WHITEWATER HEARINGS BEGIN The Senate Banking Committee opened its long-awaited hearings on Whitewater and Vincent Foster on July 18. Of the newspapers we saw, only The Washington Times and the New York Post carried stories about the hearings on their front pages. USA Today ran a prominent story on page 9. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times had no news stories, but both ran editorials about the hearings. The Washington Post and L. A. Times ignored them altogether. None of the stories informed readers the hearings would be shown live on PBS (except in Los Angeles where KCET decided to black them out) and by tape-delay on C-SPAN.
The lack of media enthusiasm reflects the fact that most journalists have closed their eyes to the mounting evidence that Vincent Foster's death was not the simple suicide that it was ruled to be by the Park Police as soon as they saw his body with a gun in his hand. They have ignored the evidence that Independent Counsel Robert Fiske, who reopened the investigation last year, had decided to endorse the conclusion of the Park Police before his own investigation had gotten off the ground.
Those who have studied the two volumes of testimony and evidence totaling 2672 pages released by the Senate Banking Committee last January are very frustrated at the refusal of all but a handful of journalists to take the time to examine the serious flaws in both the Park Police and Fiske investigations that have been discovered in these two volumes. Reporters who are too lazy to dig up and analyze the facts are quick to criticize those who do as conspiracy kooks who are furthering some political agenda.
The Washington Post is the best example of this attitude. On July 4 they published a long page-one story about nutty conspiracy theories about Foster's death, ignoring the hard, factual questions that have been raised that cast doubt on the official findings. I asked one of their reporters, David Maraniss, about this distorted reporting when he appeared on C-SPAN ten days later. Here is his reply.
"Well, it's an entirely rhetorical posture that Reed Irvine is taking in the guise of objectivity. His interest is not an objective assessment of the truth, but in pursuing a political agenda there. I think the Post is pursuing it in a totally unbiased, objective way. We're looking at the issues. We're not going to publish anything, including questions that can't be answered, until we're satisfied with what we've got. I think we're handling it in a very responsible way."
Moments later, a caller challenged that, saying, "You said, 'We don't want to put anything out until we're sure what we can respond to on Vincent Foster.' If that's true, why did your paper put out all these conspiracy theories and treat it so light-heartedly that anyone would believe that there's just a bunch of nuts running around out there?" Forgetting he had just described the Post's coverage as unbiased, objective and responsible, Maraniss replied, "I don't know whether if I were running the paper I would have run that story, to be honest with you."