up on Salon's focus on conservative
philanthropist Richard Scaife, ignored an April 30 Washington Times
op-ed by Mark Levin of the Landmark Legal Foundation on Salon's
ideologically motivated donors. Levin discovered one of the site's
principal funders, the Silicon Valley investment firm of Hambrecht
& Quist:
"Multi-millionaire William Hambrecht,
who until January 1, 1998, was the firm's chairman, is a major
financial supporter of the President and Democratic Party
fundraising efforts. As recently as last February, during the
time Salon's reporters were piecing together their Richard
Mellon Scaife-American Spectator-Parker Dozhier-David
Hale-Kenneth Starr witness-tampering conspiracy, Mr. Hambrecht hosted a
fundraiser for Democratic House candidates at his home in San
Francisco, which was attended by President Clinton." Levin
added that the firm's press releases note that Hambrecht
oversaw major investments by Apple Computers and Adobe Systems -
two other Salon funders.
3. OUTED T0 REPORTERS? LOVE, SIDNEY.
Liberal media outlets usually despise politically motivated
"outings" of alleged homosexuals. In 1989, the media raised a
furor when a Republican National Committee memo about then-Speaker Tom
Foley contained just a suggestive title: "Out of the Liberal
Closet." (The aide who wrote it was fired.) In Time,
Margaret Carlson demanded the RNC chairman's head: "[Lee]
Atwater's fouling of the civic atmosphere with vicious
misinformation is bad enough: compounding that with White House
hypocrisy is too much. If Bush really wants to prove himself a
political environmentalist in search of a kinder,gentler
America, he'd sack Atwater."
But in the March 30 edition of The Nation,
gay left-wing media critic Doug Ireland was alarmed in late
February when MSNBC reported Clintonites were leaking
derogatory rumors about Ken Starr's staff. Ireland found:
"Three members of the media confirmed to me that Sidney
Blumenthal, the White House media counselor, had indeed been spreading
such stories: They'd heard him do it. These reputable members of
the Beltway media agreed to tell me what they knew only if
guaranteed complete anonymity; they were afraid of losing
access to White House sources, and of possible reprisals. Two
said that Blumenthal had told them directly of the same-sex
orientation of a member of Starr's staff, and a third said he
had been present for a conversation in which Blumenthal made
such a comment to a third person." Blumenthal denied it. But
none of the national media picked up on this line of inquiry, or
passionately called for Blumenthal's ouster.
4. MORT'S MAGAZINE: THIS SPACE FOR RENT?
Mortimer Zuckerman, the owner and Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News & World Report,
has been one of Clinton's harshest attack dogs on the scandal
front. In the April 6 issue, Zuckerman charged: "It is not the
President who is involved in the politically motivated abuse of
power; it is the politically motivated counsel. It's not the
President who is insufficiently accountable; it is the
prosecutor."
Last summer, Village Voice media critic
James Ledbetter argued the MRC's Brent Bozell was wrong to
suggest Zuckerman's liberal bias was driving coverage: "Since
the Daily News - which has historically shown minimal
enthusiasm for Democratic presidential candidates - endorsed
Bill Clinton in 1992, News [owner and] co-publisher
Zuckerman has received leases from the Clinton administration
worth more than $8 million a year. All told, Zuckerman's main
company receives nearly $30 million a year from federal agencies."
(Ledbetter also detailed $1 million in annual contracts
from the U.S. Navy for a company owned by Arthur Carter, who
publishes the New York Observer. Observer columnist Joe
Conason has been one of the primary attackers of Richard Scaife
and his alleged conflicts of interest with Ken Starr.)
Ledbetter suggested: "A newspaper or magazine owner who is even
partially dependent on federal contracts presents a challenge to
editorial underlings: under what circumstances, if any, should such
publisher-government ties be disclosed to readers?" A Nexis
search for the term "Boston Properties" in U.S. News & World Report found no disclosure of Zuckerman's contracts in the magazine.
