Who Makes Scoops Today?
Espresso has often launched epoch-making campaigns, the first of which is still renowned: «Corrupt capital, corrupt nation.» But what was the technique behind these campaigns? At home I have only one complete year of issues of Espresso, 1965, and I leafed through them the other day. From issue number 1 to number 7 the articles ranged from politics to society, and there were no extraordinary revelations. But in number 7 there was a report by Jannuzzi, «Saint Peter’s Withholding Tax,» in which the Vatican was accused of having evaded, over a three-year period, tax payments amounting to 40 billion lire—with the agreement of the Italian government. At that time the Second Vatican Council was in progress, article 7 of the constitution was once more in question, and the topic was red-hot. Number 8 of the magazine ran nothing on the tax story. Instead there was an article on Hochhuth’s The Deputy, the performance of which had been vetoed by police authorities in Rome, accompanied by an article by Eugenio Scalfari. There was also an unsigned piece containing inside information about the Vatican Council. Without the reader’s becoming aware of it the first time around, the magazine went back to the topic of the Deputy in Sandro De Feo’s theater column. Number 9 began with a long behind-the-scenes piece by Camilla Cederna on the Vatican Council, which was continued in number 13.
Only in number 13, two months later, did there appear an article by Livio Zanetti, in which he broached the political problem of the revision of the Concordat, and only at the end was the problem linked to that of the alleged Vatican tax scam. This topic returned in number 14, but without big front-page headlines. In number 15 the Church was featured with an article by Falconi on rebel priests and another on varieties of Catholic nonconformism. A front-page editorial assessing the political importance of socialist leader Pietro Nenni’s visit to the Vatican did not appear until number 16. Would the Italian state be capable of making its rights respected? Number 18 witnessed the beginning of a new probe, on the mysteries of the law.
The magazine clearly had a strategy; it knew it could not cry wolf every week, so it used measured tones, doling the news out sparingly, allowing readers to form their own opinions gradually, letting the political classes feel the weight of discreet but constant monitoring, and making it clear that, if need be, it could take the lid off things once more.
Could a modern weekly behave the same way?
No:
- In terms of its circulation and layout, the Espresso of those days catered to the ruling classes; today it has at least five times as many readers. It can no longer employ the technique of subtle, progressive, and gradual insinuation.
- Today, the initial scoop would be picked up and amplified by the rest of the press and the other media, and in order to continue running the story, the weekly would have to raise its sights right away, and find more and more explosive news, even if this meant pumping up data that had not been adequately checked out.
- In the world of politics, and when featured on TV, treatment of the topic would soon be on a par with a brawl. The subject of the news would no longer be the suspicion of tax fraud, or a problem with the Concordat, but the picturesque clash that would have been triggered by these problems—and the weekly would talk only of how other newspapers or television news programs were approaching the issue.
- Finally, among the elements responsible for the transformation of the press, we cannot avoid considering the new attitude shown by the judiciary. The press used to intervene in places political forces kept silent about, and into which the judiciary could not see. After the «Clean Hands» scandal the judiciary was handing out so many indictments on all levels that the press was left with very little to reveal. All it could do was report (or anticipate, in a frenetic hunt for «leaks») the indictments that emerged from the courts, or turn the rules on their head and expose the judiciary, but even here all it could do was follow television’s lead.
Whereas newspapers once had to send their spies into the corridors of power in Rome to wrangle cautious admissions out of people in the know, today if anything they have to guard against people who procure unsolicited, fat dossiers for them, whose contents, if not thoroughly checked out, are unwittingly amplified by the newspapers, which emerge as dupes and suffer a consequent loss of credibility. Newspapers now have to play a defensive game, parrying blows from outside.
Not that things go much differently elsewhere. In France, for example, there have recently been complaints that the struggle to get a scoop at all costs has violated the jealously guarded privacy of the president of the republic. The consequences of this race for scoops is revealed by a comparison between Nixon and Clinton.
Before the Washington Post’s Watergate probe there had never been any attacks, other than political ones, on the presidency and its honorability. If we consider the extent of the deception itself, Nixon could easily have got around the problem by accusing overzealous associates. But he made the mistake of leading off with a lie. At that point the press campaign staked everything on the fact that the president of the United States had lied, and Nixon fell in the end not because he was indirectly guilty of a break-in, but because he was guilty of mendacity. The press’s decision was therefore specific, accurate, and calibrated, and that was precisely why it was successful. What made the anti-Clinton campaign far more weak and disjointed is that these days we must have a scoop a day, and in order to have this no one hesitates to attribute to Bill and Hillary malfeasance of all kinds—from property speculation to using state funds to buy cat food. Overkill. Public opinion is disturbed by this, and remains basically skeptical. The final result, in the United States too, is an embitterment of the political struggle; a leader is replaced only if his opponents manage to have him jailed.
What to Do?
If it is to avoid these contradictions, the press is left with two solutions, both difficult, because even foreign newspapers that until now have opted for one or the other have had to change in some way, to adapt to changing times.
The first is the «Fijian way.» In 1990 I found myself in the Fiji islands for almost a month, and last year I was in the Caribbean for about the same length of time. On the little islands where I stayed, all I could read was the local daily newspaper: eight or twelve pages, most of which was made up of ads for restaurants and items of local news. Yet I was in Fiji when the Gulf War broke out, and while I was in the Caribbean the first storm clouds were gathering over the Berlusconi administration in Italy. Well, I managed to stay abreast of all the essential facts. These extremely modest papers, working only with agency messages, managed to give in a few lines all the most important news of the previous day. At that distance I understood that what that newspaper did not talk about was not so important after all.
For a newspaper, following the Fijian way naturally means a dramatic fall in sales. The paper would become a bulletin for an elite like those people who read the stock-exchange news, because understanding the importance of a news item given in an essential fashion requires an educated eye. However, this would also be a calamity for political life, which would lose the critical function of the press. Superficial politicians might think that at this point television would suffice for their needs. But television, like every form of entertainment, burns things out. Political figures like Bella Abzug last longer than popular singers like Frankie Laine. A political class also grows and matures through the kind of wide-ranging, calm, and thoughtful dialogue that only relations with the press can permit. And the political class has everything to lose (with only a few short-term advantages—take the money and run) from a daily press turned weekly and modeled wholly on TV.
The other way would be what I call «broadened attention»—where the daily newspaper gives up trying to become a weekly variety magazine in favor of becoming an austere and reliable mine of news about everything that is happening in the world. It will not only cover the coup d’état that occurred the day before in some Third World country but also will have devoted continuous attention to events in that country, even those events that are still incubating. It will explain to readers why (for which economic, political, or even national interests) it is necessary to keep a watch on what is happening down there. But this kind of daily press requires a slow education of the reader; today, in Italy, a daily of this type would lose its readers before it managed to educate them. Even the New York Times, which has an educated readership and a singular position in New
