THE MEDIA AND BILL CLINTON
THIS WAS BEFORE supermarket tabloids helped dictate political coverage and before the Internet or Matt Drudge. Back when a Bill Clinton lie didn’t really matter much to the entire world, there was one taped conversation. The Star had the tape of Clinton and Gennifer Flowers and there was sex talk on it. Clinton was a liar even then. This was in New Hampshire in January 1992. Clinton, then seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, walked into a prosperous silkscreen company on Route 38 in Salem. Teenage girls with shopping mall faces stood outside the factory. Clinton had been heard on the tapes calling Gov. Mario Cuomo a Mafia gangster. Everyone initially wanted to believe the tapes a lie, but Clinton apologized. Cuomo accepted the apology and now Clinton apologizes, to the country. What was one lie has become a warehouse of boxed lies.
FROM ACCURACY IN MEDIA
Earlier this year the Star, a tabloid newspaper, published some 2,000 words of transcripts of telephone conversations between Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers, a woman who asserts she had a 12-year sexual affair with the prospective Democratic presidential nominee.
Our media decided you didn’t have the right to read these transcripts. The Washington Post published a meager 59 words. The Associated Press, the wire service which supplies news to most American dailies, transmitted only 24 words. The New York Times, arguably the most influential paper in the country, ran two sentences, both pertaining to derogatory remarks Clinton was heard making about Gov. Mario Cuomo. (The Washington Times and the New York Post are the only papers we’ve seen that published sizable portions of the transcripts; neither paper, unfortunately, has mass circulation in national terms.)
Why the media censorship? Eleanor Clift, who covers politics for Newsweek, wrote in that magazine on Feb. 10, 1992, after the Flowers revelations, “Gary Hart would have given anything for the support Clinton got last week. Truth is, the press is willing to cut Clinton some slack because they like him — and what he has to say.” Steven Stark, a columnist for the liberal Boston Globe, wrote on March 16 that “the question is whether the coverage, as a whole, has become so one-sided that the mainstream press is not giving the public the whole truth. That has clearly happened. Why have so many baby-boom reporters boosted Clinton? In part, it’s because they identify strongly with a liberal, semi-hip contemporary who seems to share their values.” Let us give liberals Clift and Stark credit for honesty: at least they are up front about their shameless admiration for Bill Clinton.
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