MEDIA BEAT
Ten years ago, few Americans knew your name. Today, many wish they could forget it. This is your media life, Bill Clinton! When you jumped onto the national stage with peppy rhetoric about moving beyond the ideologies of left and right, you impressed mainstream news outlets. A lot of journalists wanted a "New Democrat," and you did the trick.
While making some mild populist noises, you curried favor with big business leaders who fretted about anti-corporate rumblings among Democrats. Months before you won the presidency, numerous reporters and pundits were hailing you as JFK: The Next Generation.
After you moved into the White House, of course, scandals became abundant--but you proved to be a great counter-puncher inside the media ring. More importantly, with a wide range of policies, you pleased many economic heavyweights.
Meanwhile, you showed enthusiasm for betraying longtime Democratic constituencies. And in 1996, you succeeded where the GOP had failed for several decades, taking a major step toward dismantling the New Deal with a welfare "reform" law that undermined federal commitments to America's poor children.
In January 1998, when Monica Lewinsky suddenly became a household name, you went into damage-control overdrive. You benefited from the fact that many liberal commentators--repulsed by the sleazy tactics of Kenneth Starr and the far right-went easy on you.
By early August, pathetic excuses were so routine that few eyebrows seemed to go up when Arthur Schlesinger Jr. declared in a New York Times essay: "Gentlemen always lie about their sex lives. Only a cad will tell the truth about his sexual affairs."
Overall, you and your avid defenders have done the virtually impossible--making some top Republicans in Congress look like seekers of truth. It's an optical illusion. But you became the perfect foil for every right-wing moralizer from San Diego to Bangor.
When you were forced to admit that you'd lied about "that woman," your brief speech was so cravenly evasive that you became, more than ever, a poster boy for duplicity. You functioned as an ultimate media creature--smarmy and indignant, pious and pugilistic--once again a fountain of weasel-worded cliches and a champion of not one firm principle.
In the process, you've helped the news media to accelerate in the same direction they were headed anyway-- fixating the nation on a convoluted soap-opera plot instead of genuine political discourse. The spectacle is unfolding as some kind of mass hypnosis.
Since your mini-speech on Aug. 17, media brickbats have been flying thick and fast. Let that be a lesson to you: These days, if presidential lies extend to sexual activities inside the White House, you're liable to get heavy media censure.
In contrast, if you stick to the usual deceptions--such as advancing the interests of the wealthy at the expense of poor and middle-class Americans-you can relax, confident that media criticisms will be muted and scattered.
Of course, media self-examination has been on display. Fortunately for the big-money interests that have been pleased with your economic priorities, such public introspection doesn't go very deep.
Two nights after your semi-apologetic little speech, the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" aired a segment about media coverage of the current scandal. It was a product of the PBS program's special new unit for examining media behavior--made possible by a $3 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts and headed by former CBS News correspondent Terence Smith.
The "NewsHour" presented a lengthy discussion between Smith and three other media insiders: the Washington bureau chiefs of The Los Angeles Times and CNN, plus former LA Times reporter Tom Rosenstiel, who's now director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Viewers weren't told that Rosenstiel's project is financed by Pew, the same multibillion-dollar outfit generously funding Smith and the "NewsHour." It was all very cozy--and typical.
So, Bill Clinton, beyond tragedy and farce, you remain a figment of our national non-imagination. Despite all the uproar, your longtime corporate backers are not worried about the news media getting out of hand. You may sink beneath the political waves, but the Fortune 500 will stay high and dry.
STEALTH WEAPONS AGAINST TV ADS? Imagine sitting in front of a TV set that automatically blocks out commercials. A fantasy? Maybe not. The option could soon be available in the United States. Ever since politicians began to hype the V-chip, it has been heralded as a way for parents to protect kids from violence and sex on the tube. But the V-chip could turn out to have some unintended consequences.
Two major TV manufacturers-producing such brands as Panasonic, RCA and General Electric--are going ahead with plans to make television sets with V-chips that enable viewers to block unrated programming, a category that includes news, sports and commercials. The owners of TV stations and networks seem worried, to put it mildly. The National Association of Broadcasters and the National Cable Television Association are adamant: They want those TV sets kept off the market.
But TV makers point out that consumer choice should not be restricted. And they cite an unambiguous FCC ruling: "We will not prohibit features that allow the user ... to block programs that are not rated."
By next summer, stores across America will be offering large quantities of V-chipped televisions, designed for easy operation. Then, if you click the "unrated program blocking" option, many commercials could simply disappear from sight.
What if you've blocked unrated programs but feel like watching news or sports? No problem. Within a minute or so, viewers will be able to clear the way for unrated shows by pushing a few buttons.
This all sounds too good to be true. And it might be. TV ad revenues amount to billions of dollars each season--and media conglomerates will certainly go all out to defend the sanctity of commercials. The V-chip may lose its commercial-zapping powers before they begin. Television networks are determined to prevent V-chips from being used to foil the real purpose of broadcasting in the first place--to grab a large audience and foist commercials on it. The pressure will be intense on the FCC and Congress to--one way or another--block viewers from blocking commercials.
On Capitol Hill, would-be commercial zappers may be out of luck. After all, the bipartisan phalanx of moralizing politicians behind the V-chip didn't have commercials in mind when they condemned some TV programming as unfit for youngsters. To do an end run around the V-chip's anti-commercial potential, networks may try to give (benign) ratings to TV advertising. But a lot of commercials would deserve to be rated as truly obscene, one way or another. TV networks already claim that commercials airing within a program's time slot warrant the same rating code as the program itself. Even so, many commercials air between shows, and those ads may be the easiest to keep off our TV screens.
The V-chip commercial-blocking scenario is on the horizon at an especially fitting time. This summer has brought the one-second TV commercial. It premiered nationally with flick-of-an-eye spots for Master Lock on the FX cable network and ESPN.
Here in the United States, the news media have yet to sound an alarm. But in London, the Evening Standard put it bluntly: "TV advertisements that last just one second are the latest corporate assault on consumers in America." The British newspaper reported: "Advertising experts believe the one-second commercials will be good news for products like Pepsi and Coke, that already have strong consumer images." Just what we need--more subliminal brainwashing.
If it were easy to filter out TV commercials, many people would be glad to take advantage of the appropriate technology. The television industry's timeworn line--"we're just giving the public what it wants"--is refuted by the fact that most viewers don't want commercials but get plenty of them anyway.
Is there a possibility of stuffing the commercial genie back into the broadcast bottle? We'll find out. In the long run, grass-roots pressure and activism--not technological gizmos--are our best hope. It would be wonderfully ironic if the brainchild of pandering politicians and reluctant network executives, the V-chip, could serve as a catalyst for a belated public debate about incessant commercials on the airwaves.