SF Chronicle Creating News
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--Ways
we Think Series--
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When
William Randolph Hearst was alive and in full control of his newspaper
empire, he used it to attack presidents, senators, and others he did not
like. He also used it as his platform for conducting and wielding public
opinion. The Hearst Corporation now owns a smaller paper empire, but it
still attempts to fashion public opinion and official behavior.
Gibbs
Magazine has discussed the SF
Chronicle and the SF Examiner is other articles and
observed that the Hearst's Chronicle still functions to create
news. That attempt was again obvious last week.
In the SF Chronicle’s Friday edition, the paper weighed in on the Congressman Gary Condit /Chandra Levy affair. Although this Condit situation is indeed sordid and becoming more unseemly by the day and by new revelations, the SF Chronicle is attempting to force official and public action against Condit on this matter.
Friday,
in a poorly written and typographically plagued editorial—an offense for which
this giant media outlet roundly criticized the new Ted Fang SF Examiner
a few months ago (as a part of their strategy to kill that paper)--the paper
lambasted Condit for not offering full disclosure of the details of his
relationship with Chandra Levy; they implied and asked whether Condit has
destroyed evidence and lied to FBI agents about his relationship with her and
other women. They stated that by trying to get a SF airline stewardess he is
alleged to have had an affair with to lie to the FBI about it, he may have been
destroying evidence.
Such
a broad editorial does not breach the unsheathed protocol of aggressive newspapers,
and the SF Chronicle is an aggressive newspaper. However, they did
not stop there.
On
Saturday of last week, the next day, they carried two front-page articles
on Congressman Gary Condit: Grand Jury to Tackle Missing Intern Case
and Condit’s Seat Suddenly ‘In Play’. In the first story,
they simply reverted to one of their old tricks of creating news
in order to develop momentum in this matter. They reported that the Grand
Jury will call Condit and his staff to testify about Condit’s relationship
with Levy; they used the journalistic cloak of: “The source asked not
to be named….” Yet Washington, DC authorities, the AP reports,
directly refuted this statement.
This
is not new for the SF Chronicle. Seemingly,
in the absence of factual material, they have here concocted fiction--a
fiction that concurs with their editorial from the day before.
News
media like to say that they are the fourth arm of government, concerned
about truth, and they often say that they ask the questions the people
of America would ask if they had access.
That is a lofty claim, but clearly, most news media operate not
for the public’s good but to make money; second, they operate to control
and fashion public opinion and actions. This second reason has been a
historically prominent way Hearst has used his papers. Now that the SF
Chronicle is a Hearst paper, has full dominance of the San Francisco
market, and because they are so far away from Washington, they seemingly
feel free to write loosely about actions here and there.
The problem for the SF Chronicle is that officials in Washington, DC also read the Chronicle, as they did this time, and they have caught the SF Chronicle in news creation. Most Americans would like for Condit to be more forthcoming, but to create leads where there are no leads and to make statements without support are not the right ways to generate momentum. Officials in the DC Grand Jury and police department have denied that they are looking into the Chandra Levy disappeance.
The second article the paper ran on Condit was not really news. It is a given that one's political position is up for grabs whenever adverse publicity surrounds him or her. But the reason behind the second story was to make readers think that the world is aflame with Congressman Condit news and to reinforce the paper's editorial stance of the day before.
The obvious intent of the Chronicle's articles was not news, but rather to dislodge Congressman Condit from his unwillingness to fully disclose his relationship with Chandra Levy and other women. Since Gary Hart's day, the news media have begun to major in this type of journalism. But the sad truth behind this story is that the SF Chronicle's news creation will occur again; it is a staple of that newspaper.[]
Frank
A. Jones
7/9/01
