Media in Gore Jr. DUI Bust Cover-up
Saturday Sept. 14, 2002; 11:06 a.m. EDT
newsmax.com
News of 19-year-old Albert Gore III's Sept. 5 drunk driving arrest wasn't reported for a full eight days - until a political gossip column in the Washington Times broke the news blockade yesterday.
The media cover-up of Gore Jr.'s latest brush with the law stands in marked contrast to alcohol related offenses involving the Bush family, stories the press has repeatedly rushed into print over the last two years.
As of Saturday morning, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and most other big media outlets had declined to cover Gore Jr.'s alcohol-fueled antics, which came to an abrupt halt when he was pulled over by military police just outside the Pentagon.
But after Gore spokesman Jano Cabrera confirmed the arrest to the Times "Inside the Beltway" column, the paper went public with the news on Friday.
"The family is relieved that no one was hurt," Cabrera told "Inside the Beltway." "Beyond that, they are dealing with this privately as a family."
Gore was reportedly alone in his late model Mustang and wasn't driving over the speed limit, said the New York Daily News, which picked up the DUI story on Saturday. The New York Post also covered the news.
A Lexis-Nexis search, however, turned up no other coverage of the secret Gore DUI bust, his second brush with law enforcement in as many years.
In August 2000, the then-Harvard bound high school senior was nabbed for speeding on a North Carolina highway; news the media held for days so as not to embarrass his father, who was in the midst of being nominated for president at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles at the time.
At the family's request, the press also declined to report young Gore's 1996 suspension from the tony Washington, D.C. prep school St. Albans after he was discovered smoking marijuana in the cafeteria.
"[Vice President] Gore called leading news organizations around Washington and asked them not to run the story, and all complied," reported Newsweek's Bill Turque in his book "Inventing Al Gore."
In stark contrast, alcohol related incidents involving first daughters Jenna and Barbara Bush have been widely and immediately covered by the mainstream press, as were the recent drug-abuse troubles of first niece Noelle Bush, who was discovered last week with crack in a Florida drug rehab center.
Though reporters acquiesced when Mr. Gore secretly asked them not to cover the 1996 drug incident involving his son, the press has ignored repeated public requests from first lady Laura Bush to show the same discretion with her daughters.
Meanwhile, former first daughter Chelsea Clinton continues to enjoy the same protection the press extends to young Gore.
Photographs taken by British tabloids showing the Clintons' only daughter collapsing in a drunken stupor outside a London nightclub this spring have been embargoed by the U.S. media, with the exception of the supermarket tabloids. |
