-Caveat Lector-
[ISMAP]-THE TORONTO SUN
February 23, 1999
NBC's true colours revealed
[INLINE]
CREDIT: By MICHAEL HARRIS
Ottawa Bureau
OTTAWA -- What ever will America do about Juanita Broaddrick?
What will those Clinton sycophants in the feminist movement do?
What will the sorry U.S. senators do who acquitted the president on
political cue?
And what will a cowardly mainstream media do, now that Jane Doe No. 5
has finally been permitted to tell her story to the world, a story
that millions of Internet readers have known about for months?
Regrettably, none of the answers is flattering.
America will shuffle its feet and look out the window.
The feminists will ignore Broaddrick, the better to enjoy their
hard-won connections to the male power structure.
ALLEGATIONS
The senators will prattle, a little nervously, about unfounded
allegations, hoping no one asks whether they read Broaddrick's sealed
deposition before they cast their impeachment vote. (Many of them
did.)
The media will shrug and try to remain superior to Matt Drudge.
The older I get, the less surprised I am when our institutions fail
us spectacularly.
Whether it's the Vatican secretly championing the cause of the
murderous Augusto Pinochet, or our justice minister cutting loose the
victims of the tainted blood scandal, I have seen the movie before:
Power protects power, no matter what. Whenever this happens, any
living, breathing notion of justice dies a hard death.
The Bill Clinton story is about privilege and cowardice. That's why
he was able to lie his way out of felonies. That's why he was
permitted to bomb aspirin factories and rain missiles on Iraq under
the pretense of national security, when the real issue was personal
security. And it's why he almost managed to rape a woman in Arkansas
without anyone being the wiser -- at least in polite media circles.
Whatever small lustre attached to this profession comes from the
giant-killer factor. A journalist, a victim and the truth occasionally
prevail against the corrupt might of the establishment to the benefit
of everyone. For anyone who has actually done it, it is the glory of
the business; having the means, the colleagues and the courage to
stand up and tell the story when no one in authority wants to hear it.
NBC had the means but not the courage in the Juanita Broaddrick
affair.
Reporter Lisa Myers won Broaddrick's trust and got her terrible story
on videotape. It's the account of how Bill Clinton brutally raped the
then 35-year-old woman after inviting himself into her hotel room for
coffee.
When he was finished, he told her not to worry, that he was sterile
from a childhood disease. Putting on his sunglasses at the door, the
man who was Arkansas' attorney general at the time advised her to put
some ice on her swollen lip, a lip he had bitten during the attack.
WITNESS
At least that's her story. As far as Bill goes, I guess it depends on
what you think rape is.
Myers did her homework to get the piece to air. She found a
corroborating witness who spoke with Broaddrick immediately after the
attack. She checked the wealthy woman's past and found no skeletons.
NBC even submitted 40 questions to the White House, which went
unanswered. But regardless of what she and Washington bureau chief Tim
Russert did to confirm the story, NBC brass "raised the evidentiary
bar a little higher."
Raising the bar for Bill is turning into a favourite American
pastime.
Despite the felonies for which Clinton was impeached, Democratic
senators insisted that they didn't rise to the level of high crimes
and misdemeanours.
It was their conduct that didn't rise to the level of integrity
intended in their oath to dispense impartial justice. They let a
popular president go for partisan reasons. They pretended that the
subject matter of the Lewinsky scandal was too sleazy to even be heard
on the Senate floor.
By refusing to hear live witnesses at an impeachment trial for the
first time in U.S. history, they made the well of the senate sleazier
than Monica Lewinsky ever could have. After all, was she so much
different from Democratic senators? Both were prepared to protect the
president at all costs, even though they knew he was guilty.
The craven NBC managers who decided to break the network's word to
Juanita Broaddrick can't hide behind the excuse that their journalist
didn't have the goods. The media is in the business of presenting
legitimate stories, not air-tight legal defences.
In the end, one journalist did step to the plate. I wish I could buy
Dorothy Rabinowitz a spring bouquet.
INTEGRITY
It took an editorial writer from the staid Wall Street Journal to do
what one of the major U.S. networks and just about everybody else was
afraid to do; run the legitimate story of Clinton's alleged rape based
on a personal interview with a very believable Juanita Broaddrick.
The network still has the taped interview, but so far hasn't aired on
the side of justice.
Is that a peacock over at NBC, or just a gaudy chicken?
_________________________________________________________________
Michael Harris can be e-mailed at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit his home
page.
He is The Sun's national affairs columnist.
Letters to the editor should be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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