Michael Bugeja has written a novel of our political times, Family Values (hb). A fascinating page turner about a tough District Attorney who is running for city council. His campaign is tied to marriage and the family, but his wife is cheating on him. The local media is gunning for him. And a miscreant, almost unwittingly, creates havoc with the cities social structure and the hero's life. This book is clever and entertaining, but at the same time so real it could have been grabbed from today's headlines. 
What a difference a week makes. Last week most of the Sunday morning pundits were talking about the number of days left in the Clinton Presidency. The words "President Gore" were used. This week the story is being pushed out of the lead in favor of the approaching Iraq War.
Most voters seem to accept the President's behavior. Those same voters do not accept the press' coverage. Television reports the two loudest public anthems are: 1. I voted the Dow Jones not Paula Jones, 2. What consenting adults do in private is their business.
We are entering an extremely dangerous period. The public has, since the death of President Kennedy, been skeptical of politicians. They have come to rely on the press for learning "truth." They have leaned especially hard on electronic media since many people do not read. The recently released movie, Wag the Dog, expresses that dangerous situation.
The theme of the movie is that what is said on television defines what is real. If television says there is a war, there is war. If they say the war is over, it's over. People accept these "realities" without question. That movie is cynical and made me very angry. Yet, in the light of the real Clinton crises, the theme of that movie is being tested.
What editors and news directors are finding is that the people are not accepting the media version of reality. The public wants little to do with the current 'Clinton roast.' To most Americans it is unseemly. They are uncomfortable and want things to be safely the way they were.
People generally still have low trust in political leaders. Now that they are discounting the press' opinion, they have no one from whom trustworthy information can be obtained. Is that what the press wants, to be discounted? I don't think so.
To regain the trust of readers and viewers, the press must return to a more even handed style. Quit the rush to judgement. Take the time necessary to research stories. Give the people what they need more often than what they seem to want.
There are so many stories that never makes the papers or onto television news because editors and news directors underestimate the people's ability to understand a complex story. They would rather go for money making stories which appeal to a large audience's basest instincts. They especially want to excite the owner's accountants.
The press can teach people what they missed in school about politics, economics, and good manners. Most people have no idea that there is a big difference between the national debt and the deficit. There has been little discussion of the massive unfunded debt faced by the nation in the years shortly following the year 2000. When the President crows about how small he has made the government, few in the press point out that most of the decrease came from cuts in military personnel. At a time when we may need a strong military to defend America's national interests as well as our borders, it has been cut to the bone. When I interviewed the former Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Carlisle Trost, he told me that American warships are so short of non-nuclear missiles that on many ships there is only one reload per tube. Why hasn't the press taught the public what that means?
The press is in a bad position. Owners who have more loyalty to profit than to truth have control of the printing press and the TV studio. There are people who work in news that know what they are supposed to do. They just don't want to get fired for doing it. I will remind them of their colleagues in the former Soviet Union who had more to lose than a job. At a critical moment they chose to report the truth and allowed a process of political transformation to occur.
We in the United States are about to move through a critical period in our social and political history. President Clinton is only the tip of that iceberg. Without trust in the press the people will have no place to turn to at that critical moment for correct, usable information.
Lee A. Presser
