Word: press
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...embattled President rose early on Monday to greet Stepashin and Putin at Gorki-9, the presidential dacha outside Moscow. The hour--7:30 a.m.--meant Yeltsin was not seeking a casual conclave. Stepashin and Putin knew what was coming; the shake-up had already surfaced in the Moscow press. Anatoli Chubais--an early Yeltsin ally--had even met with Kremlin aides on Sunday to argue that firing another Prime Minister now, with parliamentary elections set for December and a presidential vote next July, was a dangerous move that could discredit the Kremlin, the government and Russia in general. But Chubais...
America survived and prospered for a couple of centuries without knowing absolutely everything about its Presidents. Full disclosure was prevented both by the discretion of the perpetrators and by a fairly rigid sense of restraint on the part of the Establishment press. For example, when James B. ("Scotty") Reston, the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, found out that one of his reporters was looking into rumors that John Kennedy had been married to another woman before Jackie, he stopped the investigation. Said Reston: "I will not have the New York Times muckraking the President of the United...
Before Washington journalism turned into blood sport and politics turned into an exercise in serial lying, there was a fairly firm understanding by the press that personal failings were none of the public's business unless misbehavior affected the performance of public duties. Because there was so little competition, the press barons could enforce those rules. No more...
...there is a national longing to return to the good old days when political news was more about issues and policies, and less about private lives. Could there be a set of guidelines governing both press coverage and the terms of political engagement? How about a statute of limitations for past misdeeds? Maybe any act committed before the age of majority should be off limits. Or could misbehavior that violates no laws and harms no other person be declared out of bounds for scrutiny...
This all sounds reasonable enough, but it's hard to imagine that some parts of the press wouldn't continue to ask the questions and that some parts of the media wouldn't rush to report the answers, believable or not. Soon it would be everywhere. The rationale for probing has only grown easier in this post-ideological period, since so many politicians are essentially saying "Elect me because I'm the better person." Is there not then a compelling need to know just how good a person that politician is? Is he or she a hypocrite...