Whether It’s O.J. or Clinton-Lewinsky, There’s Good Reporting to Be Done

Early in the O.J. Simpson trial, as the case was taking over the news, I was a guest on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” show.

On this weekly program, a panel of journalists wring their hands about the current state of the media. In general, they praise boring stories about budgets and foreign policy nuances, and condemn anything to do with sex and celebrities.

Naturally, I was prime material for this good-taste police force. They came down hard on the Simpson story and, by implication, anyone associated with it. I replied that Simpson was a great story because all of America was fascinated by it.

Maybe they didn’t like my attitude. Maybe I was too long and too loud in my reply.

In any case, they never invited me back.

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If you wait long enough, you usually get your revenge. I got mine when the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky story broke in Washington.

Like the Simpson saga, the Clinton-Lewinsky story is a tale of sex and celebrity, drawing normally apathetic readers and viewers to Washington news, even to the State of the Union address. The story has boosted news ratings, made the covers of the supermarket tabloids and sold huge numbers of papers and magazines.

Now reporters who once mocked the Simpson story must cover a sex-and-celebrity scandal in the capital.

Women and men with rich experience in complex foreign and domestic issues are being forced to write and report about oral sex. When they air their reports, they look embarrassed, as though they’re hoping their kids aren’t watching.

Fringe reporters, who would not have been taken seriously a few years ago, are now treated as important pundits on shows such as “Meet The Press.”

And just as in the Simpson case, what passes as news comes from odd characters.

During the O.J. criminal trial, for example, there was the guy I interviewed one night at a Sunset Strip restaurant about drugs and the Simpson case. He was accompanied by his publicist, Mickey Spillane’s ex-wife. And there was Mario, whose rumpled T-shirt and excitable manner caused a minor sensation when I brought him around the paper to hear what he had to say about the evidence.

Clinton-Lewinsky has its own weird characters.

One is a New York literary agent who, by wonderful coincidence, represents a character from Simpson days, Mark Fuhrman. Even the agent’s son made it onto the “Today” show.

Another is every parent’s worst nightmare, a kiss-and-smear schoolteacher who held a press conference to disclose his romance with Monica, a former student.

Even he, a man that most people would not permit on their front porch, was put on national television--and taken seriously.

And, of course, there are rumors reported as fact, an abundance of hot-air commentary and too many anonymous sources.

The Washington press corps has engaged in considerable public hand wringing over this situation. Clearly, covering a story of this kind is not what these journalists intended to do with their lives when they wangled assignments to the nation’s capital.

The Washington media’s crisis of conscience has prompted a spate of journalistic confession shows. Last week both CNN and PBS assembled reporters and editors to engage in public self-flagellation as they contemplated why they have fallen into the depths of tabloid journalism.

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We O.J. warriors didn’t engage in such fruitless self-examination.

We used the Simpson case as an opportunity to examine societal problems, such as race and the administration of the criminal justice system. But we never deluded ourselves. We knew what we were covering--a great story with great sleaze--and we threw ourselves into it.

We understood the American public is attracted to sex and celebrity. We knew that when the biggest sex-celebrity murder trial in decades--maybe even the century--fell into our laps, it was our job to cover it.

That’s what’s happened to the members of the Washington press corps.

So quit whining. Do your job. And do it well. Quit relying on all those anonymous sources. Follow our O.J. rule: It’s better to be beat on a story than to be wrong.

And welcome to the sleaze team.