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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (16218)	6/17/1998 9:09:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20981

"It is odd that a media critic would take the side of those who seek to hide the truth from the people over those who seek to tell it to them". Brill's Pack Attack By Michael Kelly Wednesday, June 17, 1998; Page A27 Steven Brill, the owner and editor of the new magazine of media criticism, Brill's Content, knows his subject, which is to say he knows how to hype and how to package, and he knows that the trick in scolding the press beast is to feed it at the same time. In "Pressgate," a very long and somewhat breathless cover story gracing the first issue of his magazine, Brill dissects big media's coverage of the first three weeks of the Monica Lewinsky matter. He proves that the media pack can be silly, shallow and slightly hysterical. He discovers that journalists -- particularly of the televised genre -- pretend to know more than they really do, and that they sometimes depend on leaks from interested parties and government officials. He proves that these practices can lead to sensationalism and to mistakes. This may seem to be something of a gambling-in-Casablanca story, but Brill understands that gambling in Casablanca can be news if there are enough people with a strong interest in being shocked by gambling in Casablanca. On the subject of the intern and the president and the press and the prosecutor, there are many such people. One day, Kenneth Starr will report on whether the president perjured himself, or suborned perjury, or otherwise attempted to obstruct justice. The Clintonites, by and large, I think, expect that it will at least be shown that the president perjured himself. Their hope lies not in defending Clinton's innocence but in destroying the credibility of the person who will present the evidence. So, Brill's revelation that Starr had admitted that he and his deputy Jackie Bennett Jr. had talked to some reporters about matters pertaining to their grand jury investigation was seized on by the White House with cries of horror and delight. The pack, happy for a fresh angle on the story, demanded: Should Starr be fired? Should the Justice Department appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the special prosecutor? The first question is whether Brill's story was accurate and fair. Brill's claim that Starr had admitted leaking rests on a quote that Starr says has been distorted. Six other people, including Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson and Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt, have also said they were misquoted or misrepresented by Brill. Jonah Goldberg, son of the anti-Clinton literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, told me that he told Brill in an interview that "it made sense to think" that his mother was the source for Matt Drudge's initial reports on the Lewinsky affair but that "she didn't do it." Brill, he says, printed his quote but omitted the last crucial phrase, to make it seem as if Goldberg had admitted what he in fact had denied. Brill says he quoted everybody accurately, and has the notes to prove it. For the sake of discussion, though, let's assume that the story was on the level and that the quotes are good. Assume also that Brill's narrow view of what a prosecutor is allowed to say to reporters is correct. Admit that Brill is right to say that various Lewinsky talking heads and TV types made various mistakes, rushed to overheated judgments and played copycat to an embarrassing and irresponsible degree. And let's agree that the Washington press corps is vicious and vulgar and faddish and dumb and so much in love with itself that it wears pancake makeup to bed in hopes that Ted Koppel will call for a last-minute sub. Still, this time the pack is fundamentally doing the right thing, and critics like Brill are fundamentally wrong. Brill writes that the press's coverage of the Lewinsky saga "raises the question of whether the press has abandoned its Watergate glory of being a check on official abuse of power. For in this story, the press seems to have became an enabler of Starr's abuse of power." This is what reporters call missing the story. Starr and his deputies may have done some things wrong, and so may have the ruthless smearers and leakers, whom Brill neglects to mention, who work on the president's behalf. But the great, central and unanswered question the press is chasing is precisely the one Brill says the press has forgotten: whether the president of the United States abused his official power, whether he corrupted his office and broke the laws he was sworn to uphold and whether he lied to the nation. This is the question that the president's defenders, those Augean stable hands of politics, spend their days ducking and dodging and wishing away, and this is the question the press rightly seeks to answer. It is odd that a media critic would take the side of those who seek to hide the truth from the people over those who seek to tell it to them. Michael Kelly is a senior writer for National Journal. washingtonpost.com