Press at its best — or just documenting dirt?
Ombudsman
By Paul McMasters
First Amendment Ombudsman
First Amendment Center
12.21.98
Porn publisher Larry Flynt finally got fed up with the mainstream press horning in on his franchise.
For months, the sex, sin and sensationalism of the Clinton-Lewinsky story was the purview of the major media. Then in October Flynt decided to add Hustler to the media mix by offering $1 million for information about the sexual affairs of high government officials. That newsgathering shortcut quickly bore results.
Last week, on the eve of an impeachment vote in the House, Hustler apparently was closing in on a story about extramarital affairs by Republican congressman Bob Livingston of Louisiana when the speaker-elect decided to disclose the story himself. Forty hours later, Livingston announced he would resign from Congress.
Flynt has promised to dish more dirt about a dozen other government figures when the New Year arrives. Despite the fact that 19 days later he'll be in a Cincinnati courtroom facing charges of distributing obscenity, the pornographer is a player.
The presence of Larry Flynt at the press table raises some interesting questions about propriety, privacy and paying for the news. What should be a part of the recriminations and ruminations, however, is the fact that there is an unbroken link between Larry Flynt and the earliest days of the press in America.
As for modern times, revelations of sexual infidelity by a political figure have become rather routine and usually set off a now-familiar dance: Journalists inquire about a sexual indiscretion by a well-known politician, the politician attempts to duck the damage by announcing with heavy heart that he has hurt his family and others, his colleagues blame political enemies for tipping off the press, and then vow to continue to do the people's work without being intimidated by such vicious and un-American tactics.
So, as members of Congress decried "the politics of personal destruction" and the mainstream press played catch-up, media critics and ethicists began to examine the journalism of prudery, puritanism and the personal. They raise fair questions, but often neglect context.
Should the press pay for the news? Cash for trash is not new to journalism nor to this particular story. For example, Larry Flynt's tactics could be compared to the "opposition research" so popular among political candidates today, or to Richard Mellon Scaife's contribution of $2.4 million to American Spectator to finance its "Arkansas Project" investigation of Bill Clinton. (Remember it was the American Spectator article that burned Paula Jones, that prompted a lawsuit against President Clinton, that led the Supreme Court to allow the suit to proceed, that provided an opening for the Office of Independent counsel to investigate, that resulted in a report to Congress, that led to impeachment.)
Who knows where Flynt's promised journalistic revelations will lead? But no matter where, journalists who care about their credibility and the truth should not follow Flynt's example. Checkbook journalism tarnishes the reputation of journalists as well as their targets. When journalists offer money for news, more often they get what they pay for rather than the unvarnished facts.
Is it proper for the press to pry into personal matters that have no apparent bearing on official duties and action?
Proper or not, it is inevitable. Typically, journalists and their editors invoke a higher purpose for documenting dirt, explaining that it's about character, dishonesty, hypocrisy or lying, but the fact is that they are led inexorably down a path worn smooth by the frustrated prosecutor, the vindictive partisan or the driven moralist.
And it is not as if the press has never been there and done that. Thus we've had The Washington Post reporting on Congressman Wayne Hays' affair with Elizabeth Ray, the stories about Wilbur Mills and Fanny Fox, the Miami Herald's staking out of Gary Hart and Donna Rice, CNN's impertinent question to President Bush, and in the last few months the disclosures about Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, Rep. Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, and House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde.
The mainstream press has exercised restraint and responsibility, too. During the last presidential campaign, the networks and major newspapers ignored stories about an extramarital affair by Republican candidate Bob Dole during the early '70s. More than 50 news organizations turned down the story about Rep. Hyde before an online magazine published it. And when it comes to infidelity on the part of occupants of the White House, the press seems more often to have looked the other way.
But there is an unmistakable tradition of the journalism of sex and sin going back to the very beginnings of our nation and to a printer named James Callender, who was angry with Thomas Jefferson for not giving him a political appointment. So Callender wrote the story reporting rumors about an affair between Jefferson and one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.
Callender has been held up as an example of journalism's worst impulses, for sensationalizing, for invading privacy, for spreading salacious and malicious tales.
The primary difference between Callender's journalism and Larry Flynt's is that Callender's work languished 200 years before DNA testing proved only that it was possibly true, whereas Flynt's handiwork got results in 40 hours.
Holding up political figures to moral measurements always has been a risky business for journalists. Even so, the nation is fortunate that the First Amendment protects all of the press, even journalism on the fringe, even "journalists" who have the most base of motives.
But that protection places a particular burden on responsible journalists to strive to put such matters into perspective. Even if the press fails, we can always trust in the goodwill and wisdom of people who are free to speak their minds to determine whether such charges go down in history or wind up in democracy's dustbin.
Paul McMasters can be contacted a pmcmasters@freedomforum.org.