With Clinton’s Testimony, Media Commentators Get Their Super Bowl

No city loves to talk scandal as much as Washington. Today, it may seem there’s as much talk as scandal.

Stirred up by the appearance at the federal courthouse two weeks ago of Monica S. Lewinsky, pundits and press alike have whipped themselves into a froth of excitement over President Clinton’s planned testimony today, the culmination of an investigation, and a media circus, of epic proportions.

No better evidence exists of the media’s pit bull grip on the story than the bevy of legal “experts” and former political aides assembled by television show bookers for today’s fireworks.

Channel surfing during the recent orgy of opinion-making, a red-eyed Washington political junkie could have gotten an easy Monica fix--with everything from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) talking levelly about presidential honesty on “Larry King Live” to conservative firebrand Larry Klayman and former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers trading barbs on “Rivera Live.”

Political satirist Mark Russell, at a recent National Press Club luncheon, referred to MSNBC as “the stained-dress channel.”

But the comment might be better amended to “the stained-dress press.” From the jaded and footsore reporters staked out at “Monica Beach” outside the Washington courthouse to CNN’s 24-hour-a-day talking heads, the story has created a cottage industry whose main product is talk.

“For the past six months, we’ve had one headline, just one headline: ‘Somebody’s lying. Nobody cares. Details, page 26,’ ” Russell said.

Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, argues that hardly anyone is watching. The latest ratings reveal that most cable shows, such as CNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews,” attract nothing near the viewership that mainstream shows such as “NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw” maintain, but they manage to sustain an audience.

“These programs really are sort of niche programs,” Hess said. “They service a small audience of people who can’t get enough.”

Opinion polls indicate that the public is sick of the whole matter, but “what people tell pollsters is somewhat different from the reality,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist and author. “It is somewhat declasse to be interested in this sleazy scandal.”

CNN has raised its already feverish coverage to a hectic pitch, with specials ranging from Sunday night’s “National Town Meeting” of journalists to a two-hour “Larry King Live” today.

Today will be “a very intense day in terms of getting people on shows,” said Rob Yarin, executive producer of “Hardball.”

“I sort of look at it as demand and supply. Despite what the polls say, people are interested in this story--the supply fits the demand.”

Bob Fasbender, executive producer of “Rivera Live,” booked tonight’s guests last week, among them scandal veterans Roy Black, a lawyer on the Marv Albert and William Kennedy Smith defense teams, and Alan M. Dershowitz, defense attorney, author and talk show staple.

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These talking heads earn no money for their pithy sound bites, only space in Rolodexes. Competition can be keen--and some shows offer perks such as travel arrangements in order to assemble a gaggle of experts. But for today’s windup, incentives weren’t necessary. In fact, the supply of potential pundits exceeds the demand.

While many of the TV pundits are familiar faces by now, the exact field of expertise of the “experts” can sometimes be hard to determine. “They probably are expert in something,” Hess said. “These people simply aren’t saying ‘I don’t know’ enough.”

Hess said he was once invited on a radio show as an expert on Richard Nixon. After answering several questions with “I don’t know,” he had to face a caller’s derisive remark, “And you call yourself an expert!”

“You just feel like an utter idiot,” Hess concluded.

Hence, talking heads tend to “go for the bait that’s offered to them, and they end up doing a lot of speculating,” Hess said.

Fasbender sees it differently. “Rarely are you looking for a guest to say, ‘I don’t know.’ It wouldn’t be a very long show.”

Some pundits defend their involvement in all the tawdry talk about sex by insisting that there are larger issues involved. “Long after all of the commentators turn to dust, we will be left with the precedent we create during this controversy,” George Washington University law professor and frequent commentator Jonathan Turley said.

However titillating the man on the street may find the whole mess, it remains at heart a Washington insider’s dream. The story may be not about sex, as Linda Tripp said, but “it’s about a lie about sex,” as Fasbender put it. And in the nation’s capital, that’s even more interesting.

Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.