FOR CRAZED MEDIA, IT'S NOT ABOUT THE STORY ANYMORE

IN case you're wondering how we got here -- reporters closely
questioning George W. Bush, the leading Republican presidential
candidate, about a decades-old rumor about cocaine, one with no
apparent source, not even an unattributed one, nor even an injured
party -- let's walk through a quick half-century tour of the press and
the presidency.

The opening chapter is probably apocryphal, but accurate enough. It is
late in World War II. Something ceremonial is about to happen in the
White House Rose Garden. President Franklin Roosevelt is rolled in his
wheelchair to the lectern.

Secret Service agents and Army men lift their boss to a standing
position and prop him atop crutches. A rookie photographer on
assignment lifts his Speed Graphic with the 4-by-5-inch film plates
and frames a shot.

As he focuses, an old-timer standing alongside places his fedora in
front of the lens and growls from the corner of his mouth: "Nah, kid,
we don't take that kinda pic here." The kid gulps and blushes and
lowers the camera.

Let's move ahead 30 years. New generation of cameraman. This kid is
shooting film for television. We're at Andrews Air Force Base in
Maryland. This rookie is focusing on the forward door of Air Force
One. He's thinking that if he's lucky he'll catch a shot of Gerald
Ford banging his head on the door of that blue-and-white 707.

If he's really lucky, maybe today's the day the president does a
half-gainer down the ramp stairs. And no one alongside him is
brandishing a fedora.

Which brings us to last week, when George W. Bush, parrying question
after question, implied that he had not used drugs since 1974. In this
spectacle, the press has become a deadline-crazed Mr. Spock, steaming
toward Vulcan in a febrile, atavistic, circadian lurch.

How did we get here? What happened along the way was Watergate, a
press revolution as much as it was a political watershed. The
Washington Post boys did most everything right, and the president they
"got" deserved to get got. But it changed the game
forevermore.

Thereafter giant-killing evolved into career-building. For a
generation, at least, the press saw itself as some Red Cross worker
with a notebook, impartially crossing the no man's land between
belligerents, apportioning the he-said/she-said comments with great
equity, journalistic mediators making certain none of the sides ever
got a bigger piece of pie.

The goal was to not even look as if you took sides. If it was a labor
dispute you were covering, and both union and management complained,
you'd done OK. Gabe Pressman of WNBC in New York, with 50 years of
newspaper, radio and television reporting experience, still boasts of
never having voted in a primary, because doing so requires declaring a
party affiliation.

But now, it's not just about the story. It's about newspeople worrying
about what their colleagues might think. The CNN guy may really want
to ask Bush about capital punishment, but he's worried that the woman
from NBC might think he's a sissy.

Worse, what if the NBC woman turns the cocaine question half a tick
and gets an incrementally upgraded answer from the candidate? What's
Atlanta going to say? How will I keep my head high as I shuffle to my
seat in the press section of the campaign plane?

Are you getting this? It's not about the story anymore.

This is the latest and lowest stop along the slippery slope. Even Bill
Clinton got fairer, better coverage. Granted, Clinton was the victim
of some bad reporting. But at least it had some elements of the
concrete. There were complainants, as the cops say, real people with
more or less real claims. Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen
Willey, Linda Tripp. It doesn't matter whether they were likable or
whether you believed them. They existed and said "j'accuse."

Now the press, in some perverted gesture of equality, is trying to
balance its Clinton coverage by beating up on Bush, forgetting that
every accusation made against the president -- from Whitewater to
Travelgate to Filegate to Monicagate -- stemmed from conduct that
occurred while he occupied public office, either in Little Rock or
Washington.

It used to be that "respectable" newspapers would at least wait for a
tabloid to break the story. But many have been suckered into action by
Democrats, who've taken to some skillful "coat-holding." My father
loved that expression: it means let's you and him fight. Tom Daschle,
the Senate minority leader, started it, reportedly by daring the press
to investigate rumors about Bush and cocaine use.

The Bush opponents are whispering to the press, "You nearly wrecked
Clinton, didn't you, so now what are you, sissies, when it comes to
Bush the Junior? I'll hold your coat!"

Too bad the governor from Texas is falling for their trap. His
maladroit responses to dopey questions stoke the reporters' blood
fever. A feint in Austin, a hint in Des Moines only revivifies the
Beast.

It will get worse. The journalistic progeny of Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein have moved up. The post-Watergate kids are now running our
newspapers and TV news operations. And they will demand more and more.
They know no other way because that's how they were raised.

Note:
Nachman was news director at WCBS-TV and WNBC-TV in New York City as
well as editor of The New York Post.