Trivia crowds out serious political journalism

NOT LONG after the new administration was ensconced in Washington, one of the newspapers in the nation's capital came out with the breathtaking disclosure that the President's top assistant, Hamilton Jordan, did not wear underwear. Had never worn underwear. Readers were kept duly posted there-upon about less sensational features of Mr. Jordan's sartorial regimen. He is also uncomfortable wearing ties, it turns out, and whether the President's representative deigned to wear a tie to a certain Capitol Hill meeting became a matter of political significance.

Titillation crowds out serious political journalism these days. A generation conditioned by television is believed to be incapable of sitting still for long with the dull substance of complicated issues. Personality, style, celebrity standing, gossamer gossip are served up, tiny but juicy tidbits that will attract attention.

The underwear expose prompted lots of snickering. But the more important question that eventually has to be faced is this: treated to a steady diet of this kind of "news," how can an impatient electorate possibly be interested in heavy information about what Jordan is doing in the White House after getting dressed?

A democracy cannot function responsibly, we are told, without an informed electorate. If so, the current taste for trivia warns of trouble ahead.

In Lincoln's day, candidates met the voters directly and courted the favor of political leaders. Many of the most influential newspapers were party organs. Now the parties have atrophied; the people are fed up with traditional politicians; candidates must rely exclusively on the news media to project their desired images, and most newspapers have learned that it is more profitable not to appear overly partisan.

There is a public official in Illinois who understands the value of a cool image and the media's obsession with the superficial. His name is Thompson, and he's, the governor. The voting machines had hardly been dismantled last November when Big Jim was off to Washington boasting of what a clever campaigner he had been. Like Dan Walker before him, Thompson strives for a video-oriented unorthodoxy that puts style above substance. He plays the press like a piccolo. The media print pictures of the governor in a Fawcett-Majors T-shirt, the governor playing racketball in the gym, the governor kissing his wife. Under the circumstances, the press has an obligation to inquire in some detail what is going on in the State House while the guv is out posing for pictures. Whatever imbalance exists in the coverage of the governor is the fault of the editors, not the State House correspondents, who are willing and capable of undertaking serious analytical reporting.

Newspaper readers have always been treated to a more or less calculated blend of what they want and what the editor thinks is good for them. It has been said that newspapers are made for people who need sermons but want circuses. The proportions vary according to competitive pressures. An editor who has stiff competition, whether from another newspaper or a quality TV news department, increases the heavy stuff at his own peril. The new magazine-style newspaper typography is much more readable, but there is less space available for news. So the choice between a lengthy analysis of Thompson's budget, and an upbeat item about what an exciting fellow he is, is not hard for many editors to make.

Thus it is that some of the penetrating examination of Thompson's record has come from the downstate chain-owned newspapers rather than the larger-staffed Chicago dailies where the competition is more intense.

Most of the Washington-based national press is already smitten with Thompson. The day after the Puerto Rican riot in Chicago, The Washington Post devoted a couple of paragraphs back in the paper to that story. Instead of inquiring in any depth about what happened in the city that the rest of the nation is told "runs like a top," The Post published an unrelated, excessively flattering front-page story and photo of Big Jim, virtually endorsing him for the Republican presidential nomination. He's candid, makes good copy, and fits the liberal press's notion of what a good Republican candidate ought to be. That is how Illinoisans get to be national candidates. When Scotty Reston of The New York Times dropped by to chat with the late Adlai E. Stevenson in Springfield, a presidential campaign was born.

A noteworthy exception to the superficial adulatory national attention feasted on Thompson is the excellent syndicated columnist Neal R. Peirce, who writes from Washington on the states and cities. Peirce commented in August on Big Jim's "timid" preoccupation with "not doing anything bad" like raising taxes, picking fights with Democratic legislators, or tackling problems that would test the limits of his political power.

The purpose of this column, which will appear every other month, is to keep tabs on how well the Illinois media are reporting news of government and politics at all levels. We should remind ourselves, after all, that the First Amendment was written for the people, not for commercial conglomerates Readers are invited to pass along their opinions of the quality of public affairs journalism in their communities. 

October 1977 / Illinois Issues / 33