By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources, (www.originalsources.com)
February 22, 1999
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York conducted a Forum over the week-end which was broadcast on C-Span called "Privacy and the Press." Forum members included: Fred Barnes, Executive Editor, The Weekly Standard, Joe Conason, Editor, New York Observer, Matt Drudge, Editor and Publisher, Drudge Report, Tony Frost, Editor, Globe Magazine, Victor Kovner, Attorney, Dick Morris, Consultant 1994-96, White House and Thomas Yannucci, , Attorney. The stated purpose of the forum was to discuss "whether writing about the private lives of individuals is reporting or intrusion.."
As you might expect with that mix, there were sparks flying. Joe Conason passed up no opportunity to insult Matt Drudge whose Internet "Drudge Report" breaks stories that the networks and the liberal Washington Post, TIME, or N.Y. Times won't touch.
What was interesting to me in the discussion, but not surprising, is what was NOT discussed. Conason talked about what the public "needs to know" - not what it wants to know or what it has a right to know. Once when a candidate for public office was asking for the public to trust him enough to elect, they expected they would be informed about the kind of person the candidate was. What did he believe? How did he live? What kind of morals does he have?
Not surprisingly, there was a difference of opinion about what the Press should do in reporting the behavior, especially the sexual behavior of a candidate or public figure. Conason said a "real" journalist considered "what the public needs to know" in reporting. Does the public "need to know" how a public figure thinks and what he does sexually. The sexual behavior of a person who has criticized others for their lack of morals, for example, should be reported, while the sexual behavior of a person who has NOT criticized others for their lack of morals should not be reported.
Matt Drudge defended the free and open reporting of years past "before corporate journalism" - journalism bound by the legal department of the newspaper. Drudge feels that his style of journalism reflects the freedom of press embodied in the first amendment. Conason, on the other hand, let no opportunity pass to heap scorn of Internet reporter Drudge's "irresponsibility."
The New York Observer, which is published weekly, not surprisingly is not a news magazine - it is mostly opinion. (See: http://www.observer.com/index.html) Conason's article in yesterday's issue entitled First Lady's Decision Shouldn't Be Rushed tells the reader more about what Joe Conason thinks about Hillary Clinton Running for office than it about the event itself - such as why a person who has never run for office before and is a citizen of a small, poor, rural, state like Arkansas with its 2 1/5 million people would be allowed to run for the US Senate representing the people of New York, a large, metropolitan, wealthy state of more than 18 million people. Are there no citizens of New York State that could represent the Democrats of the State?
Matt Drudge, on the other hand, represents a different kind of journalism - Internet journalism - with its need for incredible speed in writing and the INTERESTS of the people, not some journalists opinion about what they "need to know." Matt Drudge is a whole lot closer to the basics of true newspaper reporting than Joe Conason is. Those basics, as taught once upon a time, concentrated on the definition of news and the efforts of the journalist to report the news. This is what journalists fifty years ago were taught about news reporting:
"Men have disagreed on the definition of news, but most city editors in a large city will feature the same stories on the front page of their competing papers. News may deal with great events, conflicts, prominent people, sex, sports, society, war, human interest. There will usually be the element of timeliness, of urgency. The writer of news stories must never editorialize in telling his story. Leave that for the editorial page or columnists."(Dr. G. Paul Butler, editor and manager, New York Mirror)
Walter Winchell, a top writer of a generation ago, was not a news reporter. He was a columnist. He represented the opinion side of the paper - not the news writing side of the paper.
Matt Drudge, because of his own internal definition of what is news, is a much better source of actual news than Joe Conason and the New York Observer ever will be. For example, in Drudge's column today, he reports:
TIME magazine is being accused of making up a quote in a flash story about Juanita Broaddrick, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.TIME [MARCH 1, 1999] quoted Broaddrick calling Lewinsky player Lucianne Goldberg "crazy."
The magazine quoted Broaddrick: "I see this crazy Lucianne Goldberg on TV saying that I was profusely bleeding and had to be rushed to the hospital."
But on Monday, after reading the story, Broaddrick charged that she never called Goldberg "crazy" in her brief interview with the weekly!
"That is a terrible lie," Broaddrick charged. "I would never say that. That is such a lie."
Was the magazine trying to use one scandal star to discredit another?
That is a news report - based on traditional journalistic standards. However, at the National Press Club, when it finally did invite Matt Drudge to speak, surprise was expressed that he would be invited. Conason and others don't consider Matt Drudge in particular and Internet writers in general to be "real" journalists.
Conason is a good example of why Americans today are so poorly informed. He actually believes that it is his responsibility as a journalist to only tell you what HE THINKS you need to know. If you would like to know something he doesn't think you NEED to know - it isn't printed. Obviously, any journalists who comes along and challenges that opinion is a threat to the news control that has become so rampant today - in an era of political correctness.
A reader recently commented that political correctness is controlling how crime statistics are being reported. The Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, for example, which is designed to help the FBI track crime trends, is fraught with problems in a nation like the United States which has a worldwide mix.
He noted: "The bill instructed the FBI to differentiate between two elements of the statistics on 'hate crimes.' One part is the perpetrator, and the other is the victim. Perpetrators of 'hate crimes' are to be identified by only one classification. That is race. However, while perpetrators of 'hate crimes' are to be identified only by race, victims of 'hate crimes' are to be identified by just about everything under the sun; including ethnic group, religion, gender, nationality, sexual preference and others."
This is creating a climate in news reporting in which it appears that white people are the primary perpetrators and the various minorities, especially blacks, are the primary victims of "hate crimes," which, of course, creates more racial anger in the black community. If two minority groups are involved, such as in the Los Angeles riots over Rodney King, when blacks attacked Korean businessmen, somehow in the reporting the blacks were pictured as the victims of racial discrimination and the Korean businessmen somehow ended up as "white oppressors," although they were recent immigrants who had worked very hard to participate in the American dream.
Some blacks have even put forward the absurd theory that blacks, by definition, cannot be "racists," even in a situation like the LA Riots when they were clearly attacking people based on their skin color. White people and Korean people were attacked - by black people - but it was never labeled a "hate crime" by the media. The hesitancy of the media to honestly report this double standard has a detrimental affect not only on the public's right to honest and straightforward information but on their basic right as a free people to be informed. "Political Correctness" is have a major impact on crime reporting. A black person who kills a white person - and that is more common than the other way around statistically - is just as much of a hate crime as a white person killing a black person.
The changing of the rule of reporting from getting the facts and reporting them honestly to thinking about what "the public needs to know" is the difference between journalism and propaganda. What Joe Conason is writing is propaganda - for his side of the political debate.
It is because of this kind of reporting that I believe it is very hard to determine by polling just what the American people truly believe. They are not informed. Most Americans get most of their "news" through corporate media moguls who even interview each other to determine what "the people" think about issues!
Do the majority of the people want to know, for example, whether or not their president is a rapist? And, if they had known that BEFORE the election, would they have voted for him?
The incredible response of the public to Matt Drudge and to talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Chuck Baldwin, Mike Reagan and others around the country strongly suggests that what the elite journalists like Joe Conason think the people "need to know" and what the people "want to know" and have the "right to know" are not at all the same. The public has the "right to know" whether or not their president is a sexual predator and rapist. Some of them, especially in the media, may believe it makes no difference and that they would vote for him even if it is proven he is a serial rapist. However, the public in a free country has the right to know about it and to take that into consideration when they vote.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com