JOE KLEIN, ED KOCH, BRENT BOZELL, WALTER ISAACSON "PRESIDENTIAL YEAR: THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PRESS" PART I

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1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. HOST: GUESTS: SUBJECT: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. JOE KLEIN, ED KOCH, BRENT BOZELL, WALTER ISAACSON "PRESIDENTIAL YEAR: THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PRESS" PART I FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of the FIRING LINE program #2608/ 1097, taped in New York City on August 29, 1996, and telecast later on public television stations. copyright 1996 FIRING LINE Transcripts and videocassettes available through Producers Incorporated for Television, 2700 Cypress Street, Columbia, SC /

2 MR. BUCKLEY: We are here to consider in three sessions the challenge of political reporting in a presidential year. To do this we have the collaboration of two journalists, one politician, and one more or less professional critic. Walter Isaacson, who is the managing editor of Time magazine, has said that in the past 10 or 15 years the press lost--that's his word--lost its credibility and authority. He will tell us why this is so and perhaps, what he is doing about it. Mr. Isaacson was born in New Orleans, went to Harvard, received a Rhodes scholarship, went to journalism, and has written three books, among them a biography of Henry Kissinger. Joe Klein is a contributing editor of Newsweek, which he has served for many years with various portfolios. He has won many awards for his journalism and was widely discussed when a few weeks ago it transpired that he is the author of the book, Primary Colors, which went out as a work written by "Anon" -that's the abbreviation for "anonymous." It continues to be a bestseller. Edward Koch is, of course, the public man who has been everywhere, as attorney, congressman, mayor of New York City, candidate for governor, and now back to the law, but with a newspaper column, a radio talk show, and television on the side. Mr. Koch is a graduate of CCNY and of its law school, and he is, of course, a Democrat. Brent Bozell is the founder and chairman of the seven-year-old Media Research Center. Its business is to survey political developments and report on biased or insufficient accounts of them. Mr. Bozell graduated from the University of Dallas, joined the staff of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, of which he became president, before launching the Media Center. I disclose with pride and gratitude that his mother is my sister.,., In the first hour I think it useful to confront directly one or two of the charges made against the media in general in the context of the presidential race. Brent, would you give us a specimen complaint? MR. BOZELL: Well, there's a complaint that conservatives have had--and I'm a conservative and I think it's important to say so at the outset--but 1

3 there's a complaint conservatives have had for 30 years about the way the press has been handling politics and handling the conservative movement. Every four years during a presidential campaign, there becomes a question how far and balanced are the media vis-a-vis conservatives or the Republican Party. In I 992 that was an issue. I think it's interesting that when you look at the conventions, you see a classic example of this media bias that we are talking about, because it affords the analyst the empirical data to look at two different conventions with the same reporters from the same networks covering both things one week apart from one another to see exactly how things fall. In 1992, for example, you had 7 l instances in which the Republicans were called extremists by the media in the coverage of the convention. MR. BUCKLEY: This is the three networks? MR. BOZELL: The three networks and CNN. Not once--not once--was anyone in the Democratic Party convention called extremist--not once. Not once were they ever called mean-spirited, although you had people accusing George Bush of being a racist. You had one speaker accusing Ronald Reagan of being responsible for AIDS. Yet that wasn't at all deplorable. In 1996 we're seeing it again. Once again you saw at the Republican convention in San Diego-- You heard about the "bash Bill" night, you heard about the "anti-clinton" night, you heard all those deplorable things that Susan Molinari said, such as her joke about Bill Clinton's promises lasting as long as a cheeseburger on Air Force One. That's about how rough, the Republicans got. Then the Democrats came together in Chicago. You had people like Jesse Jackson saying that the Republicans are a threat to America, that they are a threat to children, to the elderly, to the poor. You had Mario Cuomo saying the exact same things. You had the vice president of the United States saying that Bob Dole is going to poison the airstream and poison the water in America. Every single one of them was saluted for his speech. Not one of them was ever critiqued for it. So it's a double standard that conservatives really are getting very tired of. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Mayor Koch, to what extent do you simply consider this the hyperbole of politics, which would leave you to explain, however, the differences that Mr. Bozell points to. 2

4 MR. KOCH: Personally, I agree with him, though that may come as a surprise to you. I think that the media, the reporters, are basically liberal in their philosophical bent and therefore, report differently--not every reporter, but overall. But l don't think it means anything. l mean, we are watching two spectacles. It's like Barnum & Bailey, with the clowns and with human elephants and human donkeys. And I don't think the public in any way becomes overwhelmed as a result of what they've seen. It's rather a cheap evening of entertainment. That's the way I think it is perceived. MR BUCKLEY: You think they distill out all of these specifiers that Mr. Bozell is complaining about. MR. KOCH: Well, I do believe that there is a double standard and that the media is far more partial to the Democrats in a laudatory way. And I'm a Democrat and I'm voting for Clinton, but facts are facts, as I see them. MR BUCKLEY: Well, Mr. Isaacson, when you said that confidence in journalists was lost, you went on to say this was in part because the tendency was by journalists to measure everything that was said or that happened with reference to a political maneuver. Now to what extent is that something which one can combat, or to what extent are you simply loaded down with the existing situation? MR. ISAACSON: I think we've combated it a lot this year. I'll take the Republican convention and defend the print press and the news magazines / in general. When Jack Kemp was chosen and the 15-percent tax cut was proposed, that was a very serious proposal, it was worthy of discussion, and I think we took it very seriously. We were not looking at just political maneuvers or bash-clinton, but I think if you look at the papers and you look at the magazines and you look at the covers that both Joe's magazine and mine did on Kemp and Dole, you'll see that we tried harder to look at the real issue, how that would affect people, how that would affect the economy. And I think when we do that, we can regain some of the respect that we have lost by treating everything that's done as a pure political maneuver. MR. BUCKLEY: -Wdl now, but what if you think it is done as a political maneuver? 3

5 MR. ISAACSON: I think we-- MR. BUCKLEY: How do you handle that problem? MR. ISAACSON: --have a say so and then there are people saying so, but I do think we ought to take ideas seriously, because they do have consequences. And a IS-percent tax has consequences and Jack Kemp's view of growth and opportunity and a growth economy is an important subject to look at. Maybe it was a maneuver. People do position themselves in order to get elected. But you have to owe the respect to Kemp and Dole and, for that matter, to the Democrats, to look at their proposals and--they may not want you to do it-but to take them seriously, to say, Those ideas will have consequences; let's look at the consequences. MR. BUCKLEY: I am reading, as it happens, galleys of a book by one of your predecessors, Henry Grunwald-- MR ISAACSON: It's a great book, by the way. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, you've seen it. MR. ISAACSON: Let's give it a tout. Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. And he talks about, you know, landing there in 1945, his first job, and he said that everybody except Whittaker Chambers was sort of soft on the communist issue, which made it all the more difficult, given that Henry Luce was very anti-communist, especially on the Chinese point. But he described efforts to balance that line. Are these efforts that, mutatis mutandis, you have to make, or has there been such a passage of time in the last 50 years that those particular wrinkles are worked out?, I MR. ISAACSON: Well, I can certainly remember the great Henry Grunwald when he was editor-in-chief and I was the nation editor of Time. He and I would have many discussions about the Contras, say, and whether or not the Contras- And sure, he would try to even out some of the kinks that he felt and we would take the issue of the funding of the Contras seriously. I think that, you know, that at times it gets better, at times it gets worse. This happens to be an important election. It's one that has real 4

6 issues and a real different vision, two different visions, about where the country is going to go. So I think it's easier in our reporting--and I think we've tried to move Time magazine to be more of a magazine just based on good reporting, as opposed to just a lot of, you know, punditry and whatever. But I think if you look at Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy and the people actually covering our campaign, they are looking seriously at the issues, and so I don't have to keep wrenching them away from injecting just off-the-wall opinions because-- In other words, I think it's not a liberalconservative bias, but a bias towards just good reporting. And that's what you keep pushing for when you work at a magazine: Let's get more good reporting in; let's find out; let's go out there and talk to people. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Mr. Klein, let me ask you this. After your years of association with Newsweek, does a magazine of that size and scope attempt to elaborate a line or is it completely atomistic in the sense that you write what you want to write, he writes what he wants to write, et cetera, et cetera, and then a line sort of gestates? MR. KLEIN: There is a line. It has nothing to do with ideology though. It has everything to do with total bias in favor of the good story. I think that what Brent said was probably much more true years ago than it is now. There may still be some liberal bias, but I think that given- If this is the golden age of anything, it is the golden age of marketing, and we are in a fierce, fierce competitive environment. You know, Walter and I represent anachronisms: general interest magazines. The competitive atmosphere in television, with 72 cable channels is such that journalists are desperate--desperate--for the colorful story, the hot story. And while the things that Brent said about some of the commentary about the Republican convention are true, what was more true of what was said about the Republican convention was the effusive commentary about Liddy Dole's performance on Wednesday night, and-- i MR BUCKLEY: Because it was theatrical? MR. KLEIN: Oh, it was theatrical--! mean, she did what the network anchors do as well as they do it. And they went berserk over her. I didn't see the same kind of reaction when Mrs. Clinton spoke. And I think-- 5

7 MR. BUCKLEY: Well, hers was pretty metallic by contrast, wasn't it? [laughter] MR KLEIN: Right. MR. ISAACSON: So we let the facts determine the coverage. But I think your point is a good one, about is it atomistic now? And I think the media in general and news magazines as well, are houses with many voices and many rooms. And in our magazine we may have a Peggy Noonan who's writing, but she's clearly writing from a viewpoint perspective and it's a viewpoint that's her own; and we may have a Margaret Carlson writing. And you can pick out any particular quote from a part of the magazine and say, Well, that's biased, one way or the other, but the main core of the magazine has to be the good reporting, and then you have viewpoints that you hope would have voices, and the voices are different. MR. KLEIN: But to finish what I was going to say, I think though in the fog, there is still a tendency to view the religious right as--to describe the religious right as extremists and not say very much about the percent of public employees union members who dominate the Democratic Party and really skew its positions, who are every bit as extreme in their way as the religious conservatives are. MR. BOZELL: But let's label that-- Let me get to that in a second. But to respond to what Walter is saying, the discussion of a serious issue sometimes is analogous to throwing a hand grenade. When you go to the Republican convention and Jack Kemp and Bob Dole suggest a 15-percent tax cut, it's a serious conversation to discuss whether or not the man means it. When Jack Kemp suggests a 15-percent tax cut, you know he means it, but then the conversation becomes, Can we afford it? And every report thereafter was, Can we afford this tax cut, can we afford it? I ' MR BUCKLEY: What's wrong with that? MR. KLEIN: Yes. MR. BOZELL: Well, it would be okay-- It would be okay-- 6

8 MR. ISAACSON: It is a valid question that Americans have to answer this fall. MR. BOZELL: Okay, now hold onto what you just said, because if that's true, then why, as Bill Ointon made his merry way to Chicago, and stopped, and at every stop issued a new federal program while his com padres in Chicago, in their speeches, were laying out one new expenditure after another that they wanted to undertake, including national health care, did not anyone ever ask, Can we afford it? MR. KOCH: Well-- MR. BOZELL: It was not asked on network television. MR. ISAACSON: l also think that he-- As he went to Chicago, he made a point for better or worse that, Here's the funding we will do for it. We will reduce this tax break or raise this tax- MR. BOZELL: l know, but Bob Dole said the same thing. MR. KLEIN: And the explanations of how they were going to raise the money were hilarious, I thought, in many cases. MR. BOZELL: Yes. MR. ISAACSON: And also covered with some seriousness. / MR. BOZELL: But then why did-- But the point is, no network during the conventions raised the question, How can we afford this? When they asked that question about two dozen times of the Republicans. MR BUCKLEY: Mayor Koch. MR. KOCH: Let me just add two cents. Firstly, we're focusing on the least important part of the media, which is the print press. Well, it's true in terms of impact. MR. ISAACSON: I would agree with that totally. 7

9 MR. KOCH: What I believe what can't be contradicted is that the average person gets their news analysis off the TV tube, and that's what impacts every single day, and had the greatest impact as it relates to evaluating the two conventions. And if you- I'm not arguing against my own case because I don't care how these things develop. I know I'm for Clinton and the- MR. BUCKLEY: You don't have to think. [laughter] MR KOCH: Right. I mean, I've made my mind up and the anchors are not going to persuade me to the contrary, but I watched them, and I must say to you that on TV every network is dominated by people I think you can fairly describe as in the Democratic--philosophically--the Democratic or liberal camp. MR BOZELL: You know, let me give you an example, Mayor, of where I disagree with you on what you said before when you said that the conventions are really just spectacles and they are really not serious. Well, they are. Of course they are. And this why the media coverage is important. When I say "Houston" and we play word association, the words that come back will be deplorable, negative, extremist, right-wing, all those terrible things. In fact you've heard that said hundreds of times since 1992 of the Houston convention. So prevalent was that message that the Republican Party itself changed its own convention because of the negative press. The only problem was that if you look at every single survey by the / media, taken by the media, before and after the Houston convention, it was a phenomenal success for the Republican Party. CBS had Clinton ahead by 23 points and it was a two-point race after the convention. ABC had him ahead by 29 points and it was a five-point race after. MR. KOCH: But all we remember-- MR BOZELL: And there were seven other ones, so that-- MR. KOCH: But we remember Buchanan and his hateful speech-- MR BOZELL: You're walking into my line. [laughter] MR KOCH: Oh, sorry. 8

10 MR. BOZELL: In the tracking smveys, night by night, the single most effective night for the Republican Party was that loathsome Monday night. MR. ISAACSON: And that point has been made quite often.. And I mean, you're right. Other people make the point that the Republican convention in Houston in the end hurt them, but there has been a great debate over whether or not it helped-- MR. BOZELL: But again, it didn't hurt them. MR. ISAACSON: Well, I think it's debatable-- MR. BOZELL: It didn't. MR. ISAACSON: --but the debate has been engaged. MR. BOZELL: I'm sorry, it didn't. MR. ISAACSON: But Bush ended up losing. MR. BOZELL: Ed Bradley on CBS News, on election night, when all the other networks were saying about how the convention hurt the Republican Party, Ed Bradley gave the results of an exit poll that CBS took, where they listed a whole host of different issues- / MR. ISAACSON: Now you're waling into my line MR. BOZELL: --as to why-- MR ISAACSON: I think there was a debate over it. MR. BOZELL: The number one-- The last, the very bottom of the ladder, was the convention. MR. ISAACSON: And that was reported. MR. KOCH: Don't we ultimately have to look at who won? I mean, it isn't just simply the bounce that occurs within the week after the 9

11 convention. It relates to a discussion, the weeks between the final poll on election day and the last day of the convention. MR BUCKLEY: The distillation. MR KOCH: Yes, and that-- MR BUCKLEY: A year ago- MR. KOCH: --convention-- MR BUCKLEY: A year ago Quayle published a book- MR. KOCH: --brought them down. MR BUCKLEY: --and in that book, autobiographical book, he said that that was a catastrophic speech and Buchanan was able to whip up love notes he had received from Quayle- MR. ISAACSON: So we now have Quayle-- MR BUCKLEY: -for three or four or five days. MR. ISAACSON: --on the liberal media elite making that case. I think the case is debatable- / MR KLEIN: I think the bottom line-- MR. ISAACSON: --which is what I was saying, when even Quayle can assert the case. MR. KLEIN: The bottom line is that if that convention had worked, it wouldn't make a difference what we in the liberal media had said about it, the Republicans would have gone back to that well this time, but it did not work. That two-point poll was less than a momentary phenomenon, it was a nano-second in time. MR. BOZELL: After which, what happened? 10

12 MR. KLEIN: After which-- MR BOZELL: There was a discussion. MR. KLEIN: I mean, you know, there was a three-point poll in my publication, you know, a week ago, a few weeks ago, when Dole came out of his convention, and I thought that that was very similar to the two-point poll in '92. It doesn't mean anything. The poll- MR. BUCKLEY: You mean you think it's just a spastic-- MR. KLEIN: Oh yes, when you see Bob Dole or George Bush or any politician up there, these guys are pretty good at what they do, and even Bob Dole, who isn't so good at what he does is pretty good. And people watch that and they respond favorably. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, let me give you this and see what you can do with it. Mr. Ford told me--and you were there-about a month ago that he was 38 points behind when he finished his speech in Kansas City, and lost by.8. Now, to what extent was Ford, who was relatively untheatrical, to what extent was he helped by the media, a lot of which thought he was the legatee of Richard Nixon and under the circumstances oughtn't to be helped? Or do I hear you all saying that it really makes no difference what the impact is of a convention speech? MR ISAACSON: No, in fact, I think I would like to disagree with the notion that these conventions were just spectacles and had no meaning or that they have no impact. I think this year you saw conventions that very well define how each party wants to define values, and it comes out and sets the stage for this campaign. Both parties did it very effectively. They said, Here are our values, here's what we mean by family values-- MR BUCKLEY: You mean village versus family kind of thing. MR. ISAACSON: Exactly. And I think that's an undercurrent of the campaign. It's a campaign that has two major issues, one of which is the economy and how to get growth into this economy, and the other is, How do we define our values? And we can all be a little bit jaded and cynical about conventions and say, Oh, well, they were just spectacles and didn't 11

13 matter, but you can draw from it the fundamental difference in the definition of values that each party wants to give. MR BOZELL: I think what's interesting is that the Republicans tried to emulate the Democrats of 1992 with their convention. The Democrats had a smashingly successful convention in 1992 in New York. They were lauded as being so well organized, so unified in their message. The Republicans tried to do the same thing. I mean, they tried to put all the divisions-- MR. ISAACSON: Maybe they didn't think their '92 convention was that good. MR BOZELL: No, proving that the leadership at the top really leaves a lot to be desired. [laughter] MR ISAACSON: Okay. MR BOZELL: But they tried to stifle the abortion debate and the tax discussion-- MR. ISAACSON: You're right. You're right. MR. BOZELL: --and all that. But the interesting thing is that, again, look at the network coverage; they were attacked for that.. ' MR. KLEIN: But they were praised-- MR. BOZELL: The networks criticized them for that. MR. KLEIN: --much more than they were attacked. MR. BOZELL: No, they weren't. No, they weren't. No, they weren't. MR. KLEIN: Monday night with Colin Powell, nonstop praise. Wednesday night-- MR. BOZELL: Liddy Dole. 12

14 .. Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. MR. KLEIN: --with Liddy Dole, nonstop praise. Thursday night with Bob Dole, pretty much nonstop praise. You know, I was flipping around the channels-- MR. KOCH: I don't know. When you watch-- MR. KLEIN: --and Tuesday night there was the-- MR. KOCH: Bob Dole-- I happen to think that he did a terrific job. But all of the anchors that I watched that night denigrated his speech and said it was a bad speech. MR. KLEIN: I don't think they denigrated it. MR. ISAACSON: They gave it mixed reviews. But I also think that this shows--because I am going to take you on on one other issue--that TV can have a quick, shallow impact, but in the end, I think print and thinking people help form opinions about what really matters. And you can come out of the convention with a blip--a blip that puts you within two or thee points in the polls or whatever, and people get some quick images. But after awhile, they think about things, they chew them over. And so do the people on TV. They read things, they think about it and chew it over. And the surface blips you get on conventions are filtered later through people discussing it, writing about it, and reading about it. MR. BUCKLEY: Let me ask you this: Does the spectacle of a convention increase the circulation of a news magazine for that week? / MR. ISAACSON: I think we'll find out in a few weeks. I think-- MR. BUCKLEY: From past experience. MR. ISAACSON: Yes, people-- MR. BUCKLEY: Is there an appetite for copy? MR. ISAACSON: Yes. And there is a larger issue with that. When people are engaged in public issues, when they believe that public issues matter, they care much more about news magazines and for that matter, all forms 13

15 of journalism. And think where we get off track sometimes is when we denigrate or make fun of or seem jaded or cynical about politics mattering, about policy mattering, then people tune out. They say, Well, I don't need to read, I don't need to be engaged in the process, I don't need to vote, I don't need to subscribe to news magazines. I don't need to watch conventions or the evening news. And you see the decline in viewership at conventions, the very steep decline in viewership of the evening news. When people feel these things matter and they get engaged, they read about them. Yes, they read our issues on Steven Forbes and the flat tax. That sold very well because they cared about that. Yes, they bought the walkinto-the-convention issue with Jack Kemp and Bob Dole. I don't know that it's going to make--politics will ever be a driving force for news magazines cover sales, but when people are engaged, they buy the magazine. MR. BOZELL: You know, it's interesting what Walter is saying, because he is right on on one point, which is that-- There was a survey I saw a few days ago on this. The number one complaint that the public has with the media coverage, television coverage, of the conventions is that reporters won't shut up and they won't let the convention air. MR. KLEIN: That's-- MR. BOZELL: When Kay Bailey Hutchison is giving her speech and halfway through her speech NBC cuts her off so that they can begin the analysis of her speech and she hasn't concluded it yet, I think they've gone too far. [laughter] / MR. KLEIN: And I think that that's a big change in the '90s in general. PBS's ratings were up significantly this time-- MR. BUCKLEY: Were up? MR. KLEIN: Were up. --while the networks were down. MR. BOZELL: Right, C-Span. CNN. MR. KLEIN: C-Span. And I think that the-- MR. BOZELL: The polls show that they are getting better ratings. 14

16 I Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. MR. KLEIN: In the '90s one of the symptoms of the information age is that the pubic has a much lower tolerance for baloney from us, and also a much lower tolerance for baloney from politicians. They want to see the full speech, they want to hear the full thing. And I think that if the networks were smart, they would just give them the information in infomercials. MR. ISAACSON: It gets back to the notion of-- MR KLEIN: Give them the five hours, let them present their arguments, and then if they want to have a half hour of commentary with all of their high-priced talking heads, including some of us, afterwards, that's fine. MR ISAACSON: Yes, I think it gets back to the point that there is so much punditry, so much thumb sucking, so much analysis right away, instantly, that if we get back to the basics of journalism, which is reporting, and just telling the tale, the story, the narrative, in a true, believable, inside way, then people respond to it, just as if C-Span and CNN and PBS cover the conventions and let you hear what's happening, that we've done too much filtering-- MR. BUCKLEY: Like the Dick Morris-- MR. ISAACSON: --too much of our own attitude. MR BUCKLEY: Like the Dick Morris piece in Time magazine, which was a real inside piece on-- / MR. ISAACSON: Well, what it was is two months- MR. BUCKLEY: --the negotiations-- MR. ISAACSON: --worth of reporting--eric Pooley--who said, This person is helping figure out a new message for the president, and instead of being a lot of, you know, punditry about what has Dick Morris done, it's: Watch this guy in action for a couple of months. MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. 15