Joe Klein is not only a disgrace to his profession, he may be nuts, too.
By DAVID CORN
WASHINGTON D.C. --
I witnessed the wrath of Anonymous, and it was not pretty.
Yesterday, Joe Klein, who regularly uses his Newsweek column to berate President Clinton as an unreliable, immature, promiscuous baby-boomer, confessed that he was, after all, the author of the novel "Primary Colors," the purportedly "thinly-veiled account" of Clinton's 1992 campaign. Klein, who had repeatedly and adamantly denied that he was Anonymous, finally acknowledged that he had lied -- to his workmates, to his friends and to the public he professes to serve.
Klein's forced admission -- which came only after the Washington Post got the goods on him -- reminded me of an ugly scene I uncomfortably sat through a few months ago. The setting was the bar at the Wayfarer Hotel in Bedford, New Hampshire, the unofficial drinking capital for the media corps that had flooded the Granite State for the Republican primary.
That night I was at a table with Jacob Weisberg, the political scribbler for New York magazine. We were gossiping about fellow journalists, when Klein passed by. He spotted Weisberg and came to a stop. That week New York had published a piece about how a literary expert had used a computer program to pinpoint tell-tale similarities between Klein's bylined writings and "Primary Colors." Weisberg had written a sidebar noting that there were other reasons to suspect Klein. The author of the book, Weisberg reported, was knowledgeable about New York politics, a onetime Clintonphile who now felt betrayed, and a man obsessed about the subject of race. All these attributes fit Klein.
Klein was enraged. He launched into a blistering attack on Weisberg. Why hadn't New York -- where Klein once had been the political columnist -- called him, he yelled, for a comment? (A comment which, obviously, would have been a lie.) "Thanks, thanks, a lot, Jacob," he said with bitter sarcasm. "That was real nice." Klein's face was red. His eyes steely. He wouldn't let Weisberg talk. "And that bit about being obsessed about race -- I really liked that. Do you think being concerned about an important national issue is the same as being obsessed?" How could the magazine do this to him, he demanded to know, playing the wrongly accused to perfection.
Increasingly wound up, he charged Weisberg with possessing no class and making improper use of off-the-record information. Getting meaner, Klein said Weisberg was gaining a reputation in journalistic circles as an unlikeable fellow not worthy of a dinner-party invitation. (I know of no evidence of this and find Weisberg entirely likable.) When Weisberg tried to squeeze in a word, Klein shot him the look of daggers and hissed: "You don't understand. This is the very last time you and I will ever speak. The last time."
I had rarely seen such a display of unrelenting anger. Weisberg turned white. Finally, Klein huffed, "By the way, this is off-the- record. You do know what off-the-record is, Jake, don't you?" Then he stormed off. (Since I do not believe public outbursts can be placed off-the-record ex post facto, I do not feel bound by Klein's parting comment.)
Until his explosion, I was a member of the it's-probably-Klein school of thought regarding the identity of Anonymous. But this performance made me question that theory. How could he have been that upset -- and so vicious in attacking a colleague's story on the subject -- if he was indeed Anonymous?
Now that we know the truth, I am even more curious about that episode. Was Klein just being a good actor? Or had the strain of deceit gotten to him? Maybe he had adopted a schizophrenia that allowed him to live his lie -- that is, until he went to deposit his royalty checks in the bank. Or perhaps he would do almost anything -- including mistreating a colleague -- to protect his cover.
Yesterday Klein defended his previous denials -- such as the one in which he said he would stake his "journalistic credibility" on his statements that he was not Anonymous. He likened such statements to "lying to protect a source." That's an odious comparison, and one which gives the protection of sources a bad name. Klein's con job can only contribute to the already too-high level of public cynicism regarding journalists and journalism. Media consumers will be right to ask, "What else is he (and they) lying about?"
Even more disturbing was the response of the top brass at Newsweek. Was Klein fired on the spot for lying to the public while on the magazine's payroll? No. In fact, editor Maynard Parker, who knew of Klein's dirty little secret for a year, lashed out at the critics, advising all those concerned about the ethics of the situation to "get a life." Should someone so dismissive of honesty in journalism be at the helm of a news magazine?
Richard Smith, Newsweek's left-in-the-dark editor-in-chief, is also standing firmly behind his writer, noting, with a straight face, that Klein "has held himself to the highest standards of integrity." Asked if Klein felt bad about misleading other journalists -- including his own colleagues at Newsweek who published a story about Anonymous's identity that Parker knew to be wrong -- Smith said that Klein "agonized over it," especially when the New York magazine story appeared last February. There was little sign of either agony, or remorse, from Klein at his news conference yesterday.
Smith, at least, ought to suspend Klein until after the election and perhaps Parker, too. But he won't. Meanwhile, Klein's book publishers are treating the tawdry spectacle as the publicity coup of the year. As Larry Kirshbaum, president and chief executive editor of Warner Books, which is publishing the paperback edition of "Primary Colors," crowed, "The notoriety and the controversy that will now swirl around it again is very helpful. 'Primary Colors' has become once again a media event."
Over at CBS News, where Klein is a commentator, the mood is not as genial. Appearing on the network last February, Klein flat-out lied to the audience and said, "It's not me." Angry CBS News executives are weighing whether or not to can Klein. Their decision will reportedly be based in part on whether a backlash against Klein develops. It's the weather-vane school of journalistic ethics.
Klein owes a profound apology to the viewers of CBS and the readers of Newsweek, who also deserve an apology from Smith and Parker. He owes an apology to those journalists who try to increase the amount of truth in the world and now are undermined as a class. By the way, he also owes an apology to Weisberg.
But don't hold your breath, Jake.
David Corn is Washington editor of The Nation magazine, and a regular contributor to Salon. He can be reached at dacor@aol.com
Joe Klein: hero or bum? Join the conversation in the Media section of Table Talk.
MSNBC's crash coverage: not ready for prime time
CNN had to wait six years for the disaster (the Challenger) that would make viewers sit up and take notice of just how good the 24 hour cable news operation was. Microsoft and NBC's cable news and Internet venture, MSNBC, got its mettle-testing disaster just three days after its launch. But for the fledgling network, the explosion of TWA Flight 800 Wednesday night was too much, too soon.
Like CNN and the three broadcast networks, MSNBC interrupted its scheduled programming to go into disaster mode shortly before 9 p.m. EDT, with initial reports that the Paris-bound jet had gone down off the coast of Long Island shortly after takeoff from New York's JFK airport. But MSNBC's coverage, helmed into West Coast prime time by nightly news anchor Brian Williams, revealed a news operation still suffering from years of NBC budget cuts, one that has yet to fully reap the benefits of Bill Gates' $500 million shot in the arm.
MSNBC relied on video feed from NBC affiliate WNBC's helicopter -- unvarying overhead shots of burning fuel on black water. After three hours of this, Williams, possibly under some kind of spell, declared that if you looked really hard, the fires sort of took on the shape of a fuselage. NBC Washington correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported from the newsroom about the White House, CIA, NTSB and FAA response, which amounted to hasty press releases offering little information. Williams took telephone reports from an Associated Press Paris correspondent at DeGaulle airport, various eyewitnesses and aviation and terrorism experts. The MSNBC helium-headed Internet correspondent Mary Kathleen Flynn popped in to show viewers how to get crash information on the Web. And that was about it.
Meanwhile, CNN had slipped seamlessly into high alert and was churning out on-camera reports from its Paris and Washington bureau chiefs. The news operation's longevity (and, some might say, its coziness with government and business sources) resulted in a one-on-one interview with NTSB chairman James Hall (by Washington correspondent Carl Rochelle). But even more important than these minor coups was the overall cautious tone of CNN's coverage. The possibility of terrorism was raised, but with constant reminders that there was no hard information available. (Of course, the lack of factual info does not deter TV news, CNN included, from going wall-to-wall with speculation-heavy coverage whenever one of these crises comes along -- although it should. But that's another story.)
Williams, on the other hand, was out of control. He kept returning to the terrorism angle ("This does come now one day before the beginning of the Olympic Games in the United States"), with the aging-airliner-theory a close second. At one point, while talking by phone to airline industry critic David Stempler, president of AirTrav Advisors, Williams practically started to morph into "The X-Files's" Fox Mulder before our eyes, riffing on Federico Pena's behavior after the ValuJet crash ("Here was the Secretary of Transportation all but urging Americans to hop on the next airline...") in an attitude thickly implying Conspiracy. Williams was extraordinarily opinionated for a network anchor, but his comments were ill-considered. Someone should have firmly reminded him what all the network speculation about the Oklahoma City bombing being the work of Middle Eastern terrorists came to.
MSNBC's hot-headed, almosty tabloid-y coverage (Williams: "There will be pieces of this jetliner -- talk about gruesome details -- washing up along the shore of Long Island") was in keeping with the look and tone of the new network. Determined to lure young viewers back to TV news, MSNBC -- the NBC half anyway -- has gone the news-ertainment route, starting with its incredibly ugly "Friends"-Meets-MTV newsroom, decorated in allegedly hip exposed brick, distressed chrome and computer processor boards. Heading into the commercial breaks, the hand-held camera tilts and roams as if we're watching an episode of "Homicide." It's all very dress-down Friday, and it's apparently supposed to symbolize both the high-tech environment of its benefactor and signal to viewers that this is not old-fogey CNN.
To that end, MSNBC is as fixated with the Net as CNN is with the stock market. But with very few exceptions, the MSNBC on-air personalities, many of whom have been culled from the NBC talent pool, seem to have no feel (or, in afternoon anchor John Gibson's case, display open contempt) for this Internet-thingie. Monday night, during his big interview with President Clinton, Tom Brokaw relayed e-mail questions to the President, reading them off the TelePrompter and never glancing at the (prop?) laptop conspicuously placed on the table between them.
Viewers are encouraged to visit the MSNBC website to learn more about stories. But good luck when you do. MSNBC is just the old Microsoft Network site with news content now provided by NBC, and it's not even adequately updated. When I first learned about the TWA crash Wednesday night after fortuitously clicking on the CNN website at 8:25 p.m. (PST), there was already a news story of several paragraphs, updated within the past 15 minutes, and live links to TWA, Boeing and other sites. MSNBC.com's breaking news story was a short wire service blurb that hadn't been updated in an hour.
CNN may be stodgy and square and plugged into the establishment. But after watching MSNBC's painful attempts to shift from casual to crisis, it was a relief to turn on CNN and find the news being delivered by adults.