Friday, July 20, 2001 | 4:42 a.m.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
"THE NEWS business isn't always polite."
That was the headline over last week's holier-than-thou editor's effort by the R-J's Martha Mitchell, I mean Tom Mitchell. It was right, this business isn't about politeness. It is about truth. But there's no reason why the people in this business can't be polite, respectful and ever mindful of the incredible responsibility they have to get it right before they get it first.
The context of Mitchell's drivel was a response, I assume, to a column I wrote about the news media's chasing of Congressman Gary Condit, all the way down and through the masquerade of a life he has apparently been leading far from the watchful and knowing eyes of his family, his friends and his constituents in Modesto, Calif. Condit's own actions, to be sure, have brought a spotlight to bear on a personal life that most people, including politicians, would want to keep secret.
What I wrote last week was an effort to keep in context the failings in his personal life with the very real tragedy of a missing person, Chandra Levy, who has been gone far too long and under circumstances far too questionable to allow most people to believe anything other than that she has met with foul play. I tried to provide some measure of rationality to the concept that misdirecting the media and, yes, a family and friends, was not enough reason to hang Condit high on the front pages of every newspaper in the country. Sex, lies and, perhaps, some videotape make for good reading, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the congressman was complicit in Chandra's disappearance.
Mitchell doesn't agree. He is convinced that just because there is sex and politics and a number of polls that confirm America's interest in the story that it is news and, therefore, Condit is fair game. He chided me and others for taking a different view. That's his right, no matter how wrong he is.
The media have an obligation to ferret out the truth of every story to which the facts remain elusive. We have a responsibility to our readers to question the institutions of government, especially the police agencies, about their methods, their successes and their failures. And, when we have proof that they aren't doing their jobs, we are compelled to share that with our readers so that the public will always know how their resources are being used or abused.
What we shouldn't have, though, is a license to kill the reputations of those who manage to get themselves caught up in our stories solely for the sake of appealing to our readers' prurient or other interests. Gary Condit, at least as of this writing, seems to have led a life of considerable deception, one for which he will most likely pay dearly come the next election, at least. But that by itself doesn't make him a killer, a kidnapper or even complicitous in the disappearance of Chandra Levy. And yet the media have made him so. All in the face of no hard evidence.
And one of the first people to justify this reputational lynch mob attitude is Mitchell, the man down the street who, frankly, wouldn't know news if it hit him in the face. At least a person can come to that conclusion given the dearth of it in the paper he is supposed to edit.
Here is a man who believes that because of a person's lifestyle he should become a suspect in a homicide. Mitchell believes that because a person may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, that he is fair game to have the media rip him to shreds with impunity and without a morsel of evidence linking him to a crime. In spite of repeated denials, Mitchell has joined the lazy set in American journalism who, rather than do their homework, are content to destroy a reputation and a life in the name of ratings and newspaper sales. And here is a man who calls himself an editor who can't tell the difference between a lie about sex, and a consequent cover-up for the sake of reputation, and a lie about criminal intent.
Does the name Richard Jewell ring a bell, Tom? I suppose you don't remember the way you pilloried that innocent man, do you? Or was that just some more of your being impolite to an innocent man?
Some of us learned from the Atlanta bombing debacle. But rather than accept at face value the pronouncements of the police who are investigating Chandra's disappearance, and who maintain that Condit is not a suspect, Mitchell knows better. So much so that he is all too happy to plunder Condit on his front page without regard for the facts.
Now, I don't know if Gary Condit is in any way responsible for Chandra Levy's disappearance. I personally hope not because Congress has enough troubles in the minds of the American people to have to pack this kind of ugliness. But if he is in any way involved, it seems so far that the police are working toward such a discovery. But until that time, they continue to say he is not a suspect. The only reason the Review-Journal's editor concludes his guilt is because he didn't tell the truth about the relationship he and Chandra had. Not to be too cynical, but Mitchell should travel to Washington, D.C. -- I am sure someone can tell him how to get there -- and check out the other rumors about the less than faithful. Confronted with so many names, would he skewer each of them?
Mitchell always tries to justify his ineptness in this business by using fancy words. In this latest effort he brought out the big ones. "It is about character, integrity, abuse of power, breaking of oaths, deceit and, yes, ultimately a mysterious and probably tragic disappearance." Sounds good, no doubt. It also sounds phony.
This is a story about the disappearance of Chandra Levy. The rest of it is an attempt to justify an appeal to the worst in all of us. It is about sex, and that, not the probable death of this young lady, is what sells papers and advertising in the world in which Mitchell and the other tabloid mentalities live.
Call it what it is, Tom. And don't use words like character and integrity to justify your actions. You haven't a clue what they mean.
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