Since cracking the Watergate scandal with fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in 1972, Carl Bernstein has become a popular media pundit in the political commentary circuit. Yet before a Page Auditorium audience full of students and parents Saturday, Bernstein slammed the two realms within which he has spent most of his life-media and politics.
"Something's not working both in our media and in our political system," Bernstein said. "To use the psychobabble of the day, they're both dysfunctional."
The media has become "bastardized," he said, and has forgotten the tenets of good journalism.
"We in the media are losing sight of the ideal of the best attainable version of the truth and are increasingly seeing the domination of [coverage] that has less to do with truth or context," he said.
Bernstein recounted that on the day real estate developer Donald Trump's involvement with Marla Maples became public, newspapers chose to run the story with more prominence than the stories of Nelson Mandela's return from prison and the agreement to reunify Germany, both of which occurred that day.
"On the first edition of Prime Time Live, the heralded newsmagazine with Diane Sawyer," Bernstein said, "Diane did not go to the Berlin Wall. Diane did not go to Johannesburg. Diane went to the apartment of Marla Maples. That is the triumph of Idiot Culture."
As guilty parties in this triumph, Bernstein named media king Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, radio personality Howard Stern and the TV show The McLaughlin Group, which he deemed the "pantheon of Idiot Culture."
"Instead of challenging our readers, we give them what we think they want without giving the best attainable version of the truth," Bernstein said. "For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the loud and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, and even our cultural ideal."
Bernstein also condemned the cash-saturated political system, which he said has become "corrupted, corroded-almost completely unresponsive to any cause that is not sponsored by millions of dollars."
As evidence, he pointed to the virtual city of "lobbyists, pollsters, [public relations] people, grassroots organizations and corporate special interests" that occupies a few blocks near Capitol Hill.
"Washington has become awash with dirty money and those who will take it," Bernstein said.
But he had only praise for the press's coverage of the current presidential race, and blamed the candidates themselves for any public disinterest in the election.
"Something's not working if these two men are the best we have to offer in a nation of 270 million people," Bernstein said as the crowd erupted in applause and laughter. "Maybe if you're really interested, you might pay attention to two preppy princes avenging the death of their fathers."
Bernstein then spent time analyzing the campaign as he has done nationwide on various TV shows. Vice President Al Gore is wrong to refuse President Bill Clinton's help on the campaign trail, Bernstein said, and real debate on the issues has become lost in a "fog of rhetoric."
Bernstein also discussed the potential of the Internet to provide the public with more in-depth analysis than is possible in print or on television, and plugged voter.com-his Web site-on political news and analysis.
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