|
|
|
|
Yellow River or Yellow Journalism?
Clinton and McCurry read the press the riot act
by Jeff Koopersmith
Monday, March 10th, 1997 -- NEW YORK (APJP) -- Robert Bennett, President Clinton's counsel, delivered an uninspiring talk at Hastings Law School in San Francisco last Friday.
The speech was supposed to give law students the fire needed to reject media coverage of scandal in favor of Bennett's theory that Congress and, by inclusion, the White House is less corrupt than at anytime in history. But it fell far short of the mark.
Bennett missed his opportunity to drive home the point that any corruption, real or perceived, is great fodder for the press -- as it should be in order to provide at least a fragile protection to this democracy. The problem, of course, is that no corruption has been proved, and that the perception seems that of journalists and not of anyone else. Mr. Bennett did pay lip-service to this idea, but kept retreating to a defensive position in his monologue which was more of a drone than an inspiration.
The White House might do better to unleash James Carville among easily-manipulated young legal minds.
President Clinton himself, however, was nearly combative with the White House press corps at his latest press conference held last Friday. Clinton was aggressive in his defense of Vice President Al Gore and Hillary Clinton's secretary -- who appears to have casually accepted a $50,000 check from Johnny Chung, which she dispatched to the Democratic National Committee.
He would not apologize for his or his staff's action. He all but admitted that he too made calls for money from publicly controlled areas of the White House, and gently followed the lead of Mike McCurry, the White House Press Secretary, who had the courage last week to tell the elite of the press corps that they were a pack of yellow journalists who have been engaging in the worst kind of rumor massage -- turning fiction into fact. After McCurry's outburst, one could hear dozens of journalists cry out, "How can you say that?...how could you?...blah, blah, blah, whine, moan..." To his credit, McCurry stood his ground, using a lot of the credibility he has earned for the past several years.
McCurry is right. The media -- and particularly the print press, who knows better -- have been printing what amounts to fantasy for several weeks now. Their mistake is not linking contributions with political and policy action. It's one thing to say "Mr. X gave Politician Y $100,000." It's another to draw a fact-based conclusion that this money resulted in a boon for Mr. X caused by Politician Y. While it sells newspapers to pose the headline question, "Did China try to buy the White House?", it's quite another to prove the preposterous suggestion that the President and the Congress sold America down the Yellow River for a few bucks.
Copyright © 2001, 1997, 1996, American Politics Journal Publications, Inc.
