Are The Media Too Liberal?

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By far the biggest factor, however, is a variation on the one that is apparently motivating voters: a simple yearning for change. After a dozen years of Republican rule, journalists hunger for new battles, new issues, above all new faces. A change in ruling party always energizes politics and boosts stories to the front page or the opening of the newscast. Says a Washington Post reporter: "God, I hope Bush doesn't get re-elected. It'll be so boring: no fresh ideas, the same old people running the show and more Capitol Hill gridlock. A Clinton Administration would be a much better story." In all likelihood, four years from now the same reporters will turn on Clinton with the same jaded ferocity.

For all the charges of favoritism, Clinton has hardly enjoyed a free ride. The media -- a term carelessly used to embrace everything from supermarket tabloids to the respectable press to prime-time sitcoms -- gave Republicans much of their ammunition: the purported romance with Gennifer Flowers, controversies over his draft record and personal investments, allegations of favors to his mother and other allies. Indeed, there was something downright unseemly about the armies of reporters tripping over one another in Arkansas last spring, scrambling to dig up dirt on Clinton. But that was when polls had the Democrat third in a three-way race. As campaign reporters are quick to point out, the cheerier coverage and splashier play started when Clinton surged in the polls. Says David Lauter, who covers Clinton for the Los Angeles Times: "When people say Clinton has been favored in the press, there's a certain amount of amnesia going on. For that matter, at the end of the Gulf War people were writing that the Democrats would be silly to bother running against Bush."

Even now Clinton is being grilled about his record as Governor by news organizations that regret having taken at face value Michael Dukakis' 1988 claims about the "Massachusetts miracle," which dissipated into deep recession almost immediately after the election. Thus Clinton's supposed allies in the press are doing to him exactly what the G.O.P. did to Dukakis four years ago: taking away the main advantage of his being a challenger by forcing him to run on his record rather than his promises. The general public apparently perceives the results as evenhanded. In a national poll taken Sept. 22 for Times Mirror, 71% of respondents thought Bush had been treated fairly by the press, and 74% thought Clinton had.

Having chastised themselves for spending too much time in 1988 covering tactics, symbolism and the who-will-win horse race, journalists this time laboriously boned up on details of economics and public policy. In a typical incident, after Clinton spoke about urban issues in Los Angeles in August, reporters converged on policy aide Bruce Reed, grilling him for so many intricate details that he had to telephone headquarters for more data.