The Tabloid Tendencies of Television

There’s a familiar pattern in coverage of the adultery charge against Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

First comes the story, then the media flog themselves over the coverage of the story, then comes the media’s self-analysis over the self-flogging.

Events are moving so speedily that stages one, two and three are now crashing into one another, as the Clinton story and the media story battle for preeminence.

Time for stage four: dissection of the first three stages.

Things are getting bizarre. For example, asking New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams to comment on journalistic ethics is like asking Dr. Mengele about good surgical techniques. Yet there she was Monday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” dominating a discussion of the media’s reporting of the Clinton controversy and its possible impact on his campaign for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination.

Adams weighed in from New York, punctuating her remarks with coarse sexual language. Clinton adviser David Osborne and journalist Rod Lurie, whose story on tabloids appears in the current issue of Los Angeles magazine, were with King in Washington.

In contrast to Osborne and Lurie, Adams defended the Star for bannering Gennifer Flowers’ unsubstantiated accusation that she had a 12-year affair with Clinton. She defended some papers, including her own, for going with the story based solely on the account of the Star, a tawdry supermarket rag often driven by unsupported rumor at best, fantasy at worst. She saw nothing improper about Flowers getting paid by the Star for her account. (Lurie correctly noted that by receiving payment, Flowers, in effect, had become an employee of the tabloid.)

In an almost surreal sequence, Adams angrily accused Clinton of not denying that he had an affair with Flowers. That was untrue. Although not denying having other affairs, Clinton had indeed categorically denied having one with Flowers during his Sunday interview with Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes.” Osborne and Lurie pointed that out to Adams. Adams wouldn’t budge, replying that she, too, had seen the “60 Minutes” interview and that they were wrong.

King said he hadn’t seen the Clinton interview.

So there was no resolution to the dispute, their word against hers. Even though Adams was mistaken, viewers who had not seen or read about the “60 Minutes” interview would not have known that.

She continued to accuse Clinton of not denying the affair.

Adams said she believed Flowers. She said she didn’t believe Clinton. “There is a smell about this story,” she said. “It seems good to me.”

She had done her research. “I’ve been out in the streets asking people all day,” Adams said. “They ain’t believing him.” The notion of Adams conducting person-to-person interviews on the streets of Manhattan seemed exotic, to say the least, but no one called her on it.

Then, as this hour of weighty media analysis wound down, Adams did what every gossip with a column does, she spread gossip. She said she had received reports from other women claiming to have had affairs with Clinton. “There are a whole bunch of them who are sending in information,” she said.

She said she was too ethical to reveal the details. Then why bring up the subject at all?

Shades of Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) smearing Anita Faye Hill during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Clarence Thomas.

King should have emphatically asked Adams if she could verify the “information” she said she was receiving. But he didn’t. He should have told her to put up or shut up. But he didn’t.

So her words went out on the airwaves, resonating later that evening on another network with a bigger audience. As it turned out, Clinton was also the subject of that night’s edition of ABC’s “Nightline,” where one of the guests mentioned Adams’ statement on “Larry King Live” that she had been hearing from other women alleging affairs with Clinton.

From CNN’s lips to ABC’s.

A gossip columnist now gets quoted during a political discussion on “Nightline.” Well, gossip is as much a part of “Nightline” these days as it is the rest of the mainstream media.

And you had to hand it to Adams.

She was good television, so good that you can bet that her stint on CNN will earn her appearances on other talk shows pursuing the real scoop on Clinton.

Adams was right about one thing, and the proof is everywhere. She complained Monday: “Everyone has gone too far.”

Including “Larry King Live” for letting her go too far, and in doing so, turning itself into a live TV tabloid.

And also including the Fox Broadcasting network, for turning itself into a tabloid Sunday by letting “In Living Color” use its “Men on Film” segment--renamed “Men on Football” for the Super Bowl--practice its worst gay bashing yet.

It was a brilliant move by Fox to deploy a live edition of “In Living Color” opposite the Super Bowl halftime, and it paid off handsomely in the ratings. But letting undisciplined “In Living Color” perform live is like letting a two-year-old run loose in a chocolate factory.

In “Men on Film” sketches, Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier play flaming, sex-obsessed gay critics who lust for the males on the screen. Prissy, prancing, mincing male homosexuals being an easy laugh, the sketches are usually as bankably funny as they are crude.

On Sunday, though, the “men” zoomed way, way over the homophobic top, with the frilly, sissified critics making obnoxious and incredibly irresponsible remarks about the sexuality of a well-known actor and star athlete that--whether true or not--amounted to a loose form of “outing.”

And anal sex jokes? C’mon!

Bad taste can be fun, but in light of the AIDS epidemic, it’s time for “Men on Film” to drop the gay-promiscuity gags and perhaps even think about retiring.

Fat chance.

“In Living Color” joked Sunday about being under the scrutiny of Fox censors. That’s a laugh. What were the censors doing, watching the halftime on CBS?

From living Clinton to living color, tabloids are taking over.