High-Profile Hearings, Low-Profile Coverage   

It's conventional wisdom that Congress' campaign finance hearings are news the public can excuse. In times of peace, prosperity and cynicism about all things Washington, politics seems particularly remote.

The ongoing shrug presents a problem for Washington journalists: Do they stick with a story they know has the elements of power, money and intrigue they covet, or move on to other subjects?

Before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee campaign finance hearings topped the news in early October with the discovery of videotaped White House coffees, the story rarely excited the press — though reporters were rewarded with the antics of oilman Roger Tamraz and Buddhist nuns recalling Vice President Gore's visit.

Routine were the days when former Commerce Department officials or intelligence briefers appeared, and the stories were buried or barely mentioned on broadcasts around the country.

Some 100-odd reporters kept coming, though. "It's a sexy subject, and it goes to the roots of democracy — who has access to policymakers," says Thomas Galvin, congressional correspondent for the New York Daily News. "It confirmed what we always believed, that money buys access."

But lots of others stayed away, rarely dropping in. "Unless you're there constantly, it's not fruitful," says Lolita Baldor, the sole Washington correspondent for the New Haven Register. "It's hard to know what's new and what's not."

And, she adds, the hearings do not seem to be a high priority for Register readers. "They care more about education, health care, defense and jobs," Baldor says.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs found during evening network newscasts from July 8 to 31, CBS offered 22 stories totaling 43 minutes of air time; NBC ran 15 stories and 31 minutes; and ABC had 14 stories and 24 minutes. "Compared to other high-profile hearings," the center concludes, "the coverage was relatively light." The total of 51 stories was far fewer than the 249 stories during the first weeks of Watergate hearings, or the 131 stories during the 1987 Iran-contra hearings; more comparable were the lackluster Whitewater hearings in 1995, which were the subject of 56 evening news stories on the networks.

These hearings have lacked the colorful characters and political gravitas that today's hype-saturated viewers and readers demand. "When these hearings hadn't developed a sexy story line in the first week, people were saying they weren't going well," recalls Baltimore Sun columnist Jules Witcover. "I don't think this is all going to lead to the impeachment of Clinton and Gore, but the media often seems to lack a discipline in covering stories that's essential."

Coverage has also had to coexist with an increasingly Balkanized media universe. Watergate, and to a lesser extent the Iran-contra hearings, were news in an era when three and later four major networks dominated television.

And this is the age of specialized information networks. The NET cable channel covers the hearings' play by play and has found "our viewers are very interested," says Marianne Fogelson, NET's host for the coverage. But NET is aimed at a conservative political audience likely to watch the hearings with far more interest than the masses in search of alternatives to "Who's the Boss" reruns.

Fogelson, like many Republicans, blames the public's inattention on the mainstream media, not the subject matter. "The mainstream liberal media didn't think there was much of a story here," she says.

ABC News political analyst Hal Bruno says the major networks have covered, and will continue to cover, campaign finance. The reporting is often unnoticed, he says, since each network has several outlets for news. "You can't judge our coverage by what gets on the evening news," he says. "This story has been all over 'Nightline,' 'This Week,' 'Good Morning America' and other shows."

The press, indeed, has driven the story. The Los Angeles Times broke the news last fall that the Democratic National Committee returned money from an Asian donor. Other outlets followed, and the names Riady and Huang became common on broadcast and in print. "Reporters knew this story a year before the Senate did," says Leslie Phillips, a former USA Today political reporter who is now a spokeswoman for Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) "The hearings have fleshed out the details."

And both parties have been adept at releasing potentially damaging documents well before the hearings. Last year, reporters could sift through lists of White House coffee guests and Air Force One passengers and Harold Ickes' insider memos. "It was as though the White House said, 'We did it,' " says Roger Desmond, director of the School of Communication at the University of Hartford. So as the testimony droned on, "the public has not felt they even needed these hearings," says Ellen Miller, executive director of Public Campaign, a Washington group pushing campaign finance reform.

Reporters will continue to dog this story, but in different ways. "The story's not in the hearings," says Galvin, in a comment widely echoed. "It's in investigative work.... The best stories are outside that room."

And other Beltway journalists will continue to take their seats at the hearings. "We're going to keep going," says Bruno. "Forget this stuff about the public not caring. They didn't care that much in the early stages of Watergate either. But the public always proves to be pretty shrewd. They know when to pay attention."