Michelle:
The senior editor of the Columbia Journalism Review says that the "Bush affair" story was not ever close to being substantiated and was therefore bad journalism. Seems the Dukakis camp lost one of their own because of his efforts to fan the bogus story:
Media Critic says Conason's tactics are "Bush"-league
Columbia Journalism Review, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1992
Jon Swan, Columbia Journalism Review senior editor
JENNIFER
(or, as the New York Post might put it, HEADLESS STORY HAS GREAT LEGS -LNS)
If the Bush-alleged-philandering story had nothing else, it certainly had legs. As Joe Conason wrote in the coverstory of the July/August Spy magazine: "Whispers about the extramarital dalliances, real and merely alleged, dateback at least as far as his first campaign for the presidency, in 1980." Whispers turned to print in 1988, less than
a month before the presidential election, when an aide to Michael Dukakis resigned "after calling on Bush to 'fessup' about whether he has carried on an extramarital relationship," in the words of a page-one October 21 BostonGlobe account.
At about the same time, L.A. Weekly ran a piece titled "The Mistress Question." The article, by Richard Ryan,asserted that "two impeccable sources are offering much harder information" about what had previously been"common gossip" in Washington circles -- namely, "Bush's long-running affair with his appointment secretary, Jennifer Fitzgerald." Both sources -- "people of stature in their respective fields" -- insisted on anonymity. The piece ended with paired quotes. Asked why he had never assigned a reporter to look into Bush's private life,Evan Thomas, Newsweek's Washington bureau chief, replied, "Newsweek has no desire to break a story on the topic." William Greider of Rolling Stone, for his part, said he'd heard "a lot of gossip over the years" and had asked journalists, "Why aren't you covering this? Why aren't you publishing this?"
One answer was provided this summer by Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz, who pointed out that "several news organizations, including the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, have investigated the rumor but found no evidence to substantiate it." Evan Thomas, again sought out for comment, supplied another reason. "It's very hard to look into the story," he told Joe Conason. "How do you do it without someone stepping forward like Gennifer Flowers?"
How? Well, Conason found a way, a sly Spy way -- by putting together a lot of detailed circumstantial evidence, including intriguing quotes from a "Ms. X, a former journalist...who apparently had an affair
with Bush while he was running for President in 1980." Stories built on anonymous sources may firm up conviction among the convinced, but on undecideds that judicious adverb "apparently" can have a deflating effect.
So here was Spy with a boldly billed cover story ("He Cheats On His Wife") written by a respected journalist (Conason was named executive editor of The New York Observer in mid-August), and now the question was: There it is -- again -- the story with those really great legs. Anyone going to admit to having looked?
The Chicago Tribune found a way of looking without seeming to stare. In a June 21 "Media Watch" column (SEEKING A MIDDLE GROUND: SPY MAGAZINE'S BUSH-WHACKING PART OF A BROADER EFFORT TO SURVIVE), James Warren used Conason's article as "a window on a magazine" trying to expand beyond New York. First, though, he summarized its findings, along the way introducing details that lent weight to Conason's reporting. Among other papers that took note of Spy's revelations were the New York Post, The New York Observer, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Fort Wayne, Indiana, News-Sentinel, and the National Enquirer. As for New York's Good Gray Lady of record, she prudently averted her eyes.
Even the times was compelled to cast a sideways glance at the mistress story, however, when on August 11, the New York Post yelled at the top of its tabloid lungs THE BUSH AFFAIR. Flanking the fat type were photos of Bush and Ms. Fitzgerald, whose resemblance to Mrs. Bush was almost eerie.
The Post "exclusive" was what might be called a blown-up footnote to a footnote to a footnote, being based on a tidbit of research tucked into a footnote to a just-published book called "The Power House," by Susan B. Trento. The book was about Washington lobbyist and p.r. executive Robert Gray, whom Trento describes as a participant in an effort to help cover up "Bush's sexual indiscretions.if he ever hoped to be president." A footnote to this episode contained evidence suggesting that Louis Fields, an ambassador to the nuclear disarmament talks in Geneva, had arranged for Bush and Ms. Fitzgerald to share a guest house in Switzerland. In Post-ese: NEW BOOK: BUSH HAD SWISS TRYST. Picking up choice bits from the Trento footnote, the
Post quoted Fields as saying, "It became clear to me that the vice-president and Ms. Fitzgerald were romantically involved. It made me very uncomfortable."
Now the entire multiheaded media monster swiveled, gawked, and ran stories about Bush's response, which among other things was to say, "It's a lie." BUSH ERUPTS! boasted the Post. Among the folks Bush erupted on were correspondents who had the audacity to seek comment on an allegation heard around the world. "I'm not going to take any sleazy questions like that from CNN," Bush snapped at Mary Tillotson, who Bush spokesman Marlin Fitzwater later said, "will never work around the White House again." Stone Phillips of NBC also took
heat for venturing to ask Bush if he ever had an affair. To ask a question "in the Oval Office" struck Bush as very bad manners.
While Bush was in an eruptive mode, Ms. Fitzgerald wasn't talking. That left former ambassador Fields, but he was dead. True, some of his comments about the alleged relationship had been taped, but Newsweek - which seemingly alone took the trouble to listen to the tape - found the comments ambiguous.
Thus, after a flashy two-day cancan staged by Alexander Hamilton's favorite tab, a curtain came down on the story. There was no denying that it had great legs, but it was hard not to notice that it lacked a
journalistic essential - a visible, living talking head. -------------------------------------------
I remember losing all respect that I had for Stone Phillips when he asked Bush about the rumors in the Oval Office. Jane Pauley (Trudeau), the co-host, asked him if he had difficulty asking the question, and Phillips said something about how putting the adultery inquiry to Bush "leveled the playing field".
I was incensed. After all, Gennifer Flowers came forward armed with incriminating audiotape. The only supposed party to the Fitzgerald affair was a DEAD MAN who wasn't even an eyewitness; he had only speculated about the closeness of Fitzgerald and Bush, and filled in the blanks with the worst possible scenario. No taped conversations, no photographs, no love letters, no quid pro quo, but if Clinton had to answer whether or not he was an adulterer, they had to find someone who was supposed to have been Bush's mistress "to level the playing
field."
For all of you who think that Joe Conason is a stellar journalist, remember this article, not written by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Robert Novak, or David Horowitz, but by the senior editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. Think about it when you see anonymous sources referred to in his stuff. Then ask yourself if he has earned the benefit of the doubt.
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