Political Weapons : Rumor Mill: The Media Try to Cope

Thomas Jefferson was a French agent, an atheist and, if elected President, would confiscate all the Bibles in the country.

That was the campaign rumor in 1800, pressed by his opponents during the fourth presidential election in American history--an election the Father of the Declaration of Independence won anyway.

For the last two weeks, Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis has been dogged by rumors that he once received psychiatric treatment for depression. Although the rumors were unsubstantiated and were spread originally by associates of political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., they were helped along by some aides to Vice President George Bush and were picked up by at least two newspapers--compelling Dukakis to bring out his doctor to deny them.

Go Back a Long Way

Rumors as political weapons are as old as the Republic, as American as a coonskin cap.

But today the rumor game has changed. It has become more public, and thus potentially more dangerous for political candidates and for the integrity of the nation’s political system.

In the 19th Century, a whisper campaign--among political insiders on the floor of a national convention, for instance--could savage a candidate almost overnight. Today, with open primaries and caucuses and two-year campaigns, it is more complicated.

Now, political rumor-mongering has become a subtle game of media manipulation--of leaking rumors to reporters, or putting rumors “into play” by asking about them in a news conference.

And political rumors can also pose difficult problems for the news media, which operate in a world of fierce competitive pressures and deadlines, yet risk being guilty of unfairness and damaging their own credibility if they take hasty or ill-considered actions.

Reaction Called Key

Even if the original rumor has no visible basis in fact, news organizations are likely to pursue the question in one form or another. And the subsequent reaction by the politician--whether he stands up to the crisis well or not--can become an issue and a potential danger anyway.

“The more I’ve seen of this, the more disturbed I am about the way this is being pursued,” said David R. Gergen, a former aide to Presidents Reagan and Gerald R. Ford and now editor of U.S. News & World Report, reacting to the Dukakis episode.

In Dukakis’ case, the rumor of psychiatric history was apparently disseminated in a LaRouche broadside distributed during the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. And even though there was no evidence to support it, in the game of media, like the children’s game of telephone, it produced troublesome variations.

These included:

--Private efforts by officials from the Bush campaign to push reporters to pursue the rumors. One Bush adviser peddled not just this but four other rumors about Dukakis and his wife to a Los Angeles Times reporter.

--Questions from reporters asking that Dukakis produce his complete medical records. When he refused, some of the reporters (and a Wall Street Journal editorial) then raised questions about whether he was hiding something.

--Then, in response to a question about the rumor from a representative of a LaRouche publication who had come to a White House briefing, a reference by President Reagan to Dukakis as “an invalid.” The remark, which required a full accounting of the rumor, became a national front page story.

And now more stories about the original rumor continue. The Washington Times, which on Tuesday had published a story saying that the rumor was making the rounds, followed up Thursday with a bannered story on Page 1 bearing the headline “Dukakis kin hints at sessions.” It quoted Dukakis’ sister-in-law as saying “it is possible” Dukakis once consulted a psychiatrist neighbor.

‘But I Doubt It’

Not until four paragraphs later were readers of the Washington Times--a paper owned by members of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church that openly acknowledges a conservative slant in its news columns--told that the woman also said “but I doubt it” and “I don’t know” with regard to such an incident.

The psychiatrist in question, Dukakis’ longtime friend Don Lipsitt, emphatically denied Thursday that Dukakis had ever consulted him. Lipsitt, whom the Washington Times did not interview for the story, told the Baltimore Sun: “The truth is, I have never treated him and he has never consulted me for any personal problems.”

He added: “There is absolutely no truth to the idea that he had any professional treatment with me. I never suggested it. He never requested it. I never referred him to anyone else. . . . I never thought he needed it.”

Washington Times Editor Arnaud de Borchgrave said he decided to go with the psychiatry rumors story on Tuesday only after his national editor was called by a Dukakis aide “pre-emptively” to deny the story. “We had absolutely no intention of publishing anything,” he asserted.

Among the most disturbing trends is what campaign professional Bill Carrick, who managed Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt’s presidential bid this year, calls “bankshot journalism,” in which a newspaper unwilling to print the rumor in the first place will run countless stories about the rumor after it has appeared somewhere else.

“When the LaRouchites and the Washington Times are deciding what is news, we are in a lot of trouble,” Carrick said.

Given the competitive pressures and national reach of major newspapers, magazines and television, once a story has been put into play, it becomes difficult for any news organization to ignore.

Hart Example Cited

Witness, for example, the case of Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart. Journalists had listened uneasily for years to stories about Hart’s allegedly adulterous behavior, and had even discussed the existence of the rumor with Hart and his staff on the record.

Many of these reporters thought a candidate’s personal life was off limits. But when the Miami Herald publicized its account of Donna Rice’s stay at Hart’s Capitol Hill townhouse, virtually all news organizations vigorously pursued the story that ultimately forced him from the race.

Then, many journalists felt compelled out of a sense of fairness to investigate the private lives of other candidates, raising questions about Bush and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Several weeks after the Hart scandal erupted, Newsweek printed a brief, titillating story in its Periscope section saying that “the nation’s political-rumor mill rattled with talk” about Bush and an alleged adulterous affair, yet offering no evidence whatsoever that it was true.

The Newsweek item quoted Bush’s son, George W., as saying, “The answer to the Big A question is N.O.,” and then went on to outline all the rumors. That prompted an Associated Press story, with further denials.

A Matter of Timing

Managing rumors by manipulating the press can also be a matter of timing. Two years before the 1988 presidential primaries, aides to Republican candidate Jack Kemp actively moved to spike unsubstantiated reports of homosexuality by bringing them up with Newsweek reporters. The campaign had thus aired them itself at an early time when the political damage might be limited, like taking an unexploded bomb off to a safe area for detonation.

How should the news media handle rumors?

Expressing the conflict felt by many journalists, Walter Mears, the AP’s executive editor, said Thursday: “We thought the responsible way to handle the Dukakis rumor was to find out the facts, not create a story.”

But once the rumor was published and Reagan was asked about it in the White House briefing room by the representative of a LaRouche publication Wednesday, Mears said, “we’re now obviously at the point where you can’t and shouldn’t ignore it.”

Dennis A. Britton, deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, said that “I don’t think there is any pat answer” on dealing with rumors. “If we are satisfied that a rumor remains unsubstantiated, it is our responsibility not to report it . . . unless the fact that there are rumors becomes an issue. In this (Dukakis) case, the press forced it to become an issue.”

He was referring to two incidents that propelled the rumor into widespread circulation. Last Friday, a Boston Herald reporter asked Dukakis about it; he shrugged it off, but an aide flatly denied that the Massachusetts governor had ever been treated for “mental illness of any kind.” Although the Herald did not mention the exchange, the rival Boston Globe noted it in a couple of paragraphs at the bottom of a Page 6 article on Saturday. The Washington Times followed up with its front-page story about the rumors on Tuesday.

Then on Wednesday came Reagan’s reference to Dukakis as an “invalid,” which immediately spawned wire service and radio reports prompting Dukakis to present his doctor at a press conference.

Refers to McCarthy Era

Duke University presidential scholar James David Barber said the Dukakis episode brings back unpleasant memories of the 1950s, when the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy let loose a stream of unsubstantiated charges that were reported by the press.

“This is a little analogous to McCarthy saying the State Department is full of Commies, then having a story saying we don’t know if it’s true or not, but if it is, here are the issues it raises,” Barber said.

Larry Sabato, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Rise of Political Consultants,” believes that the art of rumor manipulation is a standard part of any political professional’s arsenal of techniques.

“A good consultant knows how to plant information and not leave fingerprints,” he said.

On the other hand, politics is still probably dogged by fewer rumors than it once was. “You didn’t have all the media that we have today to check rumors,” Sabato observed, “so rumors are circulated and shot down on a daily basis, and most of them never make it into print.”