Guest Column: Arrogance Thy Name Is Media

Not long ago a lengthy story appeared on the front pages of the nation’s largest circulation newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. The story was about a well-known business figure, and it consumed a remarkable 74 column inches of the newspaper.

The subtitle of the story might have been a line from Shakespeare’s Richard III: “I see thy glory, like a shooting star, fall to base earth from the firmament.” The subject of the article, once powerful and famous, had been duped by a bogus philanthropy scheme. He had made “surprisingly lackluster investments… in the past decade.” His earlier success was said to be due primarily to his silent partner. Today he is losing, if not his shirt, at least his cuffs and collar.

This remarkable story of financial descent, tempered only with a few kind words for the subject’s compassion for the downtrodden, was of particular interest to me, because it was about me.

I left the world of finance and investment in 1972 to serve as President Nixon’s deputy secretary of the treasury and “energy czar,” then as treasury secretary for him and President Ford. I knew then—and know much better now—that once one leaves the gray boardrooms of the business world for service in the national government, all the rules change forever.

Once one enters public service, the media consider it fair game to publish almost any allegation, rely on persons of impeachable character, penetrate into the most personal matters—and in righteous tones drag anything disparaging or negative across the nation’s newspapers and television screens.

Reporters and editors do so because they believe “the public has a right to know”—to know everything and anything. In single-minded pursuit of that belief, the press has rummaged through Henry Kissinger’s Georgetown garbage, tracked down Judge Robert Bork’s video rental record, found someone to talk about the Speaker of the House’s sexual habits of twenty years ago, and dug out Senator Phil Gramm’s failed Grade B movie investment of the same era.

Now the media have a right, indeed a duty, to investigate and expose wrongdoing. The media have a right and a duty to give us the bad news when there is bad news. But today’s media often are consumed by the obsession to wage battles of their own against selected targets. It matters little to the media whether you have led an exemplary life of distinction in your profession, leadership to your country, and service to your fellowman.

In the eyes of the media, once you step into the public arena, you are fit carrion for the hyenas. Anything they can throw out on page one or the evening news about you—the more shocking the better—offers the prospect of higher ratings, more reportorial awards, and the chance to influence the course of national political events.

The arrogance of modern journalism is such that truth is only an incidental component of many attack stories. Some years ago, during my tenure as treasury secretary, I was told that a story was being spread around Washington which claimed that I had been engaged in laundering drug money while a senior partner at Salomon Brothers, one of the world’s most respected investment firms. This absurd story, I was told, was being peddled around Washington by Mel Elfin, Newsweek’s bureau chief, and a reporter, Jim Bishop.

Needless to say, I was furious. I invited Elfin and Bishop into my office to ask for an explanation. I am still shocked by Elfin’s reply. He offered not a shred of fact to support this vicious rumor, but instead said that since I was a leading candidate for the vice-presidency, his job was to smoke out whatever damaging information about me he could find. Floating stories like this, he said, was a way of getting people to come forward with information that journalists might not find through a normal inquiry.

“Even if it ruins a person’s reputation?” I asked incredulously. And he merely repeated the statement. (Happily, no story was ever published.) I looked up at the portrait of Alexander Hamilton on my wall and silently wished that such matters could be promptly and fatally settled on the field of honor—although admittedly that didn’t work out too well for Hamilton.

Nor does avoiding public office guarantee immunity. You are fair game if a lifetime of private sector work has made you wealthy and successful, because the majority of the press seem to believe that you must have done something shockingly wrong to arrive at that happy condition. To today’s news media, a good story is one that brings down some prominent victim. The age of heroes is over; only potential targets remain.

What happens when the media make mistakes? What happens when some innocent person is badly damaged by false or biased reporting? In a moment of admirable candor, Lawrence Grossman, former president of NBC news, conceded that “one of the problems is [that] we don’t apologize for our mistakes.”

More often the victim is left in the position of former Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan. Amid a torrent of press reports about criminality and corruption, he was indicted, forced to resign from the cabinet, and prosecuted for an alleged crime committed when he was a partner in a New Jersey construction firm. Much later he was resoundingly acquitted of the charges. A reporter covering the trial asked Donovan what he would do next. Donovan’s reply was one of the most poignant lines of that era: “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”

Too often the media seem driven by the dark side of their nature. They have a fixation on failure, a delight in defeat, an enthusiasm for embarrassment. They are on a relentless assault against human dignity, personal privacy, and all that is good and decent in American life.

No wonder so many competent, honorable, public-spirited people are loath to enter public life. I remember vividly, when I was treasury secretary, asking a distinguished and successful executive to come and serve with me at the Treasury. The man was a credit to his profession and would have been an outstanding public servant in any administration. He was willing to accept the burden of career and family sacrifice to serve, but he turned me down on the sole grounds that he did not care to have his personal reputation dragged through the mud by the Washington press corps.

Former Senator John Danforth, an exceptionally honorable public servant who witnessed many public executions of good people who accepted presidential appointments, was moved to write:

[T]he reputation… you have worked a lifetime to build can be wiped out in the months that will pass between your nomination and the confirmation that may or may not follow….

If there is to be some minimum standard of decency we accord Presidential nominees, it will arise from an expression of disgust by the American people…. [reflecting] our sense that… [they] are more than stand-ins for political positions. They are human beings…. Until that recognition dawns upon us, my advice is: if the President calls, just say no.”

Americans agree with Senator Danforth. According to a recent survey conducted by the Times Mirror Corporation, sixty percent of the public believes the press is too adversarial, and most believe that the press shamelessly mixes reporting and bias in its presentations. These biases are well known, and the public understands that reporters smuggle these prejudices into their news stories at every opportunity.

According to the same survey, journalists arrogantly dismiss such criticisms in view of their role as the “watchdogs of democracy.” But if this is so, why are they held in such low esteem by the very public they purport to protect? The only people, it seems, who hold journalists in high esteem are themselves.

Many in the news media see their role as one of forcing change, and given their well-documented liberal bias, their reporting favors change in a liberal direction. Leaders who resist such change, or worse, who advocate change in a conservative direction, become prime targets for whatever mud can be found and flung.

The Wall Street Journal story about me, by reporter G. Bruce Knecht, selectively reviewed my business and private life since I left public office in 1977 and artfully made me look like a chump, if not a crook. The few positive observations in his article were used to illustrate an amazing contradiction: that Bill Simon had actually on occasion interrupted his career of incompetence and arrogance to do a few things that decent people might find admirable.

Many who witness the vicious and virulent reporting that now dominates American journalism may conclude, like Senator Danforth, that there is simply no point in exposing themselves to such treatment by appearing even briefly on the public stage. Those decisions will make the nation’s public life the poorer, and for that the news media must shoulder much of the blame.

Author

  • William E. Simon

    William Edward Simon (1927 – 2000) was a businessman, a Secretary of Treasury of the U.S. for three years, and a philanthropist. Outside of government, he was a successful businessman and philanthropist. The William E. Simon Foundation carries on this legacy. He was a strong advocate of laissez-faire capitalism. He wrote, "There is only one social system that reflects the sovereignty of the individual: the free-market, or capitalist, system".

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