Stupid press tricks.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: Critique of recent examples of news media hypocrisy - Pundit Watch - Column

Hurry, hurry, come one, come all, into the big top for this summer's stupid press tricks.

First up, William Safire. Huffing and puffing about Filegate, he charged F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh with failing to protect people's confidential files from "political snoops." This all by way of vindicating a previous F.B.I. director. "Say what you like about J. Edgar Hoover--he never let the Bureau become a doormat for White House aides," Safire said. So no more dissing the man who had Martin Luther King wiretapped, collected secret files on thousands of Americans from Todd Gitlin to Leonard Bernstein, and organized COIN-TELPRO, which spied on, harassed, and smeared students, feminists, and leftists.

Next up, the pundits, the news media's answer to melatonin. Desperate for an inside-the-beltway story they can really sink their teeth into now that the Senate Whitewater hearings are over, John McLaughlin et al. feel they have hit pay dirt with Filegate. Sitting around like old gossips, vying over who really knows more about White House operatives Craig Livingstone and Anthony Marceca, they keep insisting that, unlike Whitewater, everyone can understand Filegate, so it's going to be a pivotal, apocalyptic story.

Well, maybe. So far the story isn't either as easy to follow or as gripping to outsiders as the pundits wish. As sleazy and criminal as Filegate may be, a lot of people don't seem to care, because they see it, too, as an insider story.

Let's go to topics people are deeply concerned about: downsizing and job flight. On June 18, The New York Times announced in its business section that LAYOFFS ARE OUT; HIRING IS BACK. Because of all the negative publicity about downsizing, "Now companies are choosing to highlight the potential for new hires down the road."

But wait: Two days later, the paper announced that Navistar International, North America's biggest producer of trucks and school buses, was eliminating between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs and moving its huge factory in Ohio "elsewhere." Elsewhere, it turns out, may be Mexico. Five days later, the Times announced that Nabisco would cut 4,200 jobs worldwide, 2,400 in the United States. So much for layoffs being outre.

No discussion of job flight would be complete without reference to NAFTA's latest poster girl, Kathie Lee Gifford. Her relentless promotion of herself as America's most perfect wife and mother made her sweatshop comeuppance deeply gratifying.

So why was the story also making me queasy? For...