Kitty Kelley’s Unoriginal Sin

Hey Ellen,

Question: What do “Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib” by Seymour Hersh, “The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency” by James Naughtie, and “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty” by Kitty Kelley have in common?

Besides all being Bush-bashing books, that is.

Answer: All of them rely on anonymous sources and hearsay to shore up shocking allegations against George W. Bush and/or members of his family and administration — a practice that serious journalism has always rightly frowned upon.

Hersh, arguing that the responsibility for the torture of prisoners in the Iraqi prison leads all the way to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — who approved, says Hersh, such treatment in Guantanamo — relies on unnamed sources in the secret services and at the Pentagon.

Naughtie, writing that Colin Powell, in talking to British foreign secretary Jack Straw by telephone, referred to the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz group of neocons in the Bush administration as “f—ing crazies,” obviously relied on a third, unnamed, party’s account, since Powell and Straw have both denied that the conversation ever took place.

Kitty Kelley’s use of unnamed and third person sources is the shaky foundation on which she builds her case linking the President to drug use, abortion, and sexual promiscuity.

Yet, only Kitty Kelley has been trotted over the coals for this dubious practice. While the other authors — and many authors before them, including Bob Woodward, for example — may have been questioned about their use of hearsay, they have not been given anywhere near the third degree Kelley has. What’s going on here?

Does Kelley get singled out because she never worked for a mainstream publication like Hersh (a former New York Times reporter) or Naughtie (who currently is the lead anchor of BBC Radio 4’s “Today Show” and is a former chief political correspondent for the Guardian)? Is it because she is a woman (Michiko Kakutani, in her New York Times review of Kelley’s book, called it “catty,” an adjective I have never seen applied to a man’s book)?  Is it because she has written gossipy books about non-political subjects and therefore does not qualify as a “serious” writer?

Why not apply the criticism of unnamed sources across the board? The intensity of the media’s flogging of Kelly seems to me to be hypocritical, to say the least.

Margo,

The news media has met the enemy, and it is us. “Kelley’s book on Bush may be bunk,” read the headline in the Chicago Sun-Times. The article beneath did scant de-bunking. What it did do was spell out enough juicy details to help move the books out of the stores. You can bet that Kelley and her publisher, Doubleday, are enjoying the slaps.

Isn’t it wonderful when the media can have their Godiva chocolates and eat them, too? They can disclaim Kelley’s allegations while detailing them for all the world to see, so that no one can say that they missed a talked-about story. Jon Stewart did a great riff one night on how the media now serve as pipelines, not filters, turning the term “news judgment” into an oxymoron.  This is news in the “age of innuendo,” to quote the headline that topped Kakatuni’s New York Times review of “The Family.”

I had to laugh when reading Kakatuni’s tut-tutting, because just months ago on the same page an article of astounding length for a daily features section — 2,500 words — spelled out a daughter’s accusations that her father had molested her as a child but failed to mention it in his bestselling book. He claimed he had not molested her. Their disagreement was never resolved in the article, but how cathartic for those of us on the sidelines to peek into the garbage pail of someone else’s personal life. I didn’t know either party, and yet I found myself reading all the way to the end.  

The sad truth is that, under the competitive pressures of 24/7, tabloids, talk radio, and cable TV, the mainstream media has succumbed to the same impulse that drives Kelley’s books — the readers’ right to have all the trash, all the time. 

It was not always thus, as you know: The respectable press once shunned airing dirty laundry. A generation ago, Monica Lewinsky would have been a peccadillo known to political insiders, not a route to impeachment. Our world was bifurcated into “real news” and the rumor mill.  The former made it to the page or broadcast.  The latter we chatted up among ourselves.   

For media types like us, what’s painful about Kitty Kelley’s book and its arrival in the midst of a down-and-dirty political season is that she reminds us how far we’ve slipped. The dueling battle over 30-year-old military records catches the trend, and I appreciate the few who have tried to declare a moratorium on this debate, saying — no duh — that it’s squeezing out discussion of the real issues.    

There’s a hint of misogyny in the Kelley bashing, perhaps. But the reason Hersh and Naughtie get more respect is not only their superior credits as reporters, but also their subject matter. The press scrambles after Kobe and Laci — and in this case Bush family scandal — in order to get ratings and readers. But tradition, that quaint old friend, holds such stories beneath contempt for a serious journalist. Hypocrisy reigns. And as Kelley might be the first to say: God save the Queen! (Royalty makes such terrific material.)

Hey, Ellen,

Yes, Kelley herself is not exactly an innocent lamb being led to media slaughter. She knows controversy sells books and she delivers. She knows the more she is slapped by the press, the more books she will sell, so she willingly turns her other cheek. She knows just how to write up shocking but unsubstantiated allegations so she will get maximum media coverage but can’t be successfully sued. 

And the press obliges. She gets saturation coverage on television (how many authors get interviews on “The Today Show” three days in a row?) and in newspapers. And in almost every case, after scorching her for her methodology, her interlocutors and reviewers happily repeat all her supposedly ill-gotten allegations one by one.

It reminds me of Conan O’Brien’s spoof about Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl performance: Let’s see that again so we can all be shocked once more. Now let’s play it in slow motion, so we can REALLY be shocked  — as shocked, shocked as Capt. Louis Renault was when he found out that there was gambling going on at Rick’s Cafe.

My solution? It’s simple: Be skeptical of ALL unnamed sources, and don’t think just because you’ve expressed your skepticism that you can then repeat those suspect allegations with impunity.