Another Unflattering Portrait of Journalists   

The Last Debate: A Novel of
Politics and Journalism
By Jim Lehrer
Random House

The Last Debate: A Novel of
Politics and Journalism
By Jim Lehrer
Random House
324 pages; $23

Here is still another novel by an upstanding journalist in which newspeople come across as self-absorbed, celebritified saps.

Billed as a satire, "The Last Debate" is no playful send-up (like Jim Lehrer's series of One-eyed Mack political mysteries). It more resembles Pete Dexter's "The Paperboy" (see Books, April), with an edgy and portentous undertone, as if the author means to send a message.

But what message? Lehrer, the respected PBS anchor, chooses as his narrator a rule-busting writer for The New American Tatler magazine. That's a publication where, as one character puts it, "nothing is out of bounds, off limits, or too much."

The plot is simple, told in a semi-suspenseful flashback manner. Four journalists assigned as panelists for a presidential campaign debate ignore the agreed-on format and gang up on one candidate, brandishing devastating secret documents that they haven't carefully checked.

Considering how artificial these so-called debates are, this may seem like a mild rebellion. But the author presents it as "an event that changed forever the practice of journalism," either "journalism's most heroic act" or its "most heinous crime."

It alters the course of the election, elevates the journalists to superstar status and triggers a national debate over news ethics.

Lehrer presents the story through the eyes of raffish writer Tom Chapman, assigned by the Tatler to piece together how the panel members conspired to hijack the debate.

Chapman, portrayed as a nice enough fellow, is a one-man ethics minefield. He lies repeatedly, cheerfully burns and cons and pays sources for information, and breaks into a hotel room by pretending to be a husband worried about his sick wife. He poses as a delivery person, telephone fraud investigator and music talent scout, even as Alan Greenspan.

±o characters win our sympathy here. The politicians are boobs and hypocrites. Their political aides are odious. The journalists, from Chapman on, are cynical and manipulative.

Lehrer's technique ranges from outright lampooning to more subtle carving.

Some characters, for example, burlesque real life. The book is set just a shade into the future, at a time when Sunday morning television is dominated by shows hosted by Ross Perot, Norman Schwarzkopf and "the hottest public affairs couple of the moment," Jack Gilbey and Jill Christopher, known as Jack and Jill and dead ringers for Mary Matalin and James Carville.

While Lehrer has fun with these characters (and another, T.R. "Teddy" Lemmon Jr., who shares more than name similarities with the New York Times' R.W. "Johnny" Apple Jr.), he turns darker in dealing with the debate panelists.

Known as the "Williamsburg 4," after the debate site, they all find ways to capitalize on their newfound stardom. The foursome includes a TV reporter who bolts immediately into the anchor chair, shoving aside the Rather-esque character who had occupied it for 14 years; two young unknowns, compromise choices for the panel in the first place, who fake a romance to attract multimillion-dollar contracts and to compete with Jack and Jill; and the instigator of the attack conspiracy, a respected Washington Post type who oversees a cover-up trying to keep their actions secret.

Toward the end of the book, Chapman authors a thoughtful paragraph about the "revolutionary changes in American journalism." He lists tabloidization, anonymous sources, personal attacks, unbridled gossip, checkbook journalism, "snideness toward everyone in public life," and a star syndrome in which newspeople "smelled the money of the stars and followed the odor."

It's a pretty effective roundup of the usual suspects. But in the next paragraph, he rejects it all as "Old Journalism whine."

"Why shouldn't reporters be the well-paid stars of a democratic open society?" he asks. "Why shouldn't they give their informed opinions?.. Why should people be expected to turn over news and information to reporters without compensation?.. Why shouldn't a television correspondent take on the president of the United States as an equal?"

On one hand, there's an argument here that journalism is "already headed over the cliff with the donkeys"; on the other, there's defense of the "good clean aggressive journalism in the new world." Is this supposed to be serious or funny? Or, perhaps, just plain old fiction? Maybe that's the real debate Lehrer has in mind.