Impeachment and the Internet

On the Net and the Web this year, we saw one kind of revolution after another: the Web helped elected a governor, saw the spread of new kinds of messaging communities like ICQ and Hotline, the rapid spread of politicized movements like OS and Free Software, the storming of the digital world by retailers and big cornporations, and oh yes, we were shocked by the sudden and highly pornographic appearance here of the Kenneth Starr report one day. But it's easy to be online for days and not quite grasp what's going on out there, which is a full-blown constitutional crisis. The differences between the old and new information cultures have never been more clearly defined than by Linda, Monica, Ken, Bill, Sam, Cokie and the members of the House Judiciary Committee.

Life on the Net has never seemed more disconnected and surreal than in the past couple weeks. There's one kind of agenda in here, and another out there, as anybody who turns off their computer and turns on the news learns in a flash.

It seems there's a constitutional crisis going on out in the capitol, even as it's possible to go for days, even weeks online and never hear a word about it. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the dumping of the pornographic Starr Report online was that we all had no choice but to realize it was there, and pay some attention to it.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal has crystallized the difference between old and new media as nothing before, especially the new freedom and ability of individuals to set their own agendas and ignore the nightmare being selected for us out there.

New media have benefited enormously from this schism. We have a great new way to define ourselves: We are not Them. On the Net and Web, and elsewhere in the vast spectrum of new information technologies, on chat and message boards, mailings and Websites, the talk this year has never really been much about the scandal in Washington (with the striking exception of the online dissemination of the Starr report itself). On the Web, Minnesota Governor-Elect Jesse Ventura helped win his election, thousands of communities sprouted and grew in new kinds of messaging communities, new digital technologies are forcing the re-structuring of music and other industries, and the Open Source and Free Software movements grew by the hundreds of thousands, challenging the primacy of megacorporations like Microsoft and AOL, and retailers stormed online like the infantry at Omaha Beach.

The public refuses to buy into the "White House Under Siege" mentality that has overwhelmed media. It has finally rebelled against the creepy Punditocracy that has encamped in the capitol and hi-jacked the government. They are simply ignoring them, along with their eternal arguments, insider insights, predictions and posturing. Finally given a choice, we have made one. We now create our own media, publish our own opinions, create our own news, talk to the people we want to talk to.

This year, we get to see media history being made, online and off.

Could anyone in media have imagined, just a decade ago, that during the same week the Congress was moving to impeach the President of the United States, the nation's two most prestigious newsmagazines would display on their covers a story about an actress who takes her clothes off on Broadway and a story about Moses, promoting a new animated movie?

What exactly is the message traditional journalism was bringing to the American public last week: that after a year of obsessive pursuit of sex and scandal, the press has decided that sexy actresses and Biblical cartoons are ultimately more important? What does it take for a story about civics to make it onto the cover of a newsmagazine these days - a full-blown revolution, or a movie about one?

For all the hype and fuss over Tina Brown's recent departure from the New Yorker, it turns out the nation's most influential magazine in recent years has really been Entertainment Weekly. Almost every other magazine now seems to aspire to cover the same subjects it does, though not as well. Media have been turned upside down lately, and not just by the Internet.

Last week was the week that the House Judiciary debated and voted on articles of impeachment, and the country lurched towards its most serious constitutional crisis in a generation. In response to this grave story, Newsweek featured a scantily-clad Nicole Kidman, under this coverline: "HOT TICKET: Nicole Kidman bares all - about her daring Broadway debut, marriage to Tom Cruise and their fight for privacy."

Meanwhile, over at Time-Warner-Turner, the nation's most intensely synergistic media company, Time's cover story was "Who Was Moses?" New research, said the magazine's cover, "and an epic animated movie offer a fresh look at a hero for our time." There was, in fact, a story on Moses inside, although one offering little in way of revelation or fresh insight about the historic Moses. The story's real here was the $75 million- plus movie's creator, DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg, lovingly profiled under the headline "The Prince and the Promoter."

Modern journalism has increasingly become an instrument of mass-marketing. If you tore off the covers of any dozen slick national weeklies or monthlies, you'd be hard pressed to tell one from another, since so many are stuffed with the same stories about celebrities, media moguls and hot new movies. Newsmagazines and newspaper feature sections have become a sort of contemporary pop - cultural flea market, in which the movie, book, TV show or toy du jour is shamelessly flogged.

Though the trend's been intensifying for years, it's still stunning to see Time and Newsweek turn to showbiz for newsstand sales in what may well be one of the country's most historic political weeks. And the odd thing is, it's hard to know quite what to feel about it. Their cover stories are a lot more interesting than the discussions in the House Judiciary Committee, if not nearly as significant. Perhaps these magazines are more in touch with the public than we realized.

The public disengaged from the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal months ago, happy to leave Washington journalists and politicians to obsess about it, although most Americans thought the crisis would be long over by now. Polls, surveys and the November election - all strong, clear guides to the public's feelings - don't seem to have penetrated the Kryptonite Wall surrounding the Capitol, whose denizens breathe their own distinctive air and talk only to themselves. The yearlong civil conflict between the American people and the Washington political and journalist establishment does seem to be coming to a head, the differences in values and priorities never clearer or more troubling. The politicians and pundits will finally have to decide, and once and for all, whether they represent the public or their own oddly confined agenda. But they will have to this without much in the way of help from Time or Newsweek. After exploiting and pursuing sex and scandal for years, it mysteriously seems to be barely worth their time any more.

In Washington, our best journalists and elected representatives seem locked in some sort of moral death-dance, unable to let go of a drama nobody else seems to want to pursue. They seem to have eyes only for one another. This is far beyond the worst nightmare of journalism professors or media pundits.

So perhaps it's not surprising that Time and Newsweek would turn to Hollywood rather than Washington in one of the country's gravest hours. Time devoted four pages - about half the length of the "Prince of Egypt" package -- to the impeachment. Newsweek ran half as many pages, focusing its major firepower on Nicole Kidman's Broadway debut (featuring a seconds-long nude scene), and on the struggle she and hubby Tom Cruise have waged against an intrusive media to maintain their privacy. The only obvious different between that cover and last weeks' edition of the National Enquirer is that Newsweek uses slicker paper and takes better pictures.

As for Time, its decision to hype a holiday cartoon under the transparently thin fig-leaf of religious history rather than cover impeachment proceedings against the President is historic in itself. One can only imagine Henry Luce rising from the grave, reading this issue and becoming an instantly disgruntled postal worker.

Aren't these the folks who have been sounding the alarm for years about the irresponsible, violence, dangerous and lurid nature of new media like rap, video games and the Internet? About the kid's lack of interest in public affairs? About the tabloidization of news? What do the editors of Time and Newsweek speak about when they visit classrooms or appear on those media panel talk-a-thons? Coverage of impeachment or stories about how they covered Nicole Kidman's nude scene and Jeffrey Katzenberg's animation instincts? The covers don't really evoke Hollywood or glamour so much as Alice's Wonderland. The White Rabbit has taken over.

On Saturday, New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote a very smart op-ed column suggesting that the chasm between media and the pubic reflect a "deeper rebellion afoot that transcends and may well outlast the specific politics of the Clinton wars. In l988 the public didn't merely reject the prognostications and moral homilies of the Sam and Cokies; it turned against the media's sermonizing cultural potentates too. The disconnect that played out in the polls and the November election was echoed in the mass culture in which Americans also vote, albeit with clickers at home and dollars at the multiplex."

This is wise, and true as far as it goes. I would push it a bit farther. The Clinton/Lewinsky scandal crystallizes the awful new reality that not only is the President of the United States on shaky moral ground, but so is the institution responsible for covering his administration and for helping us grasp the common civic life of or country.

Once proud and influential news organizations have gone to ground, burrowing their heads as deep into the sand as they will go.

They have betrayed their own roots and traditions, both in the way they have obsessed on this story and the way they have failed to cover its real significance. If they have any remaining function at all beyond selling products, sensationalizing the news, fragmenting our civic life, and entertaining us, it is less and less clear what that function may be.

As an institution long ago and far away rooted in moral tradition and purpose, the press is so turned around that it's hard to tell whether they're doing more damage when they cover our political life, or when they don't.

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