The American Spectator, the conservative monthly, has now been cleared of the spurious charge that it participated in a scheme to pay off an anti-Clinton witness, David Hale, in the Whitewater case. Which raises a question: Where was the outrage? Normally, the national press, media critics, and various journalists groups -- the Society of Professional Journalists, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press -- rush indignant to the defense of journalists when they are even tangentially scrutinized by prosecutors. But when a special counsel, appointed by Kenneth Starr, targeted the Spectator and its now-defunct Arkansas Project, which funded probes of Bill Clinton, there wasn't a peep of protest from the establishment media. Contrast this with the yowls from the press when White House aide Sidney Blumenthal claimed he'd been questioned before a Starr grand jury about his contacts with reporters. Blumenthal, it turned out, was lying, but the Spectator really was frisked by investigators. The special counsel questioned the publisher, editor, managing editor, and some writers. He examined the magazine's financial records.
The magazine was cleared, and one could say all's well that ends well. But imagine if some other news organization had to reveal its inner workings to prosecutors because of some flimsy charge. Outrage! None in this case though. Why the double standard? What comes to mind is the simple explanation: Blumenthal is liberal, the Spectator conservative (and aggressively anti-Clinton). Could the mainstream media really be so biased and petty as to let ideology and distaste govern its response? You betcha.