Tabloid Criticism
Surely the media could use some intelligent criticism, and we
actually had some hopes for Steve Brill's new media magazine, Brill's
Content. But while Mr. Brill has a sure eye for promoting his latest
property--having sold his interest in Court TV and the American Lawyer for
Time Warner's $20 million--the deadly news from his first outing is that he
thinks like a lawyer.
That is to say, in considering the investigation by Independent Counsel
Kenneth Starr, whether it's true that the President of the United States is out
suborning perjury and obstructing justice is not the important thing. To a
lawyer's mind the important thing is whether the investigators have dotted all
the "i"s and crossed all the "t"s and asked "mother may I" at all the right
moments. So Mr. Brill never ventures an opinion about whether Bill Clinton
had sex with Monica Lewinsky, but finds an ethical violation because Mr.
Starr and his staff have talked to the press.
If Mr. Brill is going to be a journalistic critic, he's going to have to learn to
think like a journalist. "Dog bites man, no story," the journalistic adage goes,
"Man bites dog, that's a real story." In hyping his scoop on the Sunday TV
rounds, Mr. Brill says "no other lawyer on the planet" has Mr. Starr's
reading of the law. Hmmm, so no other prosecutor has ever talked to the
press on background about pending cases. Now, that's surprising news to
us, real man-bites-dog. We would have thought it would be equally
surprising to someone who ran American Lawyer.
Never mind, it got Brill's Content on the front page of the New York Times.
Apparently it was news to the weekend editors of the Times that reporters
were being briefed by Mr. Starr. The Times story by the Times'Adam
Clymer said "Michael Oreskes, the Washington bureau chief of The Times,
said that the paper did not discuss its sources." The Washington Post put
the story on page A10, and the Los Angeles Times ran a few paragraphs on
A22, under the sensible headline, "Starr Goes on Record on
Off-the-Record Talks During Probe."
The New York Times did follow up the next day by reporting--under a
page A16 headline, "Exception to Rules May Not Apply to Starr on News
Leaks"--that Justice Department guidelines do allow disclosures "about
matters about which the community needs to be reassured that an
appropriate law-enforcement agency is investigating the incident." This
exception would seem to us to cover a lot of ground, given that Mr. Starr is
investigating the President of the United States, and has to defend himself
from constant attacks by the White House. For their part, White House
minions have taken their latest cue from Claude Rains in "Casablanca,"
saying they're "shocked" by Mr. Brill's disclosures.
How this battle has actually played in the press, it happens, is the subject of
a new report by a more traditional press watchdog, the Center for Media
and Public Affairs. The center did a sound-bite by sound-bite analysis of the
561 Clinton scandal stories the three major network evening news
programs carried between January 1 and April 30 this year. Mr. Clinton
counted 44% positive and 56% negative, while Mr. Starr came out at 26%
positive and 74% negative. Paula Jones fared even worse, with 78%
negative, "with most of the criticism originating from the Clinton camp."
That Mr. Starr "engaged in prosecutorial misconduct" was already a
well-established theme, accounting for no less than 12% of all coverage.
Excluding comments by Mr. Starr and his staff, some 89% of sources
quoted were negative toward Mr. Starr. Again the White House attack
team was widely quoted; the Center's Media Monitor newsletter notes,
"Kenneth Starr lacked defenders but not critics."
"[N]o one should read or listen to any media outlet that consistently shows
that it is the lapdog of big, official power rather than a respectful skeptic,"
Mr. Brill concludes. In case anyone is confused, he adds, "The big power
here is Ken Starr. Prosecutors usually are in crime stories, and the
independent counsel's power is unprecedented." Unprecedented precisely
because the investigation concerns the most powerful man in the world,
which had plenty of personal defenders even before Mr. Brill arrived to help
out.
On careful reading, in fact, Mr. Brill's own account clearly shows that Mr.
Starr and his aides were not "orchestrating" anything; they were responding
to revelations by Linda Tripp, her publicist friend Lucianne Goldberg,
Kathleen Willey and others not bound by any requirement of grand jury
secrecy. But on the Brill's Content cover, this becomes reporters "Lapping
up Ken Starr's leaks."
Headlines that don't deliver, charges thrown hither and yon, themes that
make the commonplace a scandal, the appointment of villains, and in
general a lot of screaming that adds up to "buy this rag"--we don't know
what lawyers may call this, but we journalists have seen it before. Maybe
we need some new press critics to give it its proper name, rank
sensationalism.
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