Punditry: Hit-and-Miss Blood Sport

As the winds of scandal began whipping around President Clinton in January, veteran Washington journalist Bob Novak predicted that the president would survive no matter what, because he is “beyond humiliation.”

Novak, who was discussing the Paula Corbin Jones case, made his comments on Jan. 19--two days before anyone had ever heard of Monica S. Lewinsky. The commentator was either right or wrong, depending on your interpretation, but one thing is clear: 1998 has been a horrendous year for media prognosticators.

Indeed, as the House takes up impeachment this week, the blare of the pundits continues to fill the airwaves with predictions of how Congress members will cast their votes. And their track record does not inspire confidence: Many predicted that Clinton would be gone from office within days of the Lewinsky revelations. Most recently, many political analysts said the Republicans would make gains in the November elections. Then, most rushed to declare impeachment dead after the GOP electoral setback.

“This is a perilous business,” said Cokie Roberts, who reports the news and also offers opinion on ABC-TV and National Public Radio. “God knows I’d rather be analyzing after the fact, but people always want to know what’s going to happen.”

Beyond questions of accuracy, the explosion of prime-time punditry raises serious journalistic issues: Is it proper for reporters who cover news stories to moonlight as opinion-mongers? Is the small universe of talking heads at all representative of the shades of American public opinion?

“Why can’t we have a different group of voices expressing opinions on television?” asked Jay Rosen, professor of media studies at New York University. “If the networks wanted to, they could bring the voices of the clergy, of cultural psychologists, novelists and teachers into the mix, and what you see on TV would connect a lot more with the real world.”

Still others wonder if the mind-numbing impact of pundits, their repetitious, often shrill pontificating and their frequently unreliable predictions have stoked the public’s profound lack of interest in the impeachment spectacle; a new poll taken by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that only 33% of the public is paying close attention to this crucial event in the nation’s recent history.

“People are turned off by the nonstop chatter on TV and it wears them down,” said Marlene Sanders, a former correspondent and vice president of ABC-TV News. “Who can blame people for tuning out politics when there’s all this garbage out there?”

These are not just issues for talking heads, because the pull toward punditry has seeped into the most sober and traditional of news sources. On April 2, for example, a page-one analysis story in the New York Times declared it was “politically inconceivable” that Congress would consider impeachment, because a judge had just thrown Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit out of court. Last month, a Los Angeles Times editorial predicted that “while articles of impeachment seem sure to be sent to the floor on a straight, party-line vote . . . party cohesion from that point on seems destined to melt away.”

Once, in the not too distant past, journalists refrained from voicing opinions in print and on TV talk shows like “Meet the Press.” During such appearances, they were expected to ask questions of public officials, and the rare views they offered grew out of stories they had reported. But that changed with the growth of a pundit culture--in which respected reporters began doubling as commentators--along with the advent of 24-hour cable TV news shows, which put a premium on nonstop punditry.

In the echo chamber of all-news cable, it doesn’t matter if predictions are right or wrong, experts say, because such shows are more about entertainment than news. “Those who live by the crystal ball wind up eating ground glass,” said political scientist and media critic Larry Sabato, himself a regular guest on cable TV panels. “But you don’t worry about this, you just do it again tomorrow. It’s a sick form of discourse.”

Maybe even addictive. During last week’s Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) said he had a rebuttal to an argument made by a Republican colleague but was saving it for an appearance that night on CNN’s “Crossfire,” adding that to speak prematurely “wouldn’t be fair to the program.”

In October, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and frequent TV pundit, took heat when the Washington Post reported that--based on evidence from a disgruntled student--Turley did not return a call from a student seeking a meeting. But he promptly returned a fake call by another student posing as an ABC producer, presumably to schedule another TV appearance.

The hunger for media commentary is a driving force behind the economics of the all-news cable television shows; covering the news is far more expensive to a network than hiring people to sit around in a studio and spout opinions, Sanders said.

“And I have problems with a reporter doing this,” she added. “If you’re doing nonstop talking, you’re going to make mistakes, and it means your opinion isn’t worth an awful lot. You should talk about what you know, not what will happen.”

Nonetheless, some pundits insist the secret to success is reading the tea leaves better than the competition. Chris Matthews, the high-octane host of CNBC’s “Hardball,” chides colleagues who have an obsession with instant analysis, saying “the road on this story has far too many turns, and you just don’t know what will happen.”

Then, without missing a beat, he suggests that as of Monday afternoon, Clinton was within five votes of prying away enough Republicans to stave off impeachment, because of his lobbying skills. “I don’t know,” he said. “What do you hear?”

Pundits have had some notable gaffes this year, such as the predictions in January by Sam Donaldson on ABC-TV and Tim Russert on NBC-TV that Clinton would be gone from office within weeks. Yet these journalists were not “popping off,” said Roberts, who appears with Donaldson on “This Week.”

As the Lewinsky story unfolded, she explained, “we’ve learned that this is a year in which events were outside of any previous pattern we had seen.” Journalists had “diligently checked” with political and grass-roots sources at the onset of the scandal--only to be stunned by public opinion polls that showed the public more tolerant of Clinton’s behavior.

Given such minefields, journalists should avoid the blood sport of argumentative TV news shows, said Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek reporter who first uncovered the Lewinsky story and is under contract to MSNBC. “It’s easy to get drawn into that,” he noted, “but that’s how you risk losing your credibility.”

Sanders, Rosen and others fear the line between reporting and opinion has been permanently blurred, and maybe even destroyed. Yet others insist such a distinction still exists, even as they struggle to maintain it in confusing ways.

During a recent appearance on Larry King’s show, CBS-TV anchor Dan Rather speculated that Hillary Rodham Clinton might run for president in 2000 and suggested good-naturedly that Newt Gingrich might also enter the fray. Then, mindful of his role, he quickly added: “[It’s] a good thing I am not a pundit.”