An "Irresponsible" Press Is Best

by Alexander Cockburn

New York magazine published a bunch of them last month, showing that the public reckons the press has been up to no good. What else is new? Call up households at 6.30 p.m., and ask the folks on the other end of the phone whether they think coverage of the Lewinsky story has been "irresponsible," and how many do you think will say "aye?" In New York's poll, it was 50 percent, which is lower than I would have guessed.

By instinct and social training, the public is always reproving the press, even while avidly devouring the stories about President Bill canoodling in the White House pantry.

Ask a stupid question, and you'll get a stupid answer.

"Hello. I'm from Global Strategy Group." "Huh?" "Global Strategy. We're conducting a poll for New York magazine about what people think about the press. Would you rather read about oral sex in the Oval Office or about European monetary union?" With voices brimming with virtue, 94 percent will plump for EMU.

In fact, the poll was often encouraging to those, like myself, who think the press should be irreverent and irresponsible at all times. The poll showed that 33 percent want the press to "uncover corruption" and that a 25 percent slice is eager for muckraking and dirt about the mighty. Better still, only 15 percent want the press to "uphold moral values."

Did the pundits make fools of themselves? Yes, indeed. They made incredible, unforgivable misjudgments about public opinion. This is because most of the pundits clustered in the studios of the networks, MSNBC and PBS are stupid, largely right-wing people who talk only to each other, read only each other and in consequence have very little contact with external reality. They should all be fired.

Should the press have covered Lewinsky scandal and pursued it with ardor and vim, right down to the precise centimetric area of that Gap dress anointed with Bill's semen? Of course. If tomorrow some cousin of Linda Tripp springs the news that Al Gore has been leading a double life, should this be communicated instantly to the American people? Yes, it should, along with an advisory that the story was probably false and put out by Al Gore himself in an effort to hoist himself higher in public esteem.

The main problem with the press is that it's too stuck up and too inflated with ethical self-importance. Take The Nation, a liberal weekly. A couple of months ago, its editors announced with moral self-satisfaction that they had been offered a scoop on the matter of Henry Hyde's adultery but had rejected the story, deeming that publication of it would be an unwarranted intrusion into the private life of the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, at that time pontificating about the president's morals.

The Nation's editors then asked their readers for their view of the matter. The answer came in The Nation for Nov. 23, when the editors reported that "an astonishing 100 percent replied that under the circumstances, yes, the news should have been published -- somewhere. Most thought we were fools to pass up the story. The rest said we'd been 'high-minded' but wished we'd run it."

These are mostly the same readers who reacted with high-minded fury when I wrote six years ago in The Nation that Bill Clinton had spent substantial slabs of the 1980s with his nose between Gennifer Flowers' thighs and that, taking all things into judicious consideration, this was probably the best reason, if not the only reason, to vote for him. Nation readers want the dirt on Henry but not on Bill, which shows the inherent folly of generalizing excessively from polls about the press.

There is, these days, not much actual reporting in mainstream, corporate journalism. Within the circumference of the entire media-industrial complex, the space given over to unearthing of facts is minuscule in comparison to the opinion-mongering facilities, gigantic smokehouses of punditry the size of a thousand football fields.

Most opinion formers these days are well-paid corporate serfs, promulgating boilerplate and sedulous to avoid the asking of any awkward questions. This is the politico-pundit class that screwed up this year. It's not a problem for "the press." It's a problem for them and for the people who pay their salaries.