And What About the Truth?

By CARL BERNSTEIN

The Trump story may be the Three Mile Island of journalism: a meltdown waiting to happen. We've all known for years that the journalism business was on the verge of blowing its top. Now it's been done in full view of the country. We have seen supposedly responsible newspapers give over Page One to Donald and Ivana Trump on the same day that Nelson Mandela returned to Soweto and the Allies of World War II agreed to the unification of Germany.

Our pervasive celebrity culture, fueled by a smarmy sort of New Journalism, has made Liz Smith, "Page Six" and Suzy more important to the identity and future of the Daily News and the New York Post than a dozen Pulitzer prizewinners.

That is not to say that the breakup of the Trump marriage isn't a story. It is, and it is appropriate to have a little fun with it. After all, the Trump saga -- the ascendancy of Donald Trump as a business power, of Mr. and Mrs. Trump as social doyens -- has been a masterwork of media manipulation and self-promotion, abetted by a celebrity-worshiping press corps. But to watch a purportedly serious newspaper like Newsday report breathlessly in its lead story that "hotel records show that Maples paid no bills" is to discover where priorities in the news business are heading these days.

Donald Forst, Newsday's New York editor, explained that the war of the Trumps has riveted the media's attention "because it revolves around lust, power, money, sex. A man who was successful, who's written books or had books written for him, and now he's got a little mud on his shoes. People just lap it up."

Note the phrase "a little mud on his shoes," because it represents an attitude held by editors and reporters who should know better. They have created two standards in their newspapers and broadcasts: one for real news, in which "a little mud on somebody's shoes" is treated like a little mud, no more, no less, within the context of that person's life and work. Then there are the values of the gossip/celebrity press, a netherworld of journalism in | which flacks and hacks operate in a manner that would never be tolerated in the rest of the paper or broadcast. Fairness, accuracy and balance are abandoned in the cause of titillation.

The Trump story has been a media circus: Barbara Walters raising her glass to toast Ivana. Only in this atmosphere does it seem unsurprising that a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church (John O'Connor of New York) would publicly discuss the pastoral visit of one of the separating partners in a marriage. CARDINAL TO TRUMPS: PRAY, chimed Newsday on Page One. People who choose to share their private lives with gossip columnists and debate the terms of their divorce in newspapers get what they deserve.

So what, one might ask, if Liz Smith has acknowledged that she sometimes doesn't check the accuracy of her items? So what if in her column she dispenses advice to Ivana and can't keep straight if she is friend or journalist? So what if Suzy claims to have attended a party when she did not? So what if in the nitwit pantheon of gossip Claus Von Bulow, Sydney Biddle Barrows and Jessica Hahn are celebrated in the same tones as people of genuine accomplishment?

The answer is that readers and viewers are going to conclude, not unreasonably, that the same wacko standards are infecting the rest of the paper or magazine or broadcast.

Which gets to perhaps the central fact about today's excess of gossip and celebrity journalism: it is contemptuous of readers and viewers. It says they are incapable of dealing with real news and that they must be fed Pablum and given the illusion that they are vicariously participating in important stuff. It is also about class: a nouveau celebrity class applauded less for achievement than for the mere acquisition of money or the act of becoming famous. I suspect that the pre-eminence of this type of gossip and celebrity journalism is not unrelated to the private frustrations and envy of the people who write it: the desire for importance and participation in a world they perceive as glamorous and exciting and into which they could not otherwise gain admission.

This, incidentally, is being written by someone who has done more than his share of time in Liz Smith's column and a few others. As I write this, "Page Six" of the New York Post and the gossip columnist of the Washington Times have called to ask for details about the piece you are now reading -- and "Is it true that it begins with a sentence about Liz Smith and the breakup of your marriage?" Who cares?

None of this is to say there isn't a place for celebrity journalism. It can and should be fun, occasionally bitchy and lurid, rich in relevant information about the lives of the rich and famous and the accomplished. But it should be based on reporting. And real reporting is nothing more than the best obtainable version of the truth. Getting at the truth is hard work. It requires phone calls, knocking on doors, spending hours with people who know the subject and, most important of all, giving credence to information that might be contrary to a reporter's preconceived notion of the story. Real life is about gray; it doesn't usually follow the trajectory of the gossip chroniclers: soaring careers one day, plummeting fortunes the next. Real life is about context, and so is real journalism.

Perhaps inevitably, the cloud of the new celebrity journalism hangs now over even the most rarefied atmosphere in our profession, the New York Times. Forget how confused the Times was about what to do with the Trump story. In that same week the Times also found the need to review Nelson Mandela's performance. SOME FIND MANDELA'S VISION LIMITED, said the headline, four days after the man had emerged from 27 years in the African Gulag. Mandela had himself become a celebrity to be regarded through the cynical eye of this New Journalism, the subject of its infectious, abbreviated tone, the obsession with appearance as opposed to substance. These are the warning signs of meltdown. Ciao, Nelson. Hello, Donald. Hello, Ivana.