Will TV News Ever Apologize for Condit Hoax?

For four months beginning in May 2001, major U.S. media outlets, including all three cable news channels, took the American public for a ride -- perpetrating a hoax that a married congressman was somehow involved in the disappearance of a female intern.

As I witnessed the farce from inside cable news, I could see it was all about ratings and had nothing to do with journalism.

This week -- with these same outlets reporting a "break" in the 8-year-old murder case -- would be a good time for TV news executives to look back and give the public a big, fat apology.

TV news served up its spectacular four-month sideshow at a crucial historical moment. During this period in 2001...

 Roughly 20 Al Qaeda terrorists -- including two on the CIA terrorist watch list -- were deploying across our country, while Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota due to weird behavior at a flight school, and George Bush received a presidential briefing memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

 John Ashcroft's Justice Department was devoting vital resources to surveil prostitutes in New Orleans and medical marijuana clinics in California, while rebuffing (on Sept. 10, 2001) the FBI's request for $58 million in additional counter-terrorism funds for agents, analysts and interpreters.

 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was demanding billions in "Star Wars" funding to defend America from ballistic missiles, while threatening a presidential veto (on Sept. 9, 2001) over a Senate proposal to shift $600 million from space-based weapons systems to counter-terrorism.

As they were failing to notice or report deadly serious news during these months, an army of TV "news" personnel engaged in a mindless, feverish, daily pursuit of a previously obscure congressman, Gary Condit.

This weekend it became even clearer (it was clear to rational folks back in 2001) that Condit had nothing to do with the disappearance of D.C. intern Chandra Levy.

Major media now report that authorities are about to arrest Ingmar Guandique in the Levy murder -- a man who pled guilty in 2001 to two separate assaults on young women in the same part of D.C.

There'd never been any evidence against Condit (a conservative Democrat from central California). He was never a police suspect. But he had a sexual relationship with Levy before she disappeared, and that's all television news needed to construct its biggest news-opera since Clinton/Lewinsky.

TV news executives would like us to forget this whole bizarre episode. But we shouldn't forget. I can't, since I experienced that loony summer inside Fox News Channel, where I was an on-air contributor.

From May to Sept. 11, cable news channels covered no story more than Condit/Levy. Not the economic slowdown, not California's energy crisis, not Ashcroft's or Rumsfeld's misguided priorities, and certainly not something or someone named Al Qaeda. Al who?

For months until the morning the Twin Towers were hit, it was Condit -- not bin Laden -- who was the most despised man in America. Especially on cable news, where Condit was linked week after week to murder, with no end to speculation about how he'd caused the tragedy. Perhaps Levy died during rough sex with the congressman. Or her death was connected to Condit's ex-con brother. Or Condit's buddies in a motorcycle gang. Or because Levy was pregnant with Condit's baby.

"TV's barking heads are drooling," wrote media critic Todd Gitlin.

The story seemed propelled far more by salacious interest in Condit's sex life than concern for a missing woman. A cable viewer could hear third-hand claims about his alleged S&M practices, homosexual fantasies, leather fetishism.

A few newspapers also fed the frenzy. The Washington Post published a page 1 exclusive about an alleged affair Condit had years earlier with a teenage girl. The story was based on the girl's father, a minister, who later admitted he concocted the tale.

Amid the conjecture that filled hundreds of hours of cable news, Paula Zahn on Fox News interviewed a "world-renowned psychic" from California, who asserted that Chandra Levy's body was in a Washington. D.C. park by "some trees down in a marshy area."

PSYCHIC: This girl -- I am sorry to tell you this, but this girl is not alive.

ZAHN: How do you know that, Sylvia? Has this been something that you've been spending time thinking about and analyzing?

PSYCHIC: No, no, no. Paula, you know, you can either be one place or the other. If you're not here, you've got to be there.

ZAHN: And why are you so convinced she's there?

PSYCHIC: Because I'm a psychic. I know where she -- I know she's there. She was gone very quickly after she was first missing.

Ironically, the psychic's speculation turned out to be more accurate than much of what passed for informed analysis on the story. (A year after Levy's disappearance, her skeletal remains were found in D.C.'s Rock Creek Park where she'd been jogging.)

This embarrassing chapter in TV news history also played a role in the cable news ratings war, as Broadcasting & Cable reported in Aug. 2001: "Helped by the Chandra Levy mystery, Fox News Channel is continuing its ratings tear, besting CNN for the sixth consecutive month. Fox News' prime-time ratings have climbed one-tenth of a point each month since the former intern vanished in May."

The public humiliation of Gary Condit cost him his political career. But it boosted many TV careers, including mine. My role was peculiar -- I was part of the media frenzy while constantly denouncing it: "In the dictionary, when you look up 'media circus,'" I said on Fox, "you'll see a picture of Condit, and behind him Geraldo and O'Reilly and Larry King."

I blasted the recurrent TV segments that asked, Is there too much coverage of the Chandra Levy disappearance? -- which, I complained, was "a way of adding to the overkill, while pretending not to."

Near the beginning of the Condit-fixion, I warned that "if it turns out that Chandra is a victim of random street crime, I think some in the media are going to owe a Richard Jewell-type apology to Congressman Condit." (Jewell was the security guard who ultimately received payouts from news outlets that had suggested he planted the bomb at the Atlanta Olympics; the actual culprit was an ultra-right terrorist.)

Sure enough, writer Dominick Dunne later gave Condit an apology and an undisclosed sum to settle a suit stemming from Dunne's fanciful third-hand fable told on talk radio, CNN and elsewhere that Condit was involved in a Washington sex ring of Arab diplomats, which somehow led to Levy being kidnapped and dropped into the Atlantic Ocean from a private jet.

Noting how all the "talking heads from the O.J. Simpson and Lewinksy stories" were returning to TV for the Condit case, I joked on-air that I wouldn't be "satisfied until I hear from Tonya Harding" -- the Olympic ice skater implicated in an assault on her top competitor. I soon got my wish: Larry King actually interviewed Harding about Condit.

Hey, Larry, I was just kidding!

During my final prime-time appearance about Condit in August 2001, an enraged pundit urged him to resign from Congress and "slither away and never be heard from again." My immediate response: "What's the mainstream media going to cover when he does go away?"

I soon got my answer.

Eighteen days later, U.S. intelligence picked up chatter from intercepted conversations among Al Qaeda members indicating an imminent attack: "tomorrow is zero hour" and "the match begins tomorrow." That night, cable news was offering its own chatter - the latest gossip on Condit.

The next morning, hijacked jets torpedoed the Towers -- wiping Condit's forgettable and banal image off of TV screens for good, replaced by the haunting visage of bin Laden.

Never before had a "news" story of such absolute dominance disappeared so abruptly.

TV news owes an apology to Condit -- and to the public. I'm not holding my breath waiting.

Jeff Cohen is the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. Much of this critique first appeared in his book, Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. He founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986.

Comments

[meede]

Nothing has changed from then to today. There are no news stations for which the public can view to get news. To find out what is happening in the world or within our own border. The networks and cable have become 'newstainment' shows. They stack the deck with their own in house experts who many have only gained their knowledge over the time for which they work there. The head talkers interject their personal opinions, most times to be totally misleading to the viewers, being that the talkers have a biased view.

I constantly comment that on CNN, there will be a story that every show on that day OCD's on. You could turn a tape on as it plays every show but they all say it's Breaking News or exclusive. It's not. The shows are repetitive. It's also the fact that presently, the rest of the news of the country or the world has dropped off the face of the world. They've OCD'd Obama et al.

So, nothing has changed from then til now and no one takes responsibility for it. Most certainly when they are wrong. I don't need Campbell telling me to get my kid vaccinated. Her med school degree is from where?

[oregonbird]

Condit's 'love' affair -- excuse me? Just how sweet do you claim this happily-ever-after love was? His wife and children weren't feeling the love. Neither was Levy; she was injured by Condit on more than one occasion during their affair. Don't make me smack you with the difference between love and lust!

The point was -- apparently -- that there was no connection between the affair and her death -- but Condit wasted months of crucial investigative time refusing to talk to investigators, blocking their efforts to properly investigate, and in so doing, made himself look like a suspect, to the police, to the media, to the public. His political approach to a criminal matter: -- avoidance of making definitive statements to the police, illegal attempts to hinder the investigation -- kept the police from turning their attention elsewhere. He had noone to blame but himself; it was a consequence of entering into an adulterous affair, being a violent, abusive man, and not doing his duty, as an ordinary citizen, in providing the police with the information they needed to complete their investigation of his possible involvement, and look elsewhere.

Condit's interviews with the media were masterpieces of deception and disdain; he made it clear that he was annoyed that HIS life was being interrupted by the disappearance of a woman he 'loved' enough to cheat and beat.

[Subversive]

I remember vividly that "long, hot summer of Condit" on the cable news shows in 2001. The most disconcerting aspect of the story was how cable blowhards (O'Reilly and Geraldo were the worst, but they had a lot of company) could speculate interminably about the story with virtually no facts! The nader of the story (not mentioned by Mr. Cohen) was the drivel about Condit dropping something in a mailbox in suburban Washington. What exactly this harmless act had to do with Levy's disappearance was not explained; instead, it was used as a starting point for speculation about Condit's "strange behavior." This explains why Condit did not give press conferences during this period. No matter what denial he gave or question he answered, it all was fodder for the 24/7 cable cycle and only served to perpetuate another round of mindless speculation. I agree with Mr. Cohen that Condit is owed an apology by a hell of a lot of cable people. Condit will get it when the Devil orders overcoats.

[oregonbird]

What I recall most about this media circus was how obstructive Condit was during the investigation. He lied to investigators, he used his office and contacts to impede legal process, he misled the media -- as much as they misled the public. You act as if Condit was an innocent in the process -- he was less an innocent then as Burris is today. He had a violent, adulterous affair, the woman disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and rather than being forthcoming and giving Levy's family support, he was cold, callous and calculated. The actions he took to impede the original investigation were illegal. Apparently he did not murder the woman; however, at the time his actions and reactions were those of a classic sociopath.

Leave changing the past to Bush's spin team. Condit deserves nothing but continued dismissal from our attention.

[Subversive]

You rail against Condit and say he "misled" and "lied," and that he had a "violent" affair. How do you know? What does a his love affair have to do with Levy's murder? Condit was never charged with any crime, let alone perjury. It's a good thing you don't run the FBI.

[Siobhan11]

When I first started reading your article my first - jump to conclusion thought -- was what about poor Richardf Jewel ? and the hounding that Tanya Harding took. I was happy to see you mentioned them. Now you might say that the result and by association, Tanya may have deserved the hounding she got. But at the time it very first happened, other than that she was a rival, I wondered then why she was treated that way.

I like to follow the news. But that doesn't mean, I want to see that kind of reporting.

[peterg76]

It was clear that not only was Condit was innocent (more accurately, evidence to date pointed away from him), but he was doing what little he could to help the investigation. The media collectively committed obstruction of justice.

[Themo]

I concur with your comments totally. What happened to Mr. Condit amounted to a public lynching. The news media owe Mr. Condit a public apology. I think the media members who participated in this public execution should pay penance in one form or another for at least 8 years for the damage they unfairly heaped upon Mr. Condit. Perhaps they could teach accuracy and fairness in journalism at their respective alma maters. (I do not in any way condone Mr. Condit's affair with Miss Levy.)

[bugsbonzai]

In the scheme of things, the biggest ratings for cable news are miniscule. One or two million people at best at any given time. Less than one percent of our population is depending on these people for news. The bloated effect the 24 hour channels have isn't their ability to reach huge amounts of people, but rather to serve as an echo chamber that reverberates through repitition and saturation into other facets of our lives. If Fox News pundits rant hourly about a particular subject, those talking points get picked up by others, they get repeated again and again by radio hosts, editorialists, bloggers. They bounce back and forth through an endless maze of degrees of separation until your colleague at work repeats the talking points to you as fact without even knowing where the "information" came from in the first place. There needs to be a way to establish accountability without infringing on the "rights" of powerful people who control the media to lie their buns off.

[bignerd]

If you want to stop this media mayhem, why not force these "news" organization to pay for the talent they have put on.

If you figure a percentage of the revenue they generated for the networks, they would be entitled to a cut of the pie. After all these people were unwilling participants of the ratings wars.

As the Condit issue and later the Duke Lax issue later demonstrated, this was entertainment. Should these "entertainers" not be compensated for the use of their services?

It would be great "news" to see on a weekly basis Nancy Grace having to hand a check to each person she has sullied. She can do it on the air. Each of those people she dragged thru the mud then would get a commiserate amount of time to lambaste her live and unfiltered. We could see the repeats over and over during the off-hours info-mercials.

It would make great TV. It would also show there are repercussion to tellling journalistic lies.

Most importantly it would be big bucks. Water cooler conversation the next day would center on what Nancy was called the night before.

[viewfromuphere]

it's the 24/7 news cycle coupled with pandering to lowest common denominator isn't it...I don't know which is more the problem.

[fishgirl26]

Thanks for reminding us how inept the Bush administration was before Sept 11, 2001 and how they used the media to distract everyone.

[RobinSeattle]

And let's not forget rightwing talk radio's role in this, too. They essentially accused Condit of being the white OJ Simpson. How about an article on how media sensationalism and talk radio reinforced each other to build a rhetorical auto de fe around Condit?

So now where does Condit go to get his good name back?

[OneFish]

The only useful outcome of this fiasco is as a reinforcement to skepticism.

There will be no mass journalistic admission that journalism is not what they are all about.

The diversions continue today. What stories are shelved so that the sensational stories can be run? I think the general pattern is that power is being used and abused and is using the media to keep attentions elsewhere. Follow the money. It is, after all, your money that was stolen in unimaginable amounts over the last 8 years.

[1differentdrummer]

A recipe for irrelevancy.

[PadrePio]

Thank you for this slice of sanity. Condit was a weak Blue Dog but he, and most importantly his family, didn't deserve the treatment they received from the press. I live in California and remember the near hysteria the media feeding frenzy set off. People were gathered outside his home carrying signs that aid and yelling murder. His wife and children had to endure this idiocy all in the name of TV ratings, cable, national, and local.

[Sanity01]

This headline really caught my eye! TV NEWS (and MSM in general) doesn't apololgize. I take that back/ if they made a bad description of someones gown or shoes last night, they would acknowledge that. But to admit a mistake with a story that ruins someone's life- it ain't gonna happen. They are the ULTIMATE authority.