A Shrill and Familiar Critique of the Press   

Right in the Old Gazoo: A Lifetime of Scrapping with the Press
By Alan K. Simpson
William Morrow and Company Inc.

Right in the Old Gazoo: A Lifetime of Scrapping with the Press
By Alan K. Simpson
William Morrow and Company Inc.
269 pages; $24

The date was March 18, 1987, and Sen. Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming was leaving the White House after a meeting with President Reagan. The Iran-contra episode was much in the news at the time, and Simpson found himself arguing with a reporter about the press corps' earlier questioning of Reagan on the subject. The reporter said something about the public's "right to know."

"That's a bunch of crap," Simpson shot back. "What kills me is that you go in there and have your good old fling, and that's great. But you know very well that you're not asking him things so you can get answers. You're asking him things because you know he's off balance and you'd like to stick it in his gazoo."

Gazoo?

Simpson, a Republican known for his blunt (and sometimes ribald) language, served 18 years in the Senate before retiring last year. By the late 1980s, he says, he was "plumb fed up with the media" and what he sees as their manipulation of the American public. Since the reporters "like to stick it to us," he reasoned, somebody should stick it to them. Over the next few years, as a result of several well-publicized tussles with reporters, he developed a reputation as perhaps the media's most vocal critic on Capitol Hill.

Simpson seems to be under the impression that he's come up with a new version of that familiar tale, "The Emperor's New Clothes." He writes as if he's revealing a naked truth that nobody else has been willing to admit: The media aren't always fair — or even accurate! In fact, most of the issues he raises have been endlessly debated and discussed, not just by students and professors in the nation's journalism classrooms, and by reporters and editors as well, but by countless average Americans in barber shops and hair salons, around lunch counters and across family dinner tables.

Simpson tries to present himself as a lone voice crying out in the journalistic wilderness. In fact, many of us in the news business share some of the same concerns he raises. We worry about the widespread use of unnamed sources in news stories. We wonder what it does to our profession's credibility when well-known Washington journalists pocket hefty speaking fees from lobbying groups, then go on to report on issues involving those groups. We're uncomfortable with "ambush-style" reporting. And we're embarrassed when one of our colleagues, in his or her zeal to get a story, goes too far and crosses the line of common decency.

What's disturbing about Simpson's book isn't what he says, but his slash-and-burn, take-no-prisoners style of prose and his willingness to paint all journalists with the broad brush of sweeping generalization. Early in his diatribe, he writes that he has "plenty of friends in the media, and probably will still have some even after this book is published." Maybe so. But he's bound to have a few less given the sweeping charges he makes. A couple of examples:

l "In my view, the media..have largely abandoned all basics of good journalism in favor of slanted, deceptive and ruthlessly prosecutorial reporting. As a result, the public always gets the story, but seldom gets the truth. Damn seldom."

l "In my Senate years, I gained much personal experience with reportorial hubris and indignation. Again and again, I discovered that Washington journalists were almost universally unwilling to admit when they had screwed up."

Given Simpson's penchant for lumping all journalists together, it comes as a great relief to realize that when he refers to "lazy, complacent, sloppy, self-serving, self-aggrandizing, cynical and arrogant" journalists, he's not talking about all of us in the news business, but only "many in America's media elite."

Perhaps Simpson's clash with CNN's Peter Arnett provides the best example of how the Wyoming lawmaker manages to raise a legitimate issue, then undercuts his own position by going too far. Simpson recounts how, during the Persian Gulf War, he "watched with increasing alarm — and then plain irritation — as Peter Arnett broadcast from somewhere in downtown Baghdad... American soldiers were getting killed, and this reporter was being pampered, protected, fed and given a comfy place to sleep, all courtesy of the enemy government. All Arnett and CNN had to do in exchange for this was submit their stories to Iraqi censors before airing them. In other words, all they had to do was surrender their last shred of journalistic credibility. Unbelievable."

Certainly many Americans found Arnett's reports objectionable. But, by his own admission, Simpson clearly went too far. Recalling Arnett's reporting on the Vietnam War, he repeated a rumor that the reporter's Vietnamese wife had a brother in the Viet Cong and accused Arnett himself of being a "sympathizer" to the Viet Cong cause. Simpson later wrote Arnett a public letter of apology.

While Arnett was still broadcasting from Baghdad, Simpson went home to Cody, Wyoming, for a debate with columnist Jack Anderson on the role of the media in America. Anderson said developments in the gulf required him to stay in Washington, so he participated in the debate via satellite. That infuriated Simpson. "I knew damn well he wasn't needed in Washington — if I wasn't, he sure as hell wasn't." So, says Simpson, he "really slung it to" Anderson. "I could see the shocked look on his televised face as I whirled a wet sock full of sludge around my head and let it fly. When the forum was over, I didn't feel too good about myself. I had been irrational and shrill."

And that, in the proverbial nutshell, is what's wrong with Simpson's book. Though he raises a number of points certainly worthy of concern, his approach is so "irrational and shrill" that ultimately it's hard to give him the serious attention he's seeking.

Neither politicians nor journalists rate very high with many Americans. In offering some suggestions as to how both could raise their sagging approval ratings, Simpson suggests that public officials and journalists alike "must lower the volume on our rhetoric." Good advice. Perhaps, as St. Jerome advises, Simpson should practice what he preaches.