WORKING THE REFS: Asked by the Washington Post (8/20) about Republican complaints about the media, Republican national chair Rich Bond helpfully explained: “There is some strategy to it. I’m the coach of kids’ basketball and Little League teams. If you watch any great coach, what they do is work the refs. Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time.” Judging by recent coverage of Bill Clinton’s draft record, the Republican strategy of “working the refs” may be paying off.
PLAYING THE DRAFT CARD: Clinton’s draft avoidance has been a major theme of election coverage since the primaries; in the month before the New Hampshire primary, a FAIR survey found, a full 10 percent of campaign stories in the New York Times, Washington Post and LA. Times were either about the draft or Gennifer Flowers (Extra!, 6/92). Now, seven months later, the story is bigger than ever: A Nexis search for the two weeks starting with Sept. 2 (the day the L.A. Times’ story about Clinton’s uncle kicked off the latest feeding frenzy) found 292 stories in major papers containing the words “Clinton” and “draft.”
This is a story, remember, about legal actions by a private citizen who didn’t want to fight a war he opposed. This happened 22 years ago, when the candidate was in his early 20s.
How interested are voters in this subject? According to a CBS/New York Times poll (7/16), conducted immediately before the latest media blitz, 79 percent of voters say Clinton’s draft history maices no difference to their vote. Only 14 percent say the charges tend to make them vote against Clinton—and that seems to be the audience the media is aiming at. On a single night—Sept. 15—the draft issue was debated on Nightline, MacNeil/Lehrer, Larry King Live and Crossfire—where Oliver North stood in judgment of Clinton’s honesty and ethics.
A QUESTION OF CREDIBILITY: Of course, most journalists will say that they realize what Clinton did during the Vietnam War is not in itself important—but that the honesty of Clinton’s responses is a legitimate issue. And it’s true, Clinton’s answers to draft questions have been deceptive, and the press should have reported that.
But contrast the way the press has relentlessly pursued the draft story with the near invisibility of Iran/Contra as a campaign story. Clinton’s draft maneuvers happened 23 years ago; Iran/Contra, consistently dismissed as “old news,” is six years in the past. One story involves a college student, one involves the second-highest public official in the nation.
If the allegations about Bill Clinton are true, he did what he could within the law to avoid going to Vietnam, and lied about it. If the allegations about Bush are true, he participated in unconstitutional secret wars and supported the Reagan administration’s arms-for-hostages deals. And lied about it.
Yet it is the draft, not Iran/Contra, that news organizations have devoted so many investigative resources to; it is the draft that results in daily shouted questions at the candidate (and stories about why he isn’t answering them); it is the draft that is constantly raised as a “character issue” or “issue of trust” that will continue to “haunt” the candidate—as if reporters aren’t the ones doing the haunting.
FORGOTTEN MEMO: Newspapers have frequently done wrap-ups on Clinton’s draft record, so that anyone interested can conveniently follow his shifting explanations without a trip to the library. A Nexis search of major papers by FAIR found not a single piece in all of 1992 that did a thorough job of reviewing the evidence about Bush’s involvement in Iran/Contra.
No article on Bush and Iran/Contra could be complete without quoting from the memo that Bush’s security adviser, Donald Gregg, wrote to the then–vice president, telling him that he would meet with CIA veteran Felix Rodriguez to discuss “resupply of the Contras.” This memo indicates that Bush knew about the illegal resupply operation, despite Gregg’s claim that he meant to write “resupply of the copters.”
Yet this crucial piece of evidence was mentioned only twice in all of 1992: once in a May 16 Los Angeles Times piece by Ronald Ostrow and Doyle McManus (about Gregg, not about the campaign), and once in the Washington Post—in a theater review (6/20).
“NO, AFTER YOU”: Those reporters who think that Iran/Contra isn’t a story this year because “we already covered it” back in 1988 should read Robert Parry’s Fooling America to refresh their memories. As Parry relates, press coverage of Bush’s role in Iran/Contra dropped off almost to zero after Dan Rather’s confrontational live interview (the “brawlcast”) with Bush.
Michael Dukakis failed to bring up the Iran/Contra issue, Parry writes, waiting for it to “first appear on the New York Times front page, making it acceptable to discuss. But the major news media feared being labeled too tough on Bush, who after all had a good chance to become president, so they waited for Dukakis to define the issues. This Alphonse-and-Gaston routine led to no one pressing Bush hard for answers about his clearly newsworthy relationships with Noriega, the Nicaraguan Contras and other secret deals.”
In 1992, of course, both Clinton and Al Gore have pointedly raised the Iran/Contra issue, without eliciting much interest from the press corps. Even when new evidence arises about Bush’s deceptiveness on the issue, it doesn’t result in sustained reporting: Most papers treated the release of a memo from George Shultz, condemning Bush’s claims of ignorance about the Iran arms sales, as a one- or two-day story. Do journalists really believe that Bush deserves that much slack?
Written by: Jim Naureckas
Edited by: Jeff Cohen
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