TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071089/07108900.001

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.3 KB | 120 lines

                                                                                PRESS, Page 53

Is It Right to Publish Rumors?


In an age of dirty politics, alas, mudslinging is part of the
story

By Walter Shapiro


    Even though it has been 30 years since Allen Drury
published Advise and Consent, the landmark novel of backstairs
intrigue on Capitol Hill, its plot remains eerily contemporary.
Against the backdrop of a brutal confirmation battle reminiscent
of the John Tower nomination, the 1959 novel portrays an earnest
young Senator who tries in vain to resist political blackmail
over a homosexual encounter in his distant past. But the Senator
is driven to suicide when he learns that an unsavory syndicated
columnist is about to print the politically devastating charges.
A fictional Washington Post executive explains haplessly that
while no responsible paper will publish the scurrilous column,
"some little paper somewhere will run it big as life, and then
the wire services will feel they have to pick it up and send it
across the country . . . And there we'll be, trapped in our own
operation."

    Public mores may have changed over the past three decades,
but the press still finds itself trapped by the rituals that
govern its coverage of scabrous gossip. Today the journalistic
rules of righteous rumormongering have been liberalized, even
though the results in the form of tarnished reputations often
remain all too familiar. Leading newspapers and the television
networks are less likely to permit the wire services to do their
dirty work for them. Instead, the new, more permissive approach
allows them to write and broadcast artfully crafted stories
about the rumors themselves, thereby spreading calumny while
piously decrying it.

    During the spiritually enervating marathon that passed as
the 1988 campaign, presidential candidates were forced to
refute publicly rumors of homosexuality, mental illness,
illegal-drug use and extramarital affairs. Yet the Donna Rice
episode, following months of pious denials of womanizing by Gary
Hart, can only have strengthened the public's cynical suspicion
that smoke inevitably signals an inferno of secret scandal.
Hart's dramatic downfall was an embarrassing spectacle,
especially for all the journalists who missed the story. Pam
Maples, a political reporter for The Rocky Mountain News in
Denver, expressed a typical reaction: "This paper has tended to
be very conservative about rumors. After the Gary Hart story
broke, there was guilt here among some of the editors and
reporters. You know, he was the hometown boy. The feeling was,
Shouldn't we have been doing that story?"

    Presidential campaigns have never been an arena for the
fainthearted: the awesome powers of the office may implicitly
permit the press to waive normal strictures of taste and
delicacy in the pursuit of rumor. But until recently,
journalists tended to judge members of Congress by a more humane
standard. It was not too long ago that a prominent legislator
could be carried off the Senate floor in a drunken stupor
without a word of his public intoxication appearing in the
press. Such journalistic self-censorship certainly did little
to promote sobriety among public officials, but it did help
create an almost unimaginable era of political comity in
Congress.

    How sad and sordid, in contrast, is the current rule of
rumor on Capitol Hill. Perhaps the nadir was reached with the
recent press coverage of the baseless and base charges that
House Speaker Thomas Foley is a homosexual. Syndicated
columnists Roland Evans and Robert Novak initially helped stir
the muck by referring to rumors about "the alleged homosexuality
of one Democrat who might move up the succession ladder." As the
gossip oozed along the halls of Congress, New York Daily News
columnist Lars-Erik Nelson published the details of the
whispering campaign against Foley in order to finger the staff
of Congressman Newt Gingrich as one of its sources. Never mind
that the Foley rumors were completely false. Once the Republican
National Committee launched its own smear campaign against the
new Speaker, using sniggering language like "out of the liberal
closet," virtually every news organization felt compelled to
repeat the slur, regardless of the damage it would cause.

    After participating in Foley's ordeal by innuendo, few
journalists could claim that theirs is a higher calling than
ordinary occupations. Thus how tempting it must be for armchair
analysts to decree that henceforth no responsible publication
or newscast should disseminate unsubstantiated rumors. But
while preserving the dignity of the unfairly maligned, would
such a high-minded standard also serve the public interest? Or
are current journalistic practices -- as unfortunate, unfeeling
and unfair as they sometimes appear -- necessary reflections of
subterranean currents in contemporary government and politics?

    It is difficult to invent a system under which the press
can operate on a higher ethical plane than the politicians they
cover. Rumor has always played a role in politics, but rarely
have the backstage operatives been so adroit, and so cynical,
in their use of vitriol. The nation is mired in a poison-pen
era, and to identify the culprits, the press must sometimes
inadvertently mar reputations. The role of journalism is, in
part, to delve beneath the surface and explain the causes of
events. To do otherwise is to cheat the public, the only
constituency to which reporters owe their allegiance.

    This is not to diminish the rights of Tom Foley -- or any
other public figure similarly tarred. All too often the press
is unnecessarily timid in describing the character of rumors.
Using tepid language like "unsubstantiated" or "believed to be
without foundation" to describe malicious falsehoods can suggest
to the uninformed that there may be a kernel of truth to the
charges. If there is absolutely no evidence to support a
scurrilous rumor other than the fact that prominent politicians
are spreading it, far better for the press to resort to a
four-letter word that can fit in any tabloid headline: lies.
Only through such aggressive honesty can the press sidestep the
muck that is replacing real issues in contemporary American
politics.