Vampire journalism.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: Media coverage of Whitewater affair and the Clinton presidency - Pundit Watch

A warning to pundit watchers everywhere: Never say (in print, no less) that the news media can't stoop any lower. Just when you do, you'll find the news divisions of all the television networks blanketing the airwaves with backlit interviews with our nation's serial killers. While ABC's seven-million-dollar woman presided over a hideously ghoulish "dramatic recreation" of the Tate-La Bianca murders and brought Charlie Manson and "his girls" into America's living rooms, Dateline NBC served up Jeffrey Dahmer, and CBS gave us convicted murderer Russell Obremski.

Diane Sawyer's smug cynicism--which, as far as I can tell, has never been in short supply--reached a new zenith with this performance, as she acted outraged and shocked over the murders while using them to deliver killer ratings. It must really boost the journalistic ego to stand on the graves of mutilated victims to advance one's career. But Sawyer and her ilk aren't really predators--after all, as she announced self-effacingly on the cover of TV Guide, "The truth is, I'm a wimp."

Right. And I'm Margaret Thatcher.

But the spread of vampire journalism is hardly restricted to our nation's TV "newsmagazines." The craven coverage of Whitewater, and the compulsion to inflate it into a constitutional crisis, has led to some astonishing excrescences in the major news bureaus of the nation. Even those of us deeply critical of Bill Clinton's sellout compromises on everything from health care to Haiti can still be outraged over a press that rolled over and played dead for Reagan and Bush but now suddenly bares its fangs over what it, too, regarded as business-as-usual in the 1980s.

Tabloid journalism relies on rumors, innuendo, speculation, and appearances; facts are irrelevant. If there's a rumor that Vince Foster didn't really commit suicide, that his body was found in a "safe house" and then moved, hey, print it. Then ABC News gets to rebut the rumor by broadcasting a closeup of Foster's lifeless, powder-stained hand, still gripped around the gun he used on himself. Vampire journalism, you see, doesn't just feed on the dead and the undead; it feeds on itself, getting ever more engorged.

With Whitewater, perfectly legal act ties have been cast as bordering on the criminal. The most outlandish was the boldly headlined front-page story in The New York Times: Top Arkansas Lawyer Helped Hillary Clinton Turn Big Profit. The "big profit" was $100,000--a ton of money for you or me, but peanuts in...