In the latest issue of the liberal journal American Prospect, John Judis weighs in on the Lewinsky affair. Judis is deeply disturbed by the behavior of the media; specifically, by the failure of newspaper and TV owners to step in and squash their uppity, anti-Clinton reporters. THE SCRAPBOOK kids you not.
"There are multiple reasons why the press behaved so shamelessly," Judis writes, but the main one is "the abdication by media owners, publishers, top editors, and bureau chiefs of the leadership role they once played." Judis laments the passing of an era when "publishers like the [Washington] Post's Eugene Meyer and Philip Graham or Time's Henry Luce and bureau chiefs like the New York Times's Scotty Reston participated in the deliberations of policy groups." Alas, these publishers "no longer conceive of themselves as guardians of the republic."
Needless to say, this is a dizzying ideological about-face: a left-liberal encomium to the good old days of powerful media magnates and meddling plutocrats. In the next issue: an admiring profile of William Randolph Hearst, liberal in a hurry.