He will have earned every one of them—and a great many of the votes for Clinton, as well.
Public Disservice
The Media and Hillary Clinton
SEPTEMBER 13, 2016
For over a year, stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails have dominated the coverage of her campaign. But an equally important story is the coverage itself—and, more broadly, whether campaign reportage in the modern era adequately informs the electorate about its choices.
The answer, I believe, is no.
This did not begin with Hillary Clinton but, I would suggest, with Richard Nixon.
The investigative journalism that unhorsed Nixon exemplifies why we need a free and independent media. But it also created a template for ambitious reporters—uncovering a scandal. It’s showy and, at times, easier than analyzing the impact of policies or programs.
So what makes a “scandal” scandalous, something that truly affects the public interest? And who defines the difference between actual wrongdoing, and merely suggesting its possibility in the absence of genuine proof?
Asserting the “appearance of” or “potential for” impropriety is easy enough. But at its worst it can become a kind of polite McCarthyism, dressed up in the First Amendment, where the gravest insinuations rest on little or nothing in the way of facts. Journalists are no more free from error or ambition than politicians or prosecutors, and the power they wield—for good or ill—can be as great.
We should care deeply about whether our politicians are ethical and honest. But we should also care about whether such issues are honestly reported, as well as whether the press gives sufficient attention to the impact of what our leaders do and say with respect to the issues—national security, the economy, the environment—that indubitably affect us all.
And what subject matter makes for a scandal? Things like corruption, influence peddling, and unethical behavior are easy. But “judgment?” Sure, when it affects a politician’s conduct of his or her public responsibilities. So what about sex?
Yes, if the conduct involves assault, predation, or harassment. But what of adultery involving consenting adults? And what is the difference between private character, which does not affect the rest of us, and public character, which does? No one suggests that FDR was a model of marital rectitude; no one suggests that Jimmy Carter was not. And there is little doubt who history judges to have been the better president.
Which brings us to lying. When the president lies about his consensual sex life, reflecting the self-protective behavior of millions of his fellow citizens, how does that harm us? We can be as pious as we like about “role models” but, in our public officials, we should be far more concerned when they dissemble about matters of public import.
Indeed, this raises another question—why does the press waste its attentions, and ours, on the sex lives of politicians? The answer is obvious: the story is easy enough to get, and it sells.
A loftier journalistic distraction is, ironically, more often decried—the “horse race” coverage of presidential campaigns.
Rightly so. A campaign is, for sure, a race. Who is winning, and why, is a legitimate subject of political coverage. But the proliferation of polls has made the coverage of poll numbers an end in itself, crowding out more substantive reporting. Covering numbers is far easier than analyzing substance, and infuses our campaigns with a constant churn of mini-dramas.
This near-obsession with polling has transformed political reportage. In short order the narrative of a campaign begins resembling a Rocky movie—who is up or down, surging or in freefall, gaining or losing ground, or, best of all, making a dramatic comeback. The rhythm of reportage, too, partakes of Hollywood—to keep the drama going, the story needs changes in momentum. What results is often fiction supplied by its authors, the press.
If you think I’m kidding about this, I invite you to watch the next eight weeks of reportage on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and see how this model plays out. If it comes to dominate the coverage, far more salient subjects will suffer.
Then there is the problem of the so-called metanarrative: a fixed notion about the character of a candidate. As the extreme example of Trump demonstrates, this is hard to avoid. I can offer myself as Exhibit A, in that I’ve strenuously argued that a serious personality disorder is the unifying explanation for most of Trump’s behavior.
But the reflexive recourse to metanarratives can distort coverage of a candidate, causing reporters to dwell on or slight information depending on whether it conforms to this fixed characterization. If the undeniably intelligent Bill Clinton had misspelled potato, no one would remember. But Dan Quayle? I need not go on.
Like everyone else, journalists have a herd mentality. In the twenty-four-hour news cycle, this creates an echo chamber of received, if dubious, wisdom, which reinforces the metanarrative about a candidate.
Finally, there is the profit motive. I must emphasize how many great journalists ply their often underpaid profession with honesty, distinction, and all the considerable objectivity they can muster. You don’t need to go to China to appreciate how valuable this is—a trip to Great Britain will do nicely.
But the organizations our journalists work for are not public utilities. They are for-profit corporations. This is a good thing in itself—it breeds competition, and who would want to rely on a state-run press?
But, of necessity, our media outlets exist to make money—at least enough to survive—which requires building and maintaining an audience. In the modern age, all too often that means reporting “news” that has entertainment value, no matter its value to an electorate making choices about our future.
This reinforces everything else: the focus on scandal, the horse race reportage, the metanarrative. As they say, that’s entertainment. And it badly distorts coverage of the presidential campaign and the major candidates, Hillary Clinton in particular.
You don’t have to take my word for it. How this dynamic played out during the run-up to the 2016 primary season has been exhaustively documented in a study by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Instead of focusing on cable news, often cited as ratings-hungry and overheated, the study analyzed coverage from eight major print and broadcast media: CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
Its conclusion? Contrary to the general perception of a “liberal media,” Donald Trump was the runaway beneficiary of positive media coverage throughout 2015.282 As for Hillary Clinton, she drew the most negative coverage of any candidate in either party.
Equally telling as this conclusion are the reasons for it. Propelling the tsunami of coverage for Trump was his entertainment value. Instead of following his rise in the polls, this coverage preceded—and drove—that rise. Here the report is detailed and unsparing:
Journalists seemed unmindful that they and not the electorate were Trump’s first audience. He exploited their lust for riveting stories. He didn’t have any other option. He had no constituency base and no claim to presidential credentials. If Trump had possessed them, his strategy could have been political suicide, which is what the press predicted as they showcased his tirades. Trump couldn’t compete with the likes of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or Jeb Bush on the basis of his political standing or following. The politics of outrage was his edge, and the press became his dependable if unwitting ally.
As Trump ascended, the press served as his megaphone—the source of $2 billion of free media in the primaries alone. Among his competitors in 2015, Trump received 34 percent of all media coverage compared to 18 percent for the runner-up, Jeb Bush. Broken down by category, 34 percent of this coverage related to his events and activities, 27 percent was classified as “other,” and 21 percent reported on polling. As for substance, only 12 percent of the coverage concerned issues or philosophy, and a mere 6 percent dealt with his personal character.
As for tone, the great majority of Trump’s coverage was
deemed positive or neutral, from 63 percent in the New York Times to a whopping 74 percent in USA Today. Increasingly, this fed what became the dominant story—that Trump was winning the horse race, driving yet more coverage. It seems highly doubtful that, without the benefit of extensive and favorable coverage through the primaries, Trump would be a general election away from becoming president.
Compare this to Hillary Clinton. In all but one month of 2015, the study found, her coverage was overwhelmingly negative. Remarkably, its tone was 84 percent negative. By contrast, after an initial dearth of coverage, the reportage about Bernie Sanders was overwhelmingly favorable. In turn, this drove negative “horse race” stories about Clinton’s failure to overwhelm Sanders.
As part of this picture, the study identified “more than a few anomalies” involving the coverage of Clinton.283 While reporters frequently referred to her past history, her tenure in the Senate—in which she earned bipartisan praise—was rarely mentioned. Nor, in general, was the substance of her performance as secretary of state—as opposed to, I would note, the intense focus on issues like emails or Republican allegations regarding Benghazi.
No doubt such issues are newsworthy. But this selective focus, the study showed, helped feed the metanarrative about Clinton as described in the report: that she is calculating, or cautious, or untrustworthy, or a mediocre candidate, or simply hard to like.284 In short, the metanarrative seemed to shape the coverage.
Thus the Hillary Clinton metanarrative requires a closer look. Its essence is that Clinton is lacking in character or candor. Thus questions about her email practices, Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation fit, and feed, this narrative. But what are its deeper causes?
It is hard to find a definitive answer. But some tributaries are clear enough. Over the years, both Clintons have endured numerous investigations driven by their political opponents. Though none has resulted in findings of corruption or criminality on behalf of Hillary Clinton, their very existence was newsworthy. A moment of absolution cannot undo months of inquiry. In the minds of many, charges become fact.
One does not have to assert that such charges are always politically inspired to know that they are politically useful—as GOP house leader Kevin McCarthy admitted with respect to the Benghazi inquiry. Among the GOP base, it is an article of faith that the party must keep Hillary Clinton from ever becoming president. This helps ensure her status as a lightning rod for controversy.
But remember when Barack Obama arrived in 2008, that breath of political fresh air who would sweep away the toxicity of the Clinton era? In 2016, after nearly eight years of partisan trench warfare, his 50 percent approval rating is considered near-miraculous. The agent of toxicity, it turns out, is political polarization and—like or not—the media has become its carrier.
So it is hardly surprising that, as numerous academic observers have found, Hillary Clinton is most unpopular as a candidate—negative advertising works, including when waged through the media. Whether sexism—discomfort with an ambitious woman—helps drive this political rancor I will leave to the social scientists. But as an officeholder, whether in the Senate or as secretary of state, Clinton fares considerably better than when she is seeking office.
The obvious fact that attacks on a candidate’s character, whatever their basis, serve partisan political purposes does not mean that they should never be reported. But the media should examine its role as amplifier: after all, emails, Benghazi, and the Clinton Foundation are exactly what Republicans want voters to think about—and think the worst of. No surprise, then, that another Republican congressman, Jason Chaffetz, is demanding another investigation into Clinton’s email practices. By attenuating the GOP’s central campaign theme, this also feeds the metanarrative about Hillary Clinton.
This environment makes the role of the media all the more important, and raises critical questions about its coverage of Hillary Clinton—both in itself and as compared to other candidates.
Here, the veteran reporter Jonathan Allen provides an interesting perspective. In an article for Vox entitled “Confessions of a Clinton Reporter: The Media’s Five Unspoken Rules for Covering Hillary Clinton,” Allen tackles the questions raised by the Shorenstein Center. His central diagnosis is blunt:
[The campaign is] an essential frame for thinking about the long-toxic relationship between the Clintons and the media, why the coverage of Hillary Clinton differs from coverage of other candidates for the presidency, and whether that difference encourages distortions that will ultimately affect the presidential race.
The Clinton rules are driven by reporters’ and editors’ desire to score the ultimate prize in contemporary journalism: the scoop that brings down Hillary Clinton and her family’s political empire. At least in that way, Republicans and the media have a common interest.
As a reporter, Allen has been tough on the Clintons, and there is no reason to believe that he has suddenly gone soft. So his critique deserves attention. Briefly summarized, here is how he describes the unspoken premises that drive the coverage of Hillary Clinton:
Every charge against the Clintons, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, and the media. Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely false—even then, the conservative media keeps it alive. The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there is hard evidence to the contrary. Everything that the Clintons do is newsworthy. And everything Hillary Clinton does is fake and calculated to serve her political benefit.
This dynamic, Allen suggests, creates a particularly vicious cycle—because Clinton distrusts the media, she tries to keep it at arm’s length, deepening its antagonism and distrust. As demonstrated by the questions about her health following her feeling faint on Sunday, this serves neither Clinton nor the press—nor the public that depends on the media for information. With respect to the campaign, Allen describes the impact on Clinton as he sees it:
The emphasis on a candidate’s flaws—real or perceived—comes at the cost of the candidate’s ability to focus his or her message and at the cost of negative attention to the other candidates . . . [T]hese double standards are an important thing to keep in mind when judging [Clinton] against her rivals for the presidency. Whether they’re fair or not, the Clinton rules distort the public’s perception of Hillary Clinton.
In short, Allen believes that the media is predisposed to look for, or believe in, purported scandals damaging to Hillary Clinton—causing extensive and negative reportage regardless of the merits of any particular allegation. Moreover, he suggests, this predisposition warps coverage of Clinton’s campaign, and impedes her ability to communicate her policy proposals to the electorate. So let’s gauge Allen’s analysis against recent coverage of the campaign.
The single dominant story—by far—involves Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state. Beyond doubt, this is a legitimate area of concern. It raises questions about the protection of confidential information, whether Clinton deviated from good practice for personal convenience, and whether her actions were careless and imprudent.
Nor is there doubt that her email practices, including the use of a private server, were a serious mistake—as she has been compelled to concede. In estimate of many, she has further damaged herself by being far too lawyerly, too prone to offering a series of excuses rather than a simple mea culpa. Even if one attributes this defensive reflex to the hostility surrounding her, a different response would have served her better—here, and arguably elsewhere.
But, by now, the central points about the emails are clear. Though FBI director Comey condemned her practices as careless, he made the straightforward judgment that they fell well short of the standard for criminal intent. With whatever reluctance, Clinton has admitted error, and pledged not to repeat it.
After over a year of inquiry and reportage, that’s pretty much it. The American public can make its collective judgment and move on.285
This search for a scandal nourishes another media staple—the horse race. The more plentiful the reportage on the email problem—regardless of substance—the more Clinton’s poll numbers flag and her unfavorables rise, all duly reported to confirm that Americans don’t trust her. And so, in due course, more Americans question her trustworthiness—leading to yet more reportage. It is one thing to question a candidate’s honesty, another to help create a feedback loop that shapes the answer.
The avalanche of reporting involving Clinton’s role in Benghazi also stemmed from a serious issue—whether she was responsible for the security conditions that led to the death of four Americans. But it is, as well, another example of the media abetting a Republican effort to feed the metanarrative, regardless of the facts.
Again, the bottom line is plain. After eight investigations related to Benghazi, and hours of congressional questioning of Clinton herself, one cannot conclude that Clinton is responsible for the conditions in Benghazi. But this has been lost in the cacophony surrounding the assertions themselves—both before and after the inquiries.
Most recent was the revelation of thirty supposedly “deleted” State Department emails regarding Benghazi. All were innocuous; all but one, it turned out, had surfaced previously. Yet the taint of wrongdoing was refreshed yet again.
Finally, the Clinton Foundation. Various media outlets have cited another trove of emails to intimate a pattern of “pay to play”—that large donors to the foundation influenced the activities of the State Department under Hillary Clinton.
Fever Swamp: A Journey Through the Strange Neverland of the 2016 Presidential Race Page 30