Media Starr-y Eyed, or Willfully Blind?
By Joe Conason
Reprinted with permission from The New York Observer.
How the dominant national media determine which stories are important and which should be ignored is a mysterious process. Too often, such decisions have less to do with a story's merits or what readers need to know than with editorial biases, or a prideful unwillingness to publish information that has already been reported elsewhere.
The coverage of Whitewater is replete with such journalistic lapses -- particularly when the subject is independent counsel Kenneth Starr. At a moment when tremendous attention is focused on the Little Rock trial of James and Susan McDougal and Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, and on Jim Stewart's book Blood Sport, a report about Mr. Starr and his conflicts of interest has been ignored by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and two of the four television networks. (It was picked up by CBS, CNN, the Associated Press and sundry other outlets, and also was cited at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.)
The matter of Mr. Starr's conflicts is important insofar as it reveals the partisan character of his Whitewater inquest, which needs to be seen as part of a broader Republican offensive. I'm quite certain the facts of the Starr story are true, because it's based entirely on Government documents -- and because Murray Waas and I wrote it for the March 18 issue of The Nation magazine.
Unlike most independent counsels, who are supposed to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest, Mr. Starr did not sever his ties to his private law firm, Kirkland & Ellis. What we discovered was that Kirkland & Ellis was being sued by the Resolution Trust Corporation (the Federal agency chartered to clean up the savings and loan debacle) at the same time that Mr. Starr was investigating the top officials of the R.T.C. and their role in the Whitewater affair. As those R.T.C. officials pondered whether and how to settle their claims against his law firm -- which, ironically, involved its work for a busted-out savings bank -- Mr. Starr was considering whether to call them before his grand jury and, perhaps, charge them with obstruction of justice.
Even worse, Mr. Starr by his own account did not reveal this conflict to his own ethics counsel, former Watergate committee counsel Sam Dash, until March 1995 -- eight months after his appointment as Whitewater independent counsel, and almost two years after the R.T.C. filed its complaint against Kirkland & Ellis. (His office has suggested, implausibly, that he didn't know about it.) The case against Kirkland & Ellis was settled last December for $325,000, far less than the $1 million the R.T.C. had wanted.
Now, this isn't the first time that questions have been raised about Mr. Starr, a highly partisan lawyer whose prospects will improve under a Republican President. As The Nation and other publications also have reported, he has been retained as counsel by the Bradley Foundation, a right-wing treasure chest that has provided millions to media outlets spewing anti-Clinton propaganda on Whitewater.
Mr. Starr's conflicts seem especially egregious when one recalls that his predecessor as independent counsel, former U.S. Attorney Robert B. Fiske Jr., was removed because of perceived conflicts of interest that seem laughable by comparison. The Journal's editorial page and various Republican activists and politicians made a big deal of Mr. Fiske's supposed conflicts, but remain silent now.
Such hypocrisy is not unexpected in those quarters. But why would The Times and The Post ignore Mr. Starr's problems? The relevant documents were made available to both papers by The Nation. Why would The Times and The Post disregard the same questions after they were raised by Representative Charles Schumer at a House judiciary subcommittee hearing on the independent counsel statute? The matter was deemed sufficiently serious that on March 5, Mr. Starr's office sent a letter explaining his position to Representative Bill McCollum, chairman of the House judiciary subcommittee on crime.
Only the editors of those newspapers can explain those decisions. Clearly, though, both The Times and The Post have taken a hard line on Whitewater against the Clintons, in editorials and news coverage; they might not welcome a story that impeaches Mr. Starr's credibility. They have institutional reasons for liking him, too. Some years ago, back when Mr. Starr was a Federal appeals judge, he co-wrote a decision favorable to The Post in a major libel case involving a Mobil Corporation executive. He's not a partisan prosecutor who needs skeptical observation. He's a First Amendment hero!
For me, of course, there's a personal element in all this. My own pique aside, however, there remains a real issue of editorial judgment. To pass up a legitimate story that questions the probity of an independent counsel in a case as politically heavy as Whitewater is a disservice to readers. Other editors and reporters need not reach the same conclusion as The Nation, which published an editorial urging Kenneth Starr to resign. But perhaps they ought to place these facts before their readers, and let them make their own judgments.
