TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/081291/0812103.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.3 KB | 129 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 23

COVER STORIES

The Busybodies on the Bus


As reporters feed lower on the news chain, public figures face
shifting standards for their private conduct

By MARGARET CARLSON


    Society's busiest busybodies are in the press, where,
under cover of the Constitution, they expose, scold and ridicule
public figures, and sometimes win Pulitzer Prizes for it. In the
putative national interest, reporters have taken on the roles
of mother superior, party boss, neighborhood snoop and cop on
the beat. No one knows exactly what the moral code is, but
anyone who runs for office, or otherwise pre-empts public
attention, violates it at his peril.

    We do know, however, that in its police function the press
relies less on the Constitution than on the Ten Commandments,
although not all of them. "Thou shalt not steal" is much less
interesting than "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Until
recently, the cautious public figure searching for a baseline
against which to measure his conduct could look to the Gary Hart
scandal of 1987. Roughly translated, the Hart standard meant
that the conduct in question had to be verified, reckless,
substantial and current, by a candidate running for President.
The challenge Follow Me was optional.

    Then came former Senator John Tower of Texas, who was
rejected as Secretary of Defense in part for decades-old,
unverifiable boozy womanizing. As for drug use, the other major
area of press scrutiny, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas
provides the most current guide. It is no longer disqualifying
to have smoked marijuana as a student, especially if it was an
experiment and was not enjoyed. Anyone who smoked in Vietnam
actually scores points with the press.

    But the hurdles change often: as competition for
advertising spins out of control, the mainstream press is
increasingly willing to feed lower on the news chain. This
spring NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, slumming as host of a
prime-time show called Expose, dusted off a seven-year-old story
alleging that Virginia Senator Charles Robb had spent an evening
at a hotel with a former beauty queen and attended parties where
drugs were used. Once it knew that Brokaw was going with the
story, the Washington Post, which had decided against running
it before, took the clothespin off its nose and played the story
on the front page.

    Brookings Institution analyst Stephen Hess likens the
lowered standards to "a tabloid-laundering operation in which
respectable news organizations get into a story through the back
door by reporting on a tabloid's reporting on a story." The
value of Brokaw, a respected pro who wins journalism awards and
dines at the White House, in such a cleanup operation is high.
In April, Brokaw sanitized the use of the name of the alleged
Palm Beach rape victim in the William Smith case under the
guise of reporting on the ethics of a supermarket scandal sheet,
which had used the name first. This purified the issue
sufficiently for the New York Times, which ran a lurid profile
of the woman the next day, violating most of the newspaper's
rules about printing unsubstantiated charges from unnamed
sources and naming victims in rape cases. Other publications,
which would not take their cues from a tabloid but which felt
noble taking them from the Times, followed suit.

    Reporters in Washington held their collective breath last
week wondering who, if anyone, would perform the laundering
service for the vicious story in a gay magazine claiming that
a Pentagon official is homosexual. The Los Angeles-based
Advocate tried to get publicity for itself by offering an
advance copy of the piece to major news outlets that would agree
to run it. Although the individual has not been antigay or
hypocritical or done any of the other things gay groups use as
excuses for "outing" people, Jack Anderson broke the story in
his syndicated column, deciding that being first was better than
being right.

    The Washington Times last week lobbed a pre-emptive strike
against Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, warning that his private
life will be fair game if he decides to run for President. The
main inspiration for the paper is political gadfly Robert
("Say'') McIntosh, a Little Rock restaurateur known as the
"Sweet Potato Pie King," who is trying to stir up trouble for
Clinton in Arkansas, handing out rumormongering leaflets.

    In the world of moral shakedown, all sources -- bored
beauty queens who want to be models, models who want to flack
for No Excuses jeans -- are unimpeachable, and no sexual charge
is too old or trivial to pass up. If the country loses the
candidacy of one of the nation's most successful Governors to
moral terrorism, the press may yet come to see that there is
more to journalism than moving product, no matter how heated the
competition. But so far, with only slightly fewer correspondents
assigned to the alleged Palm Beach rape case than to the Moscow
summit, there seems no end to busybodying in sight.

    Few would argue for a return to the John Kennedy standard,
where reporters enjoyed nudging each other over the President's
affairs but didn't feel the public had a right to know. For the
President, the standard must be high: there are no off-hours,
and wars can start in the middle of the night. But there is a
moral statute of limitations, a sense of proportion, that still
applies.

    Not every aspiring candidate who has his picture taken
with his wife puts his sexual history into play. The public
looked at Hart's egregious pattern of conduct and,
understandably, had qualms about what it revealed about the man
who would be President. Hart, after all, flaunted his affairs
and taunted the press to expose him. But the specter of the
press pursuing the issue of whether Robb got a massage or
something more from the former Miss Virginia, as if there were
a Pulitzer at stake, makes the public wonder why the reporters
aren't off sorting out the savings and loan scandal. Who among
the busybodies can know what really happens behind a closed
door, inside a marriage or in the human heart, or what it means?
Uncovering an affair a public official may have had tells us
that he's not perfect. But not much more.