BOOK REVIEW
SCANDAL AND SILENCE:
MEDIA RESPONSES TO PRESIDENTIAL MISCONDUCT
ROBERT M. ENTMAN | CAMBRIDGE: POLITY PRESS, 2012. 269 PP.
By Michael Jablonski
Law Office of Michael Jablonski
[email protected]
W
hy do some incidents of presidential malfeasance erupt in scandal while others never
ignite? The answer, according to Robert
Entman, lies buried in the nature of the relationship between political elites and the media. Dig into
the relationship a little, as Entman has done, and a complex dependency between political actors and the journalism
establishment begins to emerge. The existence of a vital relationship between the two should be of no surprise to anyone
who follows law and politics, but the nature of the interaction
resembles a complex ecosystem that resembles a disease
process. Some stories act like out-of-control bacteria infecting
the body politic to produce scandal while others produce minor
symptoms as they are overwhelmed by immune systems.
The Political Immunity System
The main question explored in Scandal and Silence is the
attributes of the political immunity system, to continue the
disease metaphor. Entman, the Shapiro Professor of Public
Affairs at The George Washington University, describes the
system as a cascade of issue frames that begins with the
President and executive agencies and ends with the public
that consumes news. Between the presidency at the top of
the waterfall and the turbulent basin at the bottom, potential
scandals make stops at intermediate pools dominated by
non-administration elites such as Congressional opponents
and think-tanks before tumbling into waters controlled by
media. Issues splash upward at each level, forming a recursive system in which each level of issue management influences previous levels and feeds subsequent ones. Entman
developed the cascade model in 2004 to explain the formation of foreign policy. Here he broadens its applicability.
The Real Interest
The explication of a nuanced theoretical model should not deter
a non-specialist from reading this fascinating book. You will
be forgiven for hurrying through the first two chapters to get to
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the feast, even though the theoretical basis for the analysis is
compelling. The real interest to most readers will be empirical
research on scandals and near-scandals in high-level politics
during a twenty year period ending in 2008. Research
on both Iran-Contra and Watergate round out the narrative. The material is well-researched and presented in a compelling manner accessible to any reader.
Frenzied Reporting
An essential argument in the book is that
political scandal results from a rational process managed by political actors rather than media. The book
directly refutes the generally accepted belief that
media thrives on scandal, which results in a desire to uncover,
report, and amplify unsavory stories. On the contrary, the
preponderance of corruption is underreported. Media in this
view is not significant in initiating, moderating, or concluding
political stories. The picture that emerges from the research is
not one where media indulges in frenzied reporting of stories.
Minimizing Pressure
Entman writes that “the mainstream media are more concerned with minimizing pressure than clarifying truth.” The
evidence for his conclusion is based analysis contrasting
media reporting of political stories that became scandals
with ones that did not. For example, evidence that George
W. Bush avoided military service required after he joined the
National Guard received much less coverage during the 2000
presidential campaign than did allegations during the 1988
campaign that Dan Quayle avoided the
Vietnam draft or similar attacks on Bill Clinton in
1992. The book contrasts media reporting of Bill
Clinton’s private life with stories focused on allegations concerning George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole,
Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, and John McCain.
The book argues that real estate transactions by the Clintons
labelled the Whitewater scandal were comparable to insider
trading allegations about the sale of Harken Energy stock
by George W. Bush but media coverage was qualitatively
and quantitatively more extreme for the Clinton story. Relentless coverage of the story resulted in the appointment
of Kenneth Starr as a special prosecutor. He spent $45 million on an investigation that failed to find any illegality with
the transactions. Entman shows that
although the Boston Globe reported
that Bush had been advised by a
lawyer at the time of the sale that
it would be illegal, the story had no
traction and quietly faded away.
Blocking Reporting
So why did one story proliferate while
the other never became a scandal? Entman argues that Bush partisans employed
a strategy of blocking reporting by attacking the media. The precise strategy was
to create a frame changing the story by
arguing that reporting by “liberal media” was unfair. Entman presents
substantial evidence of a media
tendency to report scandals involving
Democratic candidates with more
energy than problems with Republicans, although he acknowledges
that the reported bias may reflect
greater competence in manipulating
media by the GOP. For example,
conservative commenters were able
to redirect the National Guard service
story from one attacking Bush to one
besieging Dan Rather. The subsequent abandonment of Rather
by CBS masked the fact that no
evidence documenting fulfillment
of the military service requirement has ever been discovered.
would push media to link the president to illegal activities. These
incidents form important examples of stories where reporters did
not follow leads because the stories were not framed by political opponents, thereby permitting diversionary tactics to work.
Supportive of Democratic
Accountability
Entman does not forgive media for
these failings. His argument assumes
that political operatives control the
importance of stories because the
role has been ceded by media. He
urges journalists to be “supportive of
democratic accountability” when
reporting political stories instead of protecting sources
in ways that circumscribe
investigation of corruption.
Although it is generally believed that scandal sells more
newspapers (in modern parlance, attracts eyeballs to
screens), in reality day-to-day
reporting is based upon relationships between sources and
reporters. The capital of a news
reporter is access to well-placed
people who can tell them about what
really happens in government and
politics. There is little reward
for the reporter in the field
to burn a source in support
of democracy. The incentive is to do otherwise. ■
Scrutinizing
the Evidence
Later chapters in the book track the development of stories that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and the role of Bush in revealing that
Valerie Plame Wilson was an undercover
agent of the CIA. Entman blames Democrats
for failing to scrutinize the evidence in ways that
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