The Clinton-Lewinsky Obsession.

• Author: GITLIN, TODD
• Position: Excessive media coverage of presidential scandal

How the press made a scandal of itself

To derail his presidency, a thrill-seeking president had to come into the sights of a prosecutor with virtually unbridled powers, married to an omnivorous press. How did the news business, also known (when it is giving itself awards) as the profession of journalism, turn into a nonstop strip-search? How to account for the sheer volume of the scandal coverage, and the gloating tone of much of it, the gleeful obsession, the overkill and wallowing that seized hold of journalism in these United States?

Barking Heads

Start with the Sunday morning barking heads, the high church that certifies each week what the political class is and ought to be talking about, issuing self-fulfilling prophecies for inside dopesters. Consider especially ABC's "This Week," where Cokie Roberts declared, on Jan. 25,1998, with the Lewinsky story four days old, "There's only one real question that's being asked in Washington this week, and that is, can President Clinton survive?" Along the Potomac, among the knowing, it was thunderously clear what was real--and it was not the fate of women without childcare, or children without doctors.

One function of the Sunday shows is to make certain notions thinkable. Between his Sunday punditry and nightly reports, no one bulldogs America's political conversation more than ABC's Sam Donaldson. Donaldson's repute rests not on his reporting, not on his preparation, but on his leather lungs, his selective bullying and his bellow. He jeers the big cheese in charge, whoever it is, because ideology matters less than attitude. On "This Week," the emphatic Donaldson makes George Will look thoughtful, the studious boy who does his homework as opposed to the loudmouth pumped up on attitude. Here was Donaldson on Jan. 25: "If he's not telling the truth, I think his presidency is numbered in days. This isn't going to drag out. We're not going to be here three months from now talking about this."

Of course more than nine months later Donaldson, Roberts, Will & Co. were still talking about "this." But Donaldson, Roberts, Will, Tim Russert and the rest matter not because of their acumen, let alone their accuracy, but because powerful people think that what they say matters--because official Washington and its eavesdroppers watch the Sunday shows in order to know what they had better take into account as they plot their own moves. Like prosecutors talking about "this case" as if they were observers from the far reaches of outer space, journalists like to talk as though "this story" had a life of its own, as if it landed and stayed on front pages and Sunday morning shows by itself. Already, on Jan. 25, Donaldson was declaring, "I'm amazed at the speed with which this story is going." Of course it all depends what the meaning of "this story" is. On Jan. 21, the day the Monica story broke, it was Donaldson--not "this story"--who, at the White House press briefing, asked whether Clinton would cooperate with an impeachment inquiry.

The ardor of the barking heads even makes straight news people squeamish at times. Chris Vlasto, an ABC News producer who, as we shall see, cannot be accused of excessive tenderness toward the White House, told me: "The night Jackie [Judd] and I broke the story, Jan. 21, impeachment never crossed our minds. It only came up that Sunday on `This Week.' I think it's unfair that the talking heads on MSNBC, on our own network and the rest, have stoked the flames."

The Rush Back from Havana

The thrill of a breaking story, any breaking story, is easy to understand, and so is the dynamic that keeps CNN and MSNBC, the 24-hour news channels, along with the tabloids, scraping the bottoms of all accessible barrels for cigar butts. The word of words is competition, and not only for bottom-line purposes. News organizations live for the frenzy of getting "there" first, getting "the story," getting the "get," getting the Big Creep. Recall that on Jan. 21, all three network anchors were in Havana to cover the Pope's visit--all in a position, American news media being what they are, to certify to the American public that Cuba exists and that what happens there might be newsworthy. All three promptly picked themselves up and flew back to Washington to cover (or rather, witness the wreckage from) Hurricane Monica. Dan Rather seems to have been most reluctant to go, later telling Jeff Greenfield on CNN: "If you want to stay in the anchoring business, you have two choices. You can get back to Washington and cover this big breaking story, or you ask for asylum in Cuba ... If one [anchor] had made the decision to stay, one of the three over-the-air national anchor people, I think he'd have gotten killed in the press. He'd have gotten killed by his bosses internally. I just don't think it was practical to say no." In March, receiving a career excellence award at Harvard, Rather picked up this theme again: "If I really deserved this award, I'd have stayed behind in Havana to cover the Pope's visit," instead of returning to "lurid innuendo, sex, and sensationalism and smirking and winking ... I wish I'd had the guts but I chickened out." Rather's confession might have made a nice story for some major paper, or TV Guide or People, but it didn't rate.

As it was, on Jan. 21, CBS delayed 26 precious minutes before going to the president's Jim Lehrer interview denying entanglement with Lewinsky. For lagging behind ABC, NBC, CNN, and Fox, CBS got tweaked in the papers. "After months of chanting hard news, hard news," crowed Eric Mink in the New York Daily News, "CBS News blew it with the pressure on." No one rushed to defend CBS for its principled foot-dragging. It was lost on no one that the one network executive who didn't go live to the death and transfiguration of the people's princess in 1997, Lane Venardos, was soon demoted from his position overseeing hard news.

Did CNN, MSNBC, and the Internet force Rather's hand? Cable and on-line news are too easy to blame for pressing the once-respectable organs ever downward. True, a TV monitor stays tuned to CNN in every newsroom, and on MSNBC, where the soap-opera format glided seamlessly from All-OJ to All-Diana to All-Monica, many a media personage has tied his success to the rising Starr. Instant stars have no incentive to see the scandal with any sense of proportion. Chris Matthews' nightly rant, "Hardball", swelled from 30 to 60 minutes last March, and when the Clinton video was released, MSNBC ratings shot up seven times higher than average. The absolute numbers are still small--CNN and MSNBC between them average less than three-quarters of a million viewers in prime time--but the increment is most attractive. Media analysts tune to...