July 17, 2000
Investigating the old media
� 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
By Paul Sperry
WASHINGTON -- As I approached the E. Barrett Prettyman United
States Court House steps Thursday, I was taken aback by the
gaggle of network TV cameras staked out there.
Could it be that the White House e-mail scandal was finally
getting some traction in the TV news cycle? I asked a cameraman
if he was there for the e-mail hearings in U.S. District Judge
Royce Lamberth's courtroom.
"Huh? Nah, we're covering the Bakaly trial," he said.
That would be Charles Bakaly, former Independent Counsel Kenneth
Starr's spokesman who's on trial on a criminal contempt charge
stemming from news leaks during President Clinton's impeachment
case.
Figures, I muttered. (Tom Brokaw turned down a credible story
about Clinton raping a woman. Why would I think he'd talk about
him possibly hiding his e-mail from investigators?)
Then I saw a lone TV cameraman staked out under a tree, away from
the herd of a dozen or so other cameramen.
I walked over and asked him which story he'd been assigned to
cover. "Some hearing on missing White House e-mail," he said.
Who are you with? "Fox," he replied.
Figures, I muttered.
What a snapshot of old-media bias. Two trials, same building. In
one trial, an aide to the poster boy of the "vast right-wing
conspiracy," the veritable bull's-eye of all Clinton-hater
haters, is accused of obstructing justice. In the other, the
White House is accused of obstructing justice.
One creates a frenzy of coverage. The other a whisper.
But evidence of pro-White House bias only got thicker inside
courtroom 21, where the White House was forced to explain five
months of delays in producing e-mail evidence to the court.
The White House's army of defense lawyers grasped at straws
throughout the hearing. It even tried to smear a plaintiff's
witness by pointing out she'd had a nervous breakdown.
Of course, the tactic backfired when the former White House
computer manager testified she'd only broken down after Clinton
appointees ordered her to do illegal acts.
But here's the behind-the-scenes media maneuvering that the
public never sees.
As lawyer Elizabeth Shapiro lit into the witness about her mental
health, reporters flipped open their notebooks and began
scribbling furiously. Up to that point, the press had barely
stirred.
I sat on the back row of the spectator's gallery, behind a CNN
correspondent. He had been sitting with his buddy from AP. His
buddy left for a potty break and missed Shapiro's ad hominem
attack.
When he returned, the CNN guy, grinning, leaned over and filled
him in about the breakdown. "She had had one, or she just had
one?" whispered the AP reporter excitedly. "She'd had one," the
CNN reporter answered. More note scribbling.
After the hearing, the CNN guy scoffed at plaintiff's lawyer
Larry Klayman's chances of turning up any incriminating evidence
against the White House.
"You still don't have a smoking gun," he said, almost wishfully.
This is a common line among the mainstream media. Whatever the
Clinton scandal, they pooh-pooh the investigation as futile. No
smoking gun's been found, so there probably isn't one, so what's
the point of searching?
I don't recall any reporters copping that attitude during the
Watergate probe. Hope sprung eternal then.
Let's revisit how a smoking gun emerged: Washington Post
reporting forced congressional hearings; hearings revealed the
existence of Oval Office tapes; and a U.S. District judge, after
hearings, seized the tapes, which produced the smoking gun.
Did Woodward and Bernstein know there was a smoking gun? No, but
Ben Bradlee still gave them the green light to keep digging. Did
Sam Ervin know there were tapes? No, but he still held hearings.
Did Judge John Sirica know Nixon would OK a cover-up? No, but he
still went ahead with his ruling.
This White House e-mail case, which is looking more and more like
a major cover-up, has similar earmarks. Yet the old media
gatekeepers can't stop whining.
Luckily, Fox News also is covering the hearing. It'll balance out
CNN's coverage, assuming CNN even runs a story (it still hasn't
rolled tape of interviews with e-mail whistle-blowers).
Or so I thought.
The next day, as the hearing recessed for lunch, I came upon a
Fox News reporter hanging out near the Bakaly stakeout. I'd
recognized her from the hearing.
I asked what she'd thought of the testimony so far. She whipped
out her reporter's notepad and replayed the proceedings for me,
adding her spin. It was all White House.
I know, Fox is supposed to have Clinton's number. Not this
reporter.
She carried on about Klayman's witness suffering a nervous
breakdown, while slamming Klayman's own tactics and lines of
questioning. All suspicion rested with Judicial Watch, not the
White House.
This woman's job is to observe the hearings (which continue
today), take notes and jump on her cell phone and report
newsworthy items back to her producer. She's not the on-air
talent and doesn't correspond with Washington managing editor
Britt Hume.
But her influence is just as great, if not greater. Thursday's
Fox Special Report with Britt Hume bears that out:
BRITT HUME: A former Clinton administration staff member says the
White House could have produced those missing e-mails. The
testimony came in another hearing on the matter in federal court
in Washington. White House officials say technical problems are
holding up the retrieval process and it could be months before
any of the lost e-mails surface.
Fox News' Colin Spencer has the story.
COLIN SPENCER, FOX CORRESPONDENT: According to testimony given by
the White House tape restoration manager, they have already
started copying tapes, and since they are dealing with over 3,000
tapes, they say the process could take up to a year to finish.
Then he brought up the witness having a nervous breakdown, and
added how the White House's lawyers accused her of being "bitter"
and "disgruntled."
You see, the White House spin got through even on Fox, and Hume
wasn't the wiser.
Hume knows this president's MO. He left ABC News after Clinton
gave him a dressing down in front of his press corps colleagues
for asking a legitimate question of Clinton's Supreme Court
nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg during a press conference.
Here's my point: Hume, no real fault of his own, relied on a
field reporter who relied on her preconceived notion that the
White House's motives for losing the e-mail and dragging its feet
in finding it are somehow purer than Judicial Watch's motives for
questioning the White House's story and the court's motives for
demanding the evidence now.
That led to her missing the story. It wasn't the nervous
breakdown. Not because it's not newsworthy, but because there was
bigger news than what that witness had to say.
On cross examination, the White House's star witness, no less
than the project manager on the job, confessed that the lead
contractor the White House insisted on hiring has little, if any,
experience retrieving lost computer data. And he wanted to hire a
more experienced contractor, but his White House superiors vetoed
him. It was a bombshell. Both Fox and AP missed it.
Meanwhile, the rest of the gang who completely missed the e-mail
story are having to rationalize committing major resources to
covering a trial in which the defense is motioning to dismiss
based on the prosecution introducing not a single shred of proof
against Bakaly.
If you think this coverage is bad, wait till the conventions.
In 1992, I witnessed something I'll never forget covering the GOP
convention at Houston's Astrodome. BellSouth sponsored a lounge
for the media in the Astrohall, replete with TV monitors, tables
and chairs, cold cuts, chips and the main attraction for
reporters: beer kegs. All free.
The long, raised platform of seats reserved for the press next to
the dais where Republican speakers spoke was only speckled with
reporters for most of the convention. Most camped out in the
lounge and in their tent-like workspaces nearby.
But it was an absolute ghost town during Pat Buchanan's "hate"
speech. Before covering it, I went to the lounge to grab a
sandwich. The place was wall-to-wall reporters. And unusually
loud.
Reporters had just gotten copies of Buchanan's embargoed speech
and were reading it as Buchanan spoke on the TV monitors.
Nazi salutes went up. Epithets such as "fascist" were hurled.
Beer cups bounced off the TVs and walls. I stood there
slack-jawed, not because I was a big Buchanan fan, but because I
was seeing up close the visceral manifestation of the media
groupthink I'd up to that point only sensed from a distance.
Folks, there were media personalities you'd all recognize in that
lounge. Whatever you think of Buchanan, it was a shameful
display.
Is it any wonder the speech was so quickly condemned as
"mean-spirited" and "extremist"? They panned it before it was
delivered. They didn't cover it live, in the Astrodome, to gauge
the audience's response, to watch Buchanan's body language up
close. Yet it's their job to absorb that color and nuance to tell
a fuller, richer story.
The failure of the Fourth Estate to do its job -- to tell the
unvarnished truth and put aside political agendas -- is the real
scandal in this town.
Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.
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