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Helsinki Edition
October 1998
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So you thought this paper was a Monica-free zone?
Think again.
In a paper that deals with media issues it would be difficult to ignore it. Through the media, just about the whole world has been offered a peek into President Clinton's underwear. Many have jumped at the chance. What they got was a strange mix of courtroom drama and repetitive, rather unsatisfying soft-core porn.
It felt almost surreal, didn't it? To see the most powerful man in the world - "hey, is that a nuclear missile in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?" - sit there, at the table, blushingly answering in-depth questions about his sex life, to a prosecutor and to a jury which in time expanded to include everyone with a TV set. I think most people, if forced to answer such questions under oath, would come across as slightly perverted. Such are the mechanisms of bigotry.
And when we look at the media's role in all this the question that must be asked is this: Where was the moderation? Was it really, really necessary for six US television networks (and who knows how many foreign?) to send live feeds of the videotapes? Was it a good thing to publish the whole Starr report on the Internet immediately, and indexed so everyone would find the juicy details easily? Was there a point in having a book entitled "The Starr Report - word for word" out for sale all over the world a week after it had been made public? "It's news, big news" was the obvious defence. Sure, but why?
Somebody, I don't remember who, said about the Lewinsky case: "This is grounds for divorce, not grounds for impeachment". Maybe it should have stayed that way. This became such a huge issue because we, the media, wanted it to. Because it would sell papers and books and advertising time, we made it so. And in the crazed atmosophere surrounding the Lewinsky case many reporters seem to have forgotten what they were really supposed to be doing. In a way it seems they hunted down the president just for the hell of it. To prove they could. But media was given power in order to serve the people, not to serve itself. Even the most commercial offshoots of media must have a basic ambition - the clearest vision there is. To give the people / buyers what they want.
Now more and more voices are raised, saying "we didn't want to know this", "it's too much", "we never asked to be told everything".
That must mean we failed, somewhere.
Mattias Källman |
