TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/030590/0305220.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.2 KB | 131 lines

                                                                                PRESS, Page 52

And What About the Truth?


By CARL BERNSTEIN


    The Trump story may be the Three Mile Island of journalism:
a meltdown waiting to happen. We've all known for years that
the journalism business was on the verge of blowing its top.
Now it's been done in full view of the country. We have seen
supposedly responsible newspapers give over Page One to Donald
and Ivana Trump on the same day that Nelson Mandela returned
to Soweto and the Allies of World War II agreed to the
unification of Germany.

    Our pervasive celebrity culture, fueled by a smarmy sort of
New Journalism, has made Liz Smith, "Page Six" and Suzy more
important to the identity and future of the Daily News and the
New York Post than a dozen Pulitzer prizewinners.

    That is not to say that the breakup of the Trump marriage
isn't a story. It is, and it is appropriate to have a little
fun with it. After all, the Trump saga -- the ascendancy of
Donald Trump as a business power, of Mr. and Mrs. Trump as
social doyens -- has been a masterwork of media manipulation
and self-promotion, abetted by a celebrity-worshiping press
corps. But to watch a purportedly serious newspaper like
Newsday report breathlessly in its lead story that "hotel
records show that Maples paid no bills" is to discover where
priorities in the news business are heading these days.

    Donald Forst, Newsday's New York editor, explained that the
war of the Trumps has riveted the media's attention "because
it revolves around lust, power, money, sex. A man who was
successful, who's written books or had books written for him,
and now he's got a little mud on his shoes. People just lap it
up."

    Note the phrase "a little mud on his shoes," because it
represents an attitude held by editors and reporters who should
know better. They have created two standards in their
newspapers and broadcasts: one for real news, in which "a
little mud on somebody's shoes" is treated like a little mud,
no more, no less, within the context of that person's life and
work. Then there are the values of the gossip/celebrity press,
a netherworld of journalism in which flacks and hacks operate
in a manner that would never be tolerated in the rest of the
paper or broadcast. Fairness, accuracy and balance are
abandoned in the cause of titillation.

    The Trump story has been a media circus: Barbara Walters
raising her glass to toast Ivana. Only in this atmosphere does
it seem unsurprising that a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic
Church (John O'Connor of New York) would publicly discuss the
pastoral visit of one of the separating partners in a marriage.
CARDINAL TO TRUMPS: PRAY, chimed Newsday on Page One. People
who choose to share their private lives with gossip columnists
and debate the terms of their divorce in newspapers get what
they deserve.

    So what, one might ask, if Liz Smith has acknowledged that
she sometimes doesn't check the accuracy of her items? So what
if in her column she dispenses advice to Ivana and can't keep
straight if she is friend or journalist? So what if Suzy claims
to have attended a party when she did not? So what if in the
nitwit pantheon of gossip Claus Von Bulow, Sydney Biddle
Barrows and Jessica Hahn are celebrated in the same tones as
people of genuine accomplishment?

    The answer is that readers and viewers are going to
conclude, not unreasonably, that the same wacko standards are
infecting the rest of the paper or magazine or broadcast.

    Which gets to perhaps the central fact about today's excess
of gossip and celebrity journalism: it is contemptuous of
readers and viewers. It says they are incapable of dealing with
real news and that they must be fed Pablum and given the
illusion that they are vicariously participating in important
stuff. It is also about class: a nouveau celebrity class
applauded less for achievement than for the mere acquisition
of money or the act of becoming famous. I suspect that the
pre-eminence of this type of gossip and celebrity journalism is
not unrelated to the private frustrations and envy of the people
who write it: the desire for importance and participation in
a world they perceive as glamorous and exciting and into which
they could not otherwise gain admission.

    This, incidentally, is being written by someone who has done
more than his share of time in Liz Smith's column and a few
others. As I write this, "Page Six" of the New York Post and
the gossip columnist of the Washington Times have called to ask
for details about the piece you are now reading -- and "Is it
true that it begins with a sentence about Liz Smith and the
breakup of your marriage?" Who cares?

    None of this is to say there isn't a place for celebrity
journalism. It can and should be fun, occasionally bitchy and
lurid, rich in relevant information about the lives of the rich
and famous and the accomplished. But it should be based on
reporting. And real reporting is nothing more than the best
obtainable version of the truth. Getting at the truth is hard
work. It requires phone calls, knocking on doors, spending
hours with people who know the subject and, most important of
all, giving credence to information that might be contrary to
a reporter's preconceived notion of the story. Real life is
about gray; it doesn't usually follow the trajectory of the
gossip chroniclers: soaring careers one day, plummeting
fortunes the next. Real life is about context, and so is real
journalism.

    Perhaps inevitably, the cloud of the new celebrity
journalism hangs now over even the most rarefied atmosphere in
our profession, the New York Times. Forget how confused the
Times was about what to do with the Trump story. In that same
week the Times also found the need to review Nelson Mandela's
performance. SOME FIND MANDELA'S VISION LIMITED, said the
headline, four days after the man had emerged from 27 years in
the African Gulag. Mandela had himself become a celebrity to
be regarded through the cynical eye of this New Journalism, the
subject of its infectious, abbreviated tone, the obsession with
appearance as opposed to substance. These are the warning
signs of meltdown. Ciao, Nelson. Hello, Donald. Hello, Ivana.