Tag Archives: Media Bias

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Lawrence Walsh’s Self-Inflicted Wound

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Republican partisans have been spewing vitriol for so long at Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair, that it’s tempting to brush off the current claims that Walsh played a dirty election-eve trick on President George Bush as more right-wing ranting.

But this time Walsh’s critics have a point, though a more modest one than they claim: It was only natural (if ultimately mistaken) for them to suspect a political motivation when Walsh chose the last Friday before the election, Oct. 30, to drop into the public record a nugget of evidence dramatically contradicting President Bush’s claim that he was "out of the loop" on Iran-Contra.

Walsh’s critics also have a point when they complain that the mainstream media have shown a remarkable lack of interest in exploring Walsh’s October surprise, compared with, for example, the saturation coverage of the State Department search of Bill Clinton’s passport files.

It’s not that there was anything wrong per se with Walsh disclosing the evidence that so discomfited Bush-a Jan. 7, 1986, note summarizing an Oval Office meeting that day, in which then Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger wrote that the "VP favored" an "Iranian offer to release our 5 hostages in return for sale of 4000 TOWs to Iran by Israel." Indeed, one of the reasons Congress passed the independent-counsel law was to expose executive-branch lies and quasi-lies, like Bush’s efforts to distance himself from the arms-for-hostages dealings.

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Mediagate: Anatomy of a Feeding Frenzy

by Stuart Taylor, Jr

The American Lawyer

Remember Iraqgate? It may seem ancient and obscure. But just two years ago, it was big. Very big.

This was the "scandal" that hounded George Bush as he slumped toward the 1992 election. Thousands of newspaper articles and a gaggle or television specials turned his greatest triumph-his victory over Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf war-into a political liability, by spreading unfounded claims that Bush had secretly and illegally plotted to arm Iraq and then had orchestrated a cover-up.

Iraqgate grew out of legitimate criticism of the Reagan-Bush policy of seeking normal economic relations with-and, some say, appeasing-the brutal, Kurd-gassing, arms-buying Iraqi regime in the years leading up to its August 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait. Bush may well have paid too little heed to warnings that Iraq was intent on using Western technology to build nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

But what made Iraqgate front-page news everywhere was a crescendo of allegations and innuendos of criminality, which New York Times columnist William Safire sum marized as "the Bush administration’s fraudulent use of public funds, its sustained deception of Congress, and its obstruction of justice." Such charges multiplied throughout 1992, due to assiduous promotion by an array of prominent journalists, congressional Democrats, and a federal judge.

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The Capitals Peculiar Rituals

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Richard Allen. Robert Bauman. James Beggs. Peter Bourne. Tony Coelho. Tai Collins. Daniel Crane. Deborah Gore Dean. Raymond Donovan. Fanne Foxe. Newt Gingrich. Stephen Gobie. Thereza Imanishi-Kari. Rita Jenrette. Tim Kraft. Bert Lance. Rita Lavelle. Donald Lukens. Robert McFarlane.

Edwin Meese III. Ozzie Myers. Lyn Nofziger. Oliver North. Theodore Olson. Tom Pappas. Paula Parkinson. Elizabeth Ray. Nancy Reagan. Donna Rice. Gus Savage. Denise Sinner. Gerry Studds. Jim Wright. Joseph Wright Jr. John Zaccaro Jr.

Pop quiz: Try to recall how these people became embroiled in front-page Washington scandal (or what passes for scandal); which of them were accused of crimes; which were convicted; and what became of them. (For answers, see Page 29.)

Then read Scandal: The Crisis of Mistrust in American Politics. It’s a much-needed antidote to the obsession with exposing wrongdoing that has distorted our political culture since Watergate.

Scandal, a new book by former Wall Street Journal columnist Suzanne Garment, is one of the most sensible and readable analyses of our capital’s peculiar rituals ‘in years. Garment argues compellingly that political Washington and its scandal-happy press corps have spent far too much energy chasing tales of corruption, sin, impropriety, and the appearance thereof, and far too little on our deeper problems, which "spring less from individual wrongdoing than from more widespread failures of political will."

It’s a cautionary tale for the self-appointed, often self-righteous guardians of ethical purity whom Garment calls "scandal entrepreneurs." The carefully documented, entertainingly rendered, sometimes deliciously ironic narrative lends weight to Garment’s sobering conclusion:

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In Defense of Dirt Digging

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

”They have the whole country blanketed, trying to dig up dirt…These are the smartest attorneys from the best law schools in the land. All paid for at public-interest expense. It’s what’s ruining our country in large measure. Because some of these groups…are vicious."

–Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)

What’s so bad about trying to dig up dirt? In their furious attacks on the excesses of a few of Clarence Thomas’ opponents. Thomas and his supporters cynically sought to delegitimize the whole enterprise of investigating Supreme Court nominees and their records.

In the process, they uttered a lot of pious, hypocritical, demagogic nonsense.

Efforts by political opponents and the press to ”dig up dirt" about people in public life are as American as apple pie and as old as the republic. And such negative research is a tool used by conservatives no less than by liberals.

In the words of Bruce Murphy, author of a book on the failure of Justice Abe Fortas’ nomination to be chief justice in 1968 and his subsequent resignation under a cloud of financial improprieties: ‘ ‘The handbook for the dirt-digging operation was written by the Republicans in 1968, and the author was Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina."

Dirt digging is not only proper but good for the country-if kept within proper bounds.

By "proper bounds," I mean using legitimate investigative techniques-combing through speech texts, phoning former employees, and the like-to seek out and publicize any information that may be relevant to a nominee’s fitness for the job he or she seeks.

As for relevance, even Thomas had to concede that Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment would (if true) demonstrate his unfitness for the Court.

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Courting Disaster: Perfidy and the Press

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

The press has made a sorry spectacle of itself at the Supreme Court this year and may soon take a drubbing for it.

In two big pending cases, many of the nation’ largest news organizations have contended that the First Amendment licenses journalists to engage in grossly unethical conduct.

Here’ hoping that these wrongheaded and myopic claims do not provoke the justices-some of whom have been itching for a chance to stick it to the press-into an overreaction that could do the First Amendment lasting damage.

In last week’ oral argument in Cohen v. Cowles Media Co. No. 90-634. Minnesota’ two largest newspapers told the Court that the First Amendment means journalists can betray their sources whenever they please.

The papers are backed up by some of the nation’ largest news organizations, which have long claimed that the same First Amendment requires courts to shield their sources from subpoenas by honoring their ironclad promises of anonymity.

The press’s chance of having it both ways-of winning a right to breach promises of anonymity to sources without damaging its claimed right to protect them-approaches zero.

The looming danger is a possible holding that the First Amendment has nothing to say about reporters and their sources-which would destroy the fragile principle that currently protects sources from court-ordered disclosure. That is one reason a number of First Amendment lawyers privately express horror at the press’s posture in the case.

The Minnesota newspapers say their right to publish the whole truth sometimes overrides their ethical duty to honor their promises. So it may, but only in rare cases-for example, if a source breaks his side of the bargain by falsely accusing others of the leak-and this is not one of those cases.

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We Call That Writing

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

"Journalists doctor quotes and add colorful language to them all the time to spice up stories," H. Bartow Farr III told the Supreme Court on Jan. 14. "They have every right to do it. That’s what the First Amendment is for."

Outside on the courthouse steps, Farr’s client, New Yorker magazine writer Janet Malcolm, added this: "So I fiddled a bit with Jeffrey Masson’s quotes. So what? The man is a conceited fool. My quotes revealed the larger truth. That’s how we do it at The New Yorker. We are artists, not petty scribes.

"And so. what if I pretended to be his friend? That’s journalism. Every journalist … is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse."

Actually, that’s not quite what Farr said. Or what Malcolm said.

Actually, the quoted passages above are my words, not theirs-except the last sentence, which comes verbatim from a 1989 Malcolm article. And as far as I know, Malcolm made no statement on the courthouse steps at all.

I made up the quotes because I wanted to dramatize the wrongheadedness of the Malcolm-New Yorker defense, which is supported by many major news organizations.

But this much is true: If the Court upholds Farr’s arguments, neither he nor Malcolm nor The New Yorker could get to first base suing me for making up phony, offensive quotes and pretending that Farr and Malcolm had uttered them.

That’s because in my opinion-and my opinion would be all that mattered-my phony quotes roughly "convey the same meaning," to borrow Farr’s words, as other things that Farr and Malcolm have said.

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CNNs First Amendment Hubris

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

The 1971 Pentagon Papers case tested the right of the press to expose government duplicity about important public business without submitting to prior censorship.

Now comes the Noriega tapes case, which tests (among other things) the right of a news organization to thumb its nose at the judiciary-to flout a temporary restraining order by rushing onto the air a leaked tape almost devoid of serious news value.

The Cable News Network appealed the restraining order to the Supreme Court on Nov. 15. And leaders of the media establishment took to the barricades in full First Amendment regalia to champion CNN’s right to broadcast wiretaps of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega consulting with his legal team.

Well they should. The lower courts’ prior restraint on CNN set a worrisome precedent. But CNN’s conduct raises troublesome questions too:

Was it wise to escalate this fight by violating the order without waiting a few days for a decision on appeal? Did the public have such an urgent need to hear this unremarkable tape without delay? If so, why did you promote the tape for a full day before putting it on the air?

Were you driven by the need to expose government misconduct? Or by the urge to flaunt your scoop for purposes of self-promotion? Was it really necessary so boldly to risk provoking the first Supreme Court ruling in history to uphold a prior restraint on news reporting?

By the way, have you noticed that this is not the same Court that decided the Pentagon Papers case-that all but two of the justices who laid down that robust precedent against prior restraint are gone?

And have you noticed that the newspapers complied with temporary injunctions in the Pentagon Papers case until the Supreme Court overturned them?

News organizations ought to have a better journalistic reason than CNN had before inviting the creation of bad law by throwing down the gauntlet to the courts as CNN did.

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Janet Malcolm’s License to Lie

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

This has been a big year for Janet Malcolm, who writes for The New Yorker about psychoanalysts, journalists, murderers, and other interesting folks.

First she touched off a cyclone of journalistic indignation and soul-searching by asserting in a widely discussed article that "every journalist… is a kind of confidence man," seducing his subjects to gain their trust and then "betraying them without remorse."

And now she has won a ruling that every journalist has a First Amendment right to "fictionalize quotations," as a federal appeals court put it in dismissing a $10 million libel suit by a man who came across as a deluded egomaniac in quotations attributed to him by Malcolm.

In the 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held that a writer may attribute to a public figure words that he did not speak, words depicting a vain, foolish, and dishonorable braggart, so long as the made-up quotations are arguably similar to things he did say.

This new constitutional right to "interpret" in the guise of quoting could enable Malcolm’s journalistic "confidence man" to dispense with seducing his subjects and proceed directly to betraying his readers.

Even if Malcolm did both, the court held on Aug. 4, she did not libel Jeffrey Masson in the two-part 1983 article and subsequent book trashing his reputation.

Masson is a psychoanalyst and scholar who was fired from a job at the Sigmund Freud Archives in 1981 after he had enraged the psychoanalytic establishment by going public with evidence questioning the integrity of Freud’s work.

Malcolm put quotation marks around several damning comments and self-characterizations attributed to Masson- "intellectual gigolo," for example-that he says she simply made up.