1987: What's News?

March 4: Reagan delivers his "my heart tells me I didn't do it" Iran-Contra speech.

On March 5, Congressman Henry Gonzalez introduces an impeachment resolution.

The resolution, writes Mark Hertsgaard in On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, was—

...ignored by major news organizations, apparently because few other members of Congress endorsed it. "We were aware of it, and we watched to see how much support it got and whether it was going someplace, but it didn't," explained CBS' [Evening News executive producer Tom] Bettag. (1988, page 334)

Hertsgaard precedes this by noting had been the media attitude toward impeachment: that, in the words of NYT reporter Joel Brinkley, "public sentiment wasn't there to impeach Ronald Reagan."

That was not clear, says Hertsgaard, and he notes how various polls showed one-third to one-half of respondents believing Reagan should resign if found to have known about arms sales; in one poll, 57% thought Reagan was lying.

Of the media's insistence that there was no story, Hertsgaard notes the most question is—

How could the public be expected to develop an opinion on a given issue unless that issue was posed for their consideration. In the American system, that was the responsibility of the press. Yet the modern ethic of objectivity precluded such journalism. Only if members of the political elite, in this case the Congress actually did something about impeachment would it become "news"... (In fact, the fullest and virtually the only expositions of the impeachment question to appear in The New York Times and The Washington Post during the scandal were opinion articles, one in each newspaper, explaining why Congress was unlikely to pursue impeachment.) As New York Times Washington bureau Chief Craig Whitney explained, "The press is a captive of things as they happen."

Henry Gonzalez actually "did something"—as he throughout his life stood up for justice being done.

And it was something that could only be met by silence, being just the wrong something for those awed by Reagan's "popularity."