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Jewish World Review / Sept 25, 1998 / 5 Tishrei, 5759
Embarassed to be a journalist
DURING 35 YEARS ON THE JOB, I've
never been embarrassed to
say I'm a journalist. That has
changed as I've watched too many
of my colleagues willingly assist
Special Inquisitor Kenneth Starr drag this nation
into a major crisis.
Analyst Jonathan Alter recently moaned on
NBC that our "standards" were getting lower
and lower and "we can't do anything about it."
That's quite a statement from the resident
pundit at Newsweek, the publication that first
brought us the salacious mess now engulfing
America.
What we've witnessed is a shameful display of
professional misjudgment --- not to mention
cutthroat opportunism. Despite Starr's failure to
produce evidence of truly "criminal activity" in
Whitewater or anything else, many in the
media irresponsibly hang on to this scandal
with pit bull tenacity.
Even when polls indicate the public is satisfied
with the President's job performance and wants
to get on with it, competing journalists continue
beating Starr's drum, dredging up every tawdry
detail of what is, after all, the ultimate private
matter: someone's sex life.
Did TV have to air every second of the
President's video-taped testimony? Did the
press have to reprint every comma of the Starr
report? News is news, and it must be reported.
But while we sometimes report the most
heinous crimes, we don't give every horrible
detail. We report rapes and murders but don't
describe bloodied corpses with their legs spread
open.
In showing this story to the world --- including,
potentially, millions of kids — the tidal wave
was as unnecessary as it was indecent. The
page 1 anatomical details were over the top.
The full interview, if it had to be aired, should
have been limited to select channels like Court
TV — and only at night.
I don't excuse Bill Clinton's misbehavior. Mostly
I think it was incredibly dumb. But if a $40
million investigation comes up with nothing
more than details about how one oversexed
guy cheated on his wife with a willing partner
and lied about it, the taxpayers have been as
badly cheated as his wife.
It's up to the press to point that out, not to rub
America's nose in sleaze or play Perry Mason,
as Sam Donaldson did last week when he
asked ad nauseam how it was that Clinton
couldn't remember he had pizza in a White
House corridor!
I'm no Pollyanna. Sex and crime scandals have
always been the Viagra of newspaper
circulation and TV viewership. But there were
always lines of decency, a distinction between a
responsible press and the supermarket junk
press, between television's "Nightline" and
"Hard Copy."
The O.J. trial did much to transform legitimate
journalists into gutter reporters, to validate
schmutz in exchange for advertising revenue.
The line was crossed. Now we can publicly
humiliate a President and hope to win a
Pulitzer Prize.
And how about those ex-White House aides
who are knocking the man who made them
stars to begin with. I'm not talking about serious
folks like David Gergen. I'm talking about
media darlings like Dee Dee Myers and George
Stephanopoulos, whose ideas of serious
contributions include giggling on the Leno and
Letterman shows.
Even my old buddy Martha Stewart, who's
never hesitated to publicize her friendship with
the Clintons, has jumped ship. After filming a
fund-raising luncheon with Clinton at her
Westport, Conn., TV studio, she announced she
was dropping the much-heralded segment
from her fall premiere show.
Disloyalty --- it's not a good thing! Neither is
irresponsible
By Richard Z. Chesnoff
JWR contributor and veteran journalist
Richard Z. Chesnoff is a senior correspondent at US News
And World Report and a columnist at the NY Daily News.
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