The Only Trial Is Watching News

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright’s decision to dismiss the Paula Corbin Jones case appeared to change everything in the arena of law and politics for Jones and President Clinton.

And to change nothing for much of the media.

Late Wednesday night, for example, station after station was “live at the home of Paula Jones,” their programmed reporters arriving there in hordes like flesh-eating zombies from “Night of the Living Dead.”

“Tonight she is staying inside her condo,” Patrick Healy reported on KNBC-TV Channel 4. There was a headline for you.

And, of course, the network late shows chomped off their usual pounds of flesh, with NBC’s Jay Leno, for example, taking his customary high road by declaring that Wright found it “hard to believe that anyone would hit on Paula Jones.”

All across television, meanwhile, tongues remained untied, the process operating independently of the issues nourishing it. Without missing a beat, the same media sages who earlier were promising that the Jones sexual harassment case would go to trial were back on camera Wednesday and Thursday, unbowed and self-assured, sharing their collective wisdom about the impact of Wright’s ruling.

The message was as clear and informative as ever: The ruling would either impede special prosecutor Kenneth Starr or re-energize him. Starr would either indict Monica Lewinsky or he wouldn’t.

You had to be struck by CNN legal analyst Roger Cossack on Thursday morning, weighing in on all of this with such apparent confidence, even though he had been flat-out wrong when forecasting Wright’s decision (while his spiny “Burden of Proof” partner, Greta Van Susteren, had gotten it right). The question: Why should he be believed now? Why are any of them to be believed?

As always, cable’s all-news channels trafficked largely in gab. Someone was saying on the Fox News Channel: “Maybe it’s true that he [Clinton] still did ask her [Jones] for sex.” Or maybe it wasn’t true. Circumspection went out the window. “What it looks like is that we have a serial adulterer in the White House,” declared Bill O’Reilly, who hosts a Fox News Channel interview show.

On MSNBC, John Gibson, who hosts a loose-lipped talk and call-in show--a TV news version of talk radio--passionately defended the practice of speculation in front of the lens. In keeping with that, he speculated that Wright’s decision, while couched in “legal niceties,” was actually the product of the judge’s anger at the tactics of Jones’ attorneys.

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Meanwhile, on came the obligatory meaningless insta-polls, the person-on-the-street surveys and the inevitable self-promotion.

CNN repeatedly credited correspondent Bob Franken with breaking the story of the Wright decision. And quite a scoop it wasn’t, beating the Fox News Channel by a reported seven seconds, an advantage so brief that touting it was meaningless and totally self-serving.

Speaking of self-serving, who should pop up live on KCBS-TV Channel 2’s 5 p.m. newscast Wednesday but CBS News anchor Dan Rather. Question from reverential anchor Linda Alvarez: “We know this is good news for the president, Dan, but what does it bode for the investigation [by] Ken Starr?” Rather: “By no objective analysis. . . .” Oh, can it!

Yet that would have been premature. For here was the real purpose of this little chat, as delivered with faux sincerity by Alvarez’s co-anchor: “Dan, Larry Carroll here. What can we expect on ‘The CBS Evening News’?”

Rather, who constantly talks the talk of news ethics, then went on to use this local news segment to promote his own news program, under the guise of news.

When it came to business as usual, the line separating reporting and commentary was again being blurred, one of the biggest perpetrators being CNN for continuing to encourage senior correspondent Wolf Blitzer to switch hats. On Wednesday, for example, he responded to an anchor question by expressing surprise that Wright had the “guts” to throw out the Jones case.

There was also the usual hyperbole, with “20/20” co-host Hugh Downs becoming “one of the great newsmen in America,” in the words of CNN’s Larry King. Of course, inflating his reputation (Downs has never been more than a TV personality) justified having him join a panel to analyze the Wright decision.

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Reducing a story to personalities is nothing new for King. Two other members of his Wednesday panel--Jones spokeswoman Susan Carpenter-McMillan and Clinton defender James Carville--were allotted the last 10 minutes of the show to engage in a shrill debate (including her mimicking his Louisiana accent) that looked very much like a pilot for one of those combative talk shows. Carpenter-McMillan: “For God’s sakes, Jim. You’ve got morals. Why can’t you pass ‘em on to your buddy?”

They were back, and even louder, on NBC’s “Today” program Thursday with host Matt Lauer, each flinging wild, undocumented charges about payoffs that NBC News appeared willing to let pass for the sake of the entertainment that these two irritating partisans supposedly provide.

That is, if you were entertained by hearing Carpenter-McMillan charge that the Wright ruling means that “flashers will now walk the streets freely without any fear” of apprehension.

Actually, the biggest flashers here were the media.