US poll shows public disgust
with Starr investigation
By Martin McLaughlin
26 June 1998
An NBC- Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday finds that 83
percent of Americans are tired of hearing media reports on the Monica
Lewinsky sex scandal and that three-quarters have little or no
confidence in the fairness of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
A sizeable majority, 58 percent, of those surveyed would oppose
congressional hearings on possible impeachment of President Clinton,
even if he were found to have lied about his relationship with Lewinsky
and sought to cover it up. Among the 37 percent who would support
impeachment hearings--if charges of perjury and obstruction of justice
could be proven--the overwhelming majority, 68 percent, said they were
not interested in media reports on the alleged sex scandal.
There has been no attempt by the media to explain the divergence between
public opinion and their own incessant scandal-mongering. For more than
five months, the major networks and newspapers have bombarded the public
with sensationalized reports, for the most part damaging to the White
House and supportive of Starr.
A recent article by journalist Steven Brill detailed the intimate and
unscrupulous collaboration between major media outlets, right-wing
Republican elements and Starr in the initial days of the Lewinsky
affair. The evidence indicates that Starr and his backers believed the
media frenzy over Clinton's alleged affair with Lewinsky would
destabilize the administration and quickly force Clinton to resign.
However, the scandal failed to provoke the anticipated public outrage
against the White House. Rather it has, to date, fueled a widespread
reaction against Starr and the media.
The Wall Street Journal, a cheerleader for right-wing conspiracy
theorists and Clinton's most frenzied media opponent, failed even to
report the results of the poll, which it had cosponsored. The Journal
carried a long article reporting other findings in the poll, dealing
with responses to questions on health care and tobacco policy, but said
nothing about the findings on Starr and Clinton.
In response to criticism of the media obsession with the Lewinsky
affair, spokesmen for the television networks and daily newspapers for
weeks sought to blame the American people. They claimed that they were
only responding to overwhelming public interest. For some time, however,
these assertions have been refuted by their own opinion polls.
Such polls are an extremely inadequate measure of public opinion,
conditioned as they are by the kinds of questions asked and the role of
the media itself in shaping public discussion. They underrepresent,
moreover, a significant minority of poor and working class Americans:
those who do not possess telephones, those who are rarely home because
they are working multiple jobs, and those who are reluctant to speak to
interviewers because of language difficulties.
Normally these distortions help the professional pollsters obtain
results conforming to an unstated agenda. Such built-in biases make all
the more remarkable the starkness with which the latest polls reveal a
divergence between the attitude of the public and that of the media.
There is a huge chasm between the thoughts and feelings of the vast
majority of the American people and the preoccupations and political
aims of the press and media pundits.
The broad mass of the population, in contrast to the media, seems to
feel that Clinton's private sexual conduct is his own business. This is
coupled with suspicion over the political motives underlying the
investigation by the independent counsel. Notwithstanding Clinton's own
right-wing social policies, millions of Americans sense that the Starr
investigation and the accompanying media frenzy have a profoundly
antidemocratic content. |
