Long-time ABC News reporter Bob Zelnick provided a review of the MRC book Whitewash to CNSNews.com on Tuesday. While he found the evidence of a pro-Hillary bias (especially among female reporters) "convincing," he also suggested that the Clinton scandals in general have been a disappointing harvest for prosecutors and investigative journalists, and the pursuit of Bill Clinton’s adulteries a political loser. Here’s an excerpt:
No one does a better job than L. Brent Bozell III and his Media Research Center in documenting the liberal bias of much of the mainstream news media. Some of their citations of my former colleagues' wisdom make me laugh out loud. Others make me furious. Nearly all provide me with ammunition for verbal repartee with my cherished liberal students and faculty friends.
Bozell's new book, "Whitewash," written with his colleague Tim Graham, does much the same thing with respect to a single subject, the rise of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton from the status of bemused wife of a serial adulterer/alleged sexual predator to a seat in the U.S. Senate and frontrunner status for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president.
Bozell recites a long list of Hillary train wrecks that he argues would have derailed just about any other politician: financial improprieties back in Little Rock, many captured by the shorthand term, "Whitewater;" lies relating to knowledge of her husband's sexual dalliances, fundraising hanky panky - some of it involving big time crooks - the rout of her radical plan for health care insurance; her savage treatment of White House travel office staffers; the diversion of key personnel files to something akin to a Keystone Cops White House unit strangely loyal to Hillary; her reckless invocation of a "right-wing conspiracy" to explain her most serious perils.
Hillary survived and prospered, says Bozell, because the liberal media protected her, fawned over her, adopted her formulation of many issues as their own, barely tried to investigate obvious leads, and failed to give due weight, or air time, to many of the more serious and credible charges. Life within this protective cocoon gave Hillary the ability to project herself as she pleased to the outside world with no fear of rejoinder from the liberal media establishment. When Fortress Clinton was under attack, there was always a Margaret Carlson, a Katie Couric, a Dan Rather, or even a Ted Koppel to ride to the rescue. The journalistic gaps left by these partisans was, Bozell argues, partially filled by the reliable conservative voices at Fox News, talk radio, the American Spectator and the emerging blogosphere. Many of the conservative stalwarts prominent in this proud counter-culture are interviewed for the book, including Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Bozell's indictment of liberal media bias is convincing, but it does not strike me as a complete picture either of editorial decision-making or of the Hillary phenomenon. Let's start with the media's tepid approach to reporting on the fruits of Bill Clinton's libido. Having short-circuited Gary Hart's 1988 run for the presidency by capturing girl-friend Donna Rice's overnight stay at his Capitol Hill pad, the press in general asked itself whether consensual sex between adults was any of its or the country's business. This reporter was among those who concluded it was not.
Neither does the issue carry long-term partisan advantage. Yesterday, we reveled in tales about Clinton. But when the moving finger pointed at Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, and Henry Hyde, we sensed the time had come to find a different yardstick for character.
Most journalists who sought to investigate the Clintons' alleged improprieties in Little Rock or Washington came away with lots of suspicious behavior but no smoking guns. The Clintons, of course, stonewalled those hot on the trail of impropriety, as did their closest associates. Even so massive an effort as that undertaken by the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal yielded a disappointing harvest of conclusive evidence of wrongdoing. Investigations headed by special prosecutors proved no more productive. From Whitewater to Travelgate, the Feds quietly gave up one ghost after another. Not a single indictment was returned against either Clinton in any case. Impeachment produced a division along partisan rather than evidentiary lines.
