Why Don't Sex Scandals Matter Anymore?
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Rewind. Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. And here in the USA, it is election season. And while we are not a cover the news kind of show, typically, we have done a number of stories about elections and politics over the years. And so this week, I wanted to resurface one of those shows. But I also wanted to give it a little highlight.

Here we are. How you doing, Brooke? Good. Really good. Great to talk to you. Really? So this is Brooke Gladstone, longtime host of the show On the Media. I called her up in her home because we had done this story back in 2016, just nine months before Trump was elected president. It was about how the media covers presidential campaigns, how we the public think about our candidates. And when I re-listened to the episode, I felt like it was

Perfectly speaking to the political moment that we're in right now, but then also simultaneously totally outdated. Do you agree with that? Do you think that's true in some way? Absolutely. OK. And I have thoughts, though maybe not the ones pertaining to what is the profound nature of our humanity that you may want to get to. Well, that was the number one question.

But Brooke did show me how the last eight years have evolved out of, but also completely rewritten that story. So I'm going to play you the original show. Like I said, we did it back in 2016. So you will hear Jad and Robert, our original hosts. And then I'll come back on the flip side to talk to Brooke. So here we go. So we're going to take you back to an evening in 1987. Tom Fiedler, ace political reporter for the Miami Herald,

It's late at night and he's in his office. I'm sat at my desk and just, in fact, packing up to go home. My phone rang and I'm thinking, oh, it's probably my wife and she's wondering why I haven't left yet. I said, all right, I'll pick it up. But when he picked up the phone, it turned out it was not a voice he recognized. It was a woman's voice, maybe in her late 20s.

And she said to him, "I have something you need to know." It was a tip about one of the most powerful and charismatic men in American politics, former Senator Gary Hart, who at the time was not only the most likely candidate to become the Democratic nominee, he was very possibly going to be the next president of the United States. Her words to me were, "Gary Hart is having an affair with one of my best friends." And she told him, "Basically,

And, you know, I was rather, I guess, dumbstruck by that. And he thought, Now, if you're of a certain age, you probably remember this story. You probably know what happens next. But even if you've never heard of Gary Hart, you still probably know the outline of this story.

The accusations. Then the denial. And then after that, the whole wall-to-wall media thing. Which just goes on and on and on until you want to take your head off your shoulders, put it on the sidewalk, and beat it with a baseball bat. But the thing that's easy to forget is that it wasn't always like this. No. No.

Hart was the first to walk into this vortex of social forces. And after that, the rules of political journalism and politics change almost immediately. That, by the way, is Matt Bayh. National political columnist for Yahoo News. He wrote a book about this incident, which he called All the Truth is Out. And in that book, he makes the argument that this is the moment, Gary Hart, 1987, when political journalism slid off the rails. Or, you might argue,

when it finally got serious. Well, you know, just flashback a minute because I think the context is important. 1984. Hart kind of comes from nowhere. It's a whole new ballgame in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Runs for president. Storms New Hampshire. Senator Gary Hart is on his way to a clear-cut victory over Walter Mondale. Beats Mondale there and becomes a political celebrity. This country cannot stand four more years of Reaganomics for the rich.

Gary Hart. Gary Hart, the senator from Colorado. Gary Hart. I'm a Democrat and proud of it. Hart was this tall, good-looking Democrat. He's got great wavy hair. I mean, dashing, handsome, charismatic, and young. This is Leslie Stahl. CBS. She's covered politics for 40 years, now works for 60 Minutes. He was cool and smart.

Women liked him too. He's an anti-Orthodox Democrat, very liberal, anti-nukes. He is sort of the Bill Clinton before Bill Clinton. He doesn't get the Democratic nomination in 1984. Walter Mondale does by a nose. But when Mondale gets crushed by Ronald Reagan... Hart is immediately presumed to be the next nominee of the party at a time when these things were more obvious. So...

Fast forward to 1987. Like it or not, campaign 88 is underway. And the leading contender, frontrunner Gary Hart in New Hampshire. He's winning. He's running double digits higher than any Democrat. And he's projected to beat George Bush, the Republican frontrunner. The next president of the United States, Gary Hart.

It felt like, look, this is a guy who is changing politics, who is unafraid to speak the truth, who is willing to be really clear about what he wants to do. That's Kevin Sweeney. He was Hart's press secretary in 1987. He joined the campaign just a few years out of college. 23, I'm idealistic. The first time we really met, I was wearing a necktie with pictures of Lincoln and Washington on it, and Hart said, that's the ugliest necktie I've ever seen in my life.

So my mother made it and he said, I apologize. Well, that's a good beginning. Yeah. I knew pretty early I wanted to work for Hart. Do you remember why? He was really liberal on social issues at the time, unafraid to be specific or take a stand. He said Hart placed an extraordinary amount of emphasis on

Not just winning the campaign, but what would they do when they got in office? He commanded that attitude. So they wrote out all these position papers on foreign policy, energy, international trade, the budget. Even what would his relationship with Gorbachev be? There was something about Hart and something about what happened on the campaign where it did feel like the kind of campaign that I haven't seen since. And when does the subject of what goes on below the belt come up, if at all? Um...

Well, they were rumors. Definitely rumors. By this time, there are a lot of whispers about his personal life and a lot of speculation. He's been married to his college sweetheart, Lee, for a very long time. They've been separated twice, the long separations. And during those separations, he's dated openly in Washington. So it's a well-known...

A fact of life in Washington where he is a central figure and has a lot of friends in the press corps that he's dated, that he's dated people for extended periods of time, that he and his wife have a troubled marriage together and not together. He stayed on Bob Woodward's couch for a little while when she kicked him out at one point. Nobody wrote about that. The reason they didn't write about it was because of a very old, very well-established story.

I mean, look, go back through the 20th century. Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, you know, heroes, towering figures. Their personal lives simply were not in play. Take, for example, JFK. Leslie Stahl says that when the press was covering him... Vast numbers of reporters knew that John Kennedy was cheating on his wife. That was no secret.

We wouldn't have dreamed of printing that, even if the whispers were loud enough to spread around the country. It just wasn't done. Is the thought, hey, nobody does that, so forget about it, or hey...

hey, that has nothing to do with statecraft. I think the feeling was that, so what? You know, we all get to have a zone of privacy. And the assumption was that what happened in your private zone, behind closed doors... Had nothing to do with whether you were going to be a good president or not. I mean, there are certain ethics and certain standards, I guess. This is the world that Hart still thinks he's living in, that as long as it doesn't burst into public view...

It won't be a story. But Matt Bayh says that world was actually changing because of a political earthquake that had happened just over a decade before. Talking about the Watergate break-in. Burglarizing and bugging Democratic headquarters in Washington. That is the big first knocked out brick in that wall. Five people have been arrested and charged with breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. You know, arguably the biggest scandal in White House history. You had Nixon tapping phone lines, compiling enemy lists.

And for the reporters covering Nixon... It really is an embarrassment. You had an entire White House press corps, political press corps, campaign press corps, who had followed this man, Richard Nixon, for decades, and somehow either missed the fact or failed to report the fact that he had some significant psychological issues and was paranoid and could be corrupted. I think there was a sense that we let the public down.

Leslie Stahl remembers it this way. The regular White House press reporters, they should have been digging, chipping away, chipping away, chipping away. They should have been looking behind the curtain. And so right after Watergate, reporters became tougher, saying, OK, we have to be skeptical about everything. And in particular, the character issue.

Meaning suddenly your makeup, your personal behavior, who you are in your private moments matters a whole hell of a lot for the kind of president you can be and whether or not we can trust you as a public leader. Hart's character is the subject tonight of our weekend journal. When Americans choose presidents, personal character traits are important. In this day and age, candidates' personal lives are getting a great deal of scrutiny. I remember...

There was a bit of a shift in the kinds of reporters who were covering national politics. They had a different orientation, and they were really interested in the character question. That's Kevin Sweeney again. He says he was initially frustrated by reporters' strange obsession with things that were not really issues, important issues in the campaign. Like age, there was some confusion about Hart's age, the fact that he changed the family name.

his signature changed at a certain point in his life. He says when those stories initially popped up, I thought it was a false set of issues. I didn't really take it seriously. But then when it came to the rumors of, quote, womanizing or marital infidelity, he felt like he needed to talk to Gary Hart.

I did say, if anything is happening, it needs to stop. I mean, this can't, whatever it is. And he said, you know, nothing is happening. And he shot back and said they have no right to cover that. That's ridiculous. It's not an issue. Why is that an issue? That's not their job. And I kept pushing back saying, I don't actually care what their job is. I don't care what you think their job is. This is the new context that exists now. I don't know why or how, but the rules have changed. The rules have changed.

So, you know, it was... This brings us back to Tom Fiedler of the Miami Herald. He was covering Gary Hart, going with him to all the stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, and so forth. And it seemed like at every stop along the way, someone, some reporter would raise her or his hand and would say, what about the rumors of his womanizing?

Tom says that he would see reporters asking all these questions and he was a little bit troubled. So on April 27th, 1987, he wrote a column asking the question. Is it ethical for journalists to be even raising this kind of a question? And I really came down to the conclusion that unless the media, unless the reporters involved had actual proof that

that this was a problem, that he was a womanizer. We just shouldn't be printing that. Column runs on a Monday morning. That night... He gets the call. A voice on the other side says...

Gary Hart is having an affair with one of my best friends. He was dumbstruck, as we know. I told her that my position had to be that I couldn't believe what she had to say unless there was proof. And finally she said, my friend is going to fly up to Washington next weekend, and she's going to spend the weekend with Senator Hart. She said, so all you have to do is buy a ticket on that plane.

And I thought, well... Would that be ethically okay? What is inbounds and what is out of bounds? I mean, character was this new obsession of political journalism, but according to Matt Bayh, no one had taken that character question into a candidate's bedroom. That was new. But Fiedler thought, well, no, no, no, this is inbounds. Because Gary Hart was publicly...

denying that he had been carrying on affairs with anyone. Now, to be clear, oftentimes when Gary Hart was asked about these rumors of an affair, he was never asked directly, just about the rumors, he'd say something like this. It's no one else's business. Now, why is it not anyone else's business? Because it isn't.

Hasn't been the business of the American public for 200 years and it isn't today. He'd say something like that. But Fiedler says a couple times when he's asked, he did say something that amounted to a no. Such as if there was any truth to these allegations, it would have come out long before. The kinds of answers that were non-denials, denials, another phrase that came out of Watergate. So my view at that point was if in fact there was proof that

that he was carrying on an affair privately while publicly insisting that there really was no basis to this, then that was a relevant issue. Relevant to his performance as a future president? Yes. It was a question of integrity. So we thought the only way that we are going to find out if what the caller told us is true is we've got to catch him. That's coming up next. ♪

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Hey, I'm Jad Iboomrod. I'm Robert Krolwich. This is Radiolab. Getting back to the story, reporter Tom Fiedler gets a tip saying that candidate Gary Hart is having an affair. And he thinks to himself, this is inbounds if it's true. Therefore, we've got to catch him.

So his editor tells a colleague of his, Jim McGee, to go to the airport telling him. This is what you're going to do. You're going to look for a woman who looks like a model. That's how the woman on the phone described her friend. She's described as a model. Blonde, in her mid-20s, and call me back if you see it. So this guy, Jim, races to the airport, spots this attractive young woman, fits the description. Of course, we later knew it was

Donna Rice. So he boards the plane, they land in D.C., he follows her out of the airport into a cab. He runs to another cab, jumps in it, and he says, follow that cab. Just like the movies. Which they do. He loses her for a while, but then eventually he gets to the house where he thinks Hart and this lady should be. And he's not there more than a few minutes when the front door opens, and out comes the young woman on the arm of a very handsome man.

One small problem. Jim had never met Gary Hart. He had no idea what Gary Hart looked like. He said later, he said, I really couldn't pick Gary Hart out of a lineup. That's when I really thought we have got to go to Washington. ♪

And that's what they do. The Herald. Matt Byagan. They send a team of reporters, investigative reporters, and Fiedler and a photographer to Washington. We arrive Saturday morning. They stake out his townhouse. You know, I'm thinking, my gosh, somebody will surely notice that there are four or five of us. Lurking is probably...

be the right word. It's May and one guy's in a parka to disguise himself and Fiedler, who the candidate knows, is in a jogging suit and he's pretending to jog around the street all day long. I would change clothes a little bit. Occasionally I would run without the jacket. Other times I would just be wearing a t-shirt and shorts. He'd run around and around and around. It's not how the CIA would do it, but it's about what you'd expect from a newspaper. Our quote-unquote stakeout went on all day into Saturday night and it got dark. And then...

Front door opens. Out comes this man, and out comes the blonde woman. Hart walks out with Donna Rice, sort of arm in arm. He quickly realizes something is wrong. He kind of makes the surveillance. They see him. He sees them. He turns her back around. They go inside. Go back inside the townhouse. He sends her away through the back door. And then he comes back out of the townhouse. Hops in his car. And starts to drive off. ♪

So our photographer starts to chase Senator Hart's car. He drives a couple blocks. Up streets, down streets, back and forth. He gets out of the car. Walks through a park. Chase continues on foot. He knows they're following him and they know he knows they're following him. Hart ducks around the corner. They lose him for a second. Then they're running to catch up. And then they turn a corner in an alley and there's Hart. There is the presumed nominee of the Democratic Party, the most important Democratic politician in the country. And they're confronting each other.

And for a moment, standing in the alleyway behind Hart's townhouse, they just stare at each other because there is no script for this moment. Ultimately, he asked, well, who are you? Well, we're from the Miami Herald. And he didn't really say anything.

So I told him that we wanted to know why he was meeting with this woman in his townhouse, a woman who, at that point, we knew had spent the night with him. He says in myriad ways, myriad times, I'm not going to tell you who that woman was. This is private. This isn't public. But he says there's no affair, which he would maintain forever after.

And ultimately, he said, I've said enough. And he turned and walked inside and slammed the door. We did tell him, though, he said, we're going to write this story unless you give us a reason as to, that explains as to why what we are seeing and what we're concluding is wrong. And he never did that. So we kind of look at ourselves and said, well, now what do we do?

Ultimately, the call was, we have the proof we feel we needed. We know that publicly he was saying these things, and we now know that privately he was engaged in this. So they ran back to the hotel room. Fiedler frantically typed out the story. Gary Hart.

whose presidential campaign has been dogged by rumors of womanizing, spent Friday night and much of Saturday with a woman who came from Miami to meet him.

I finally went back and I probably slept for three or four hours. Okay, so you're going to do the story. The only thing that gives me pause is if under this standard you'd lose Jack Kennedy, certainly. You'd lose Woodrow Wilson, I think. So you'd lose a lot of people you might not want to lose. But, you know, you've leaped to the conclusion that the public would banish a person for that. And I don't go there. Hmm.

So are you worried about how it's going to land? That's our producer, Jamie York. Terrified. I was terrified. And the next morning... An ABC News read... The political world explodes. Democratic presidential hopeful Gary Hart... Gary Hart. Gary Hart. It truly became a firestorm. The Miami Herald reports today that Hart, quote, spent Friday night and most of Saturday... The Miami Herald reports that Hart and a Miami woman spent Friday night alone together... In his Washington townhouse...

That story begins ricocheting around the country. So by Sunday... It's very apparent that not only is Hart in trouble, but the entire culture of media around politics has changed in some very dramatic way.

And when you think about the mindset of the television people, the radio people, the newspaper people, is there any self-doubt there? Is there people saying, oh, should we? Is this really a question of his ability to conduct matters of state? Is that question being asked? There's a tremendous amount of self-doubt.

Not everyone agrees that such intense public scrutiny is necessary. There was widespread feeling. The Miami Herald was put on the defensive. What Fiedler and his colleagues had done was wrong. You know, that's out of bounds. What business is it of the press? You staked out a guy in his home. What are they up to, sneaking around in the bushes and all that? A lot of reporters don't think it's relevant.

And one reason is this. Nobody knows where this is going to lead. Has this set a precedent? Should reporters be staking out George Bush's house, Bruce Babbitt's house, Joe Biden's house? But then in the same breath, there's generally this sense of

But you know, all he had to do basically was stay clean. What was he thinking? Hart is to blame. It's Gary Hart's fault. And didn't he understand that things had changed? And doesn't the public maybe have a right to know? And so the newspaper that began the controversy is not backing down. This was not character assassination. This was character suicide. He did it. We didn't. Even as the debate heats up over the ethics of its coverage of Gary Hart. So there was a real conflict.

All the various echelon of media respond to this differently. The New York Times refuses to touch it. Originally, the Washington Post is deeply conflicted. And as for the public... In an unscientific Herald telephone poll, 63% of the callers said they thought the paper was making too much of a fuss over Gary Hart. I mean, the polling shows that people think the media overstepped. He's still polling very strongly. He's winning in the public mind.

According to Leslie Stahl, most people seem to be willing to compartmentalize. Most people can split off. How's he going to be as president? And, you know, is he cheating on his wife? It was not clear that the tide was going to take Hart out at all. So Hart and his team try to get ahead of the story. They schedule a press conference in New Hampshire. And on the flight over, Kevin Sweeney, his press secretary, preps him. I remember asking Hart a question, something like, have you ever been unfaithful to your wife?

And he shot back at me with anger. He said, I don't have to answer that question. That's a question that I can answer to God, to my wife. But it's not a question that I need to answer in politics. That's a dangerous question to be asking. We don't want to go there. And I just said, that's a great answer. Just hold that anger. That's an appropriate response. Senator Hart, please.

We get to the press conference. Hart and Sweeney walk into this colonial-style room at Dartmouth College. There are lights everywhere. The room is filled. Sweaty. It's hot. There's more media than anyone's ever seen packed in. It's a really intense environment.

Senator Hart, please. Hart has very little buffer, and he's handling the questions... How are you going to convince him that you're not going to make this kind of mistake in judgment about personal behavior again? ...really pretty brilliantly. I won't tell him. I'll demonstrate it. As time goes on...

People are going to want to know about your judgment, your character on the issues that affect their lives, their families, their nation. That's what this campaign is going to be about. He's kind of firing on all cylinders. And Hart goes through, you know, 30 minutes, 40 minutes of questions and then... You raised in your remarks yesterday, you raised the issue of morality and you raised the issue of truthfulness. At some point he calls on a young reporter named Paul Taylor. Very specific, I have a series of questions about it. And Paul Taylor.

walks him through a series of questions. You said you did nothing immoral. Did you mean that you had no sexual relationship with Donna Rice last weekend or any other time you were with her? That is correct. Do you believe that adultery is immoral? Have you ever committed adultery? He says, Senator, have you ever committed adultery? Um...

Senator Hart looked out at the sea of reporters. No politician had ever publicly been asked that broad, direct question about his personal behavior. It really just shocked the room. We don't know what Gary Hart was thinking in that moment. He did not want to be interviewed on tape. But it's clear that if he said yes or no to that broad of a question, then his entire married life—because have you ever committed adultery? That word, ever. His entire married life would suddenly be in play.

And as far as we know, no other person in his situation in history had ever been asked to drag that much of themselves into the limelight. And on his face, you can see that he knows that this is never going to end. I mean, he knew how many women he'd seen over the years. He could envision them all being paraded through the papers. He could tell already that there was all this new sort of tabloid press and that the political press was following along, that he was never going to be able to talk about his agenda. And...

Hart stumbled around for a minute and ultimately he says, I do nothing. I don't have to answer that question. That's right. That's right. When I heard that response, I felt it. I felt it. The tone was such that it felt like defeat. It felt like he is exhausted and he can't take this. I was offended. I...

I really, in that moment, thought, this is just wrong. This has nothing to do with what is necessary to run this country. And I just thought, this is not, we're not going to survive. And that moment effectively does him in. I have told you the facts. If you don't believe me, there's nothing I can do about it. Senator Hartman, what are you doing?

Gary Hart is finished as a presidential candidate. Gary Hart's formal campaign is only three weeks old. There was simply no putting the genie back in the bottle. His appearances yesterday were mob scenes. The Hart campaign has been hammered to its knees. Asking the same questions again and again. Today, after what may be remembered as the most disastrous week any presidential candidates endured in years, Hart told an aide, let's go home. A couple weeks later, that famous image of Gary Hart, Donna Rice, comes out in the National Enquirer.

And that was that. For people my age, that image of Donna Rice sitting in his lap and he's got this shirt on that says monkey business, that's the thing you remember. Yeah. Now, according to Matt By, you can look at this whole story, and particularly Tom Fiedler taking that call and Paul Taylor asking that question, as this moment when all of these forces way outside of Gary Hart's control come together, not just to sink his campaign, but to change political journalism profoundly. But...

As with all cultural shifts, there's more than one way to look at this. So just for a gut check, we put the whole story. We're talking about Tom Fiedler? Yeah, Tom. Yeah. In front of this lady. Can we have you introduce yourself? I'm Cokie Roberts. But know who you are, like, part two.

I have six grandchildren. No, no, no, no, no. Something in PR-y. I'm a political commentator and author. Okay. Cokie Roberts believes that, yeah, reporters were interested in character more after Watergate, but it wasn't just that. The thing that's important to keep in mind here is that there were many more women covering candidates at that point than there had been before. There were women on the bus. And in the case of Gary Hart...

several of those women had had personal encounters with him. There were times when you'd be in a room where he had hit on every woman in the room. So this was not somebody that women who were covering campaigns were ignorant of. And the other thing to keep in mind, Robert, is that the whole women's movement did talk quite a bit about the personal is political.

And because the way women were treated was something that we thought, and I continue to think, is a good gauge of character. And there was something of a sense that he treated women like Kleenex.

So we were expanding the universe of what was a major character flaw. So then are you kind of rooting Fiedler on? Oh, absolutely. Finally, somebody's written about it. And thank God it's a guy. But as much as you were cheering them on, was there any concern that that was changing the rules of journalism? No. Why? Because...

The rules of journalism were constantly changing, as they should. And according to Cokie Roberts, this was less about journalism changing than about journalism catching up with the ethics of the time. Look, we elect our presidents based on who they are, not on what policies they stand for.

It's different from any other office. The voters need to know as much as they can humanly know about that person. So is there a line for you? Is there a place you won't go in taking the full measure of a candidate? Not for president that I can think of. There's nothing you wouldn't touch? No. I mean, I'd have to know that it was true. Sure. But no, no. No.

I love that. Leslie Stahl had a slightly different take. She's fabulous, Cokie Roberts. I didn't go there. That's interesting. I just didn't want to ask about it. I didn't want to go there. Excuse me. I'm telling you this. Even though I covered Watergate and would have asked any number of questions about character...

you know, it's open season, fellas. The public needs to know this. But you know, sex is really a hard place for me to pry. So I agree with it, but I also have my own opinion that there's propriety. And I'm old-fashioned, I guess. Am I? I don't know. I'd intended, quite frankly, to come down here this morning and

read a short, carefully worded political statement. This is Gary Hart's statement a few days after that press conference. Saying that I was withdrawing from the race and then quietly disappear from the stage. And then after frankly tossing and turning all night, I said to myself, "Hell no." I'm not going to do that because it's not my style and because I'm a proud man and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. In public life, some things may be interesting,

but that doesn't necessarily mean they're important. We're all going to have to seriously question the system for selecting our national leaders that reduces the press of this nation to hunters and presidential candidates to being hunted. Politics in this country, take it from me, is on the verge of becoming another form of athletic competition or sporting match. We all better do something to make this system work

We're all going to be soon rephrasing Jefferson to say, I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve. Now, we did reach out to Mr. Hart for a comment explaining to him the story we were doing, and he wrote back this response. Thank you for your letter and the invitation to participate in your current story. Though I did not become president, my life continues to be extraordinarily rich. Perhaps someday someone will tell that story, but for now...

I have no interest in revisiting what many consider a turning point for the nation and a few an injustice. I do believe that the full and accurate story of that event remains to be told. Signed, Gary Hart. It does feel like I said at the top, like it sort of feels like the episode is about

this moment, but it also doesn't at all like it. Right. I think you're absolutely right. It does. You know, there are certain similarities, but there's also a tremendous difference. Once again, Brooke Gladstone, host of the WNYC show on the media. So you have Trump being accused dozens of times of sexual assault or sexual harassment.

even convicted, at least in a civil trial. But it doesn't seem to matter. That is staggering. Yeah. Why does that not matter way more? Well, you see, this is what makes this time different. This is a time where a simple lie will be embraced forever.

If it serves a voter's purposes. Brooks says, of course, part of what's going on here is that the electorate has become much more rigidly partisan, even tribal. But it also has to do with our relationship with the media.

where we get our news, who we trust, who we don't trust. This is a profoundly cynical time. I don't think I have ever lived through a political era that has been as cynical as this. And Brooke says she thinks this has to do, at least in part, with an evolution since the time of Gary Hart in the way reporters and media outlets think about what's worth covering or not.

Yes, precisely. Precisely. And I have an anecdote you might find interesting. Okay, let's hear it. It was in the late 80s. I was the editor of All Things Considered at the time. And George H.W. Bush...

was in some sort of a car thing. There was a threat, a loud bang. There was a woman with him in the car who got hustled away. Her name was Jennifer Fitzgerald. And she had had, it was a 17-year affair with George H.W. Bush. No, I never heard of that. This was an open secret.

Really? It's believed they began their relationship in 74. She was his secretary when he was chief of the U.S. liaison office to China. She was his executive assistant when he was the CIA director. Wow. I've never heard of her. Wow. Yeah. Vice president, president. But she denied the affair. OK.

We talked about whether this was the time to sort of bring this story out into the open. At the time, at the time, he was what was his he was he was president. He was president. Yeah. But, you know, we ended up not doing it. We ended up not doing George H.W. Bush's affair. And it never was done. Well, like, why did you decide not to?

Well, in the late 80s, in that editorial office, we decided that it really wouldn't inform the public of anything related to George H.W. Bush's governance of the country. And Brooke says this is the important thing to pay attention to. Not so much whether you're intruding on someone's privacy or not.

But rather, what better informs the people and what is a distraction? Because in the years that followed from Bill Clinton's sex scandals to George W. Bush, whether he used cocaine in the past to Barack Obama's tan suit, the press constantly erred on the side of coverage, more information, but also with it, maybe more distraction.

The aperture on what was worth talking about kept opening wider and wider until Trump came on the scene and the press pretty much started covering everything and anything about him.

I mean, during Trump's first campaign against Hillary Clinton, CNN would focus on an empty podium because Trump would arrive late all the time rather than simply shift to the speech that at that very moment Hillary Clinton was given elsewhere. And of course, after he was elected president, he continued to offer the press a deluge of outrageous statements, exaggerations and lies. Right before the first inauguration, he said,

Oh, my God, all the fancy dresses in Washington, D.C. have all been sold out because of the upcoming inauguration. It's going to be such a big thing. And the Washington Post sent people out to go to the stores to find out, so did they sell out? And, of course, no, they did not. But was it worth it?

There was just so much coverage of all these little things that even when something big and important was happening, it just sort of got lost in the noise. And, you know, obviously, Donald J. Trump is a master of distraction and he doesn't really care how people think about it. And the media just keeps falling for these distractions. This is actually something that Brooke on her show On the Media has reported about, you know, repeatedly, including just this past spring in an episode called How Not to Cover the Trump Trial.

You're looking at live pictures in New York City of Donald Trump's motorcade. It's about a 20-minute drive between Trump Tower and the court building. Coverage around Trump's indictment found the media stumbling back into some of its own worst habits. Heading down the FDR. To the Manhattan courthouse on Chamber Street. Arriving at this intersection of American history with defiance. The media that vowed to never again waste precious airtime on Trump-related minutiae

Trump leaving Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. As we've heard now since 2016 at least, the ability to flood the zone with outrages causes a kind of emotional, intellectual, and maybe even ethical paralysis. Do you feel like...

Is it just going to get more and more like this, more sensational, more distraction? Can it go back or is it just sort of a one way ratchet? Well, I'm not the best prognosticator, but I would say there's a symbiotic relationship between Americans and their leaders and Americans and their media. So, yeah.

In a sense, we're seen as consumers, not as citizens. We are served what we will buy and what we find tasty. Tabloid coverage will give you tabloid presidents, I guess, is the vision there. But if our media and our leadership offer us something else, we can be better.

So the reporters may take the cue and decide that this isn't worth it, or they'll decide that this is going to be very clicky and people on the side that you're on are going to love it. It's going to make them feel good. And it will just be in the process of tossing out red meat. Hard to say.

Thank you so much to Brooke Gladstone. And honestly, when I'm trying to avoid getting stuck in the swirl of media distractions, the circus of it all, on the media is the place I go. They put things in perspective. They curate the news in a way that is...

clarifying and not muddying. Yeah, go check them out wherever you get your podcasts on the media. The original story we did on Gary Hart drew so much from Matt Bai's book. It's called All the Truth is Out. You can, of course, find a link to the book on our website, radiolab.org.

That story, the original story, was produced by Simon Adler with help from Jamie York. And the update you just heard with Brooke was produced by Rebecca Lacks. I'm Latif Nasser. This has been Radiolab. And we will catch you next week.

Hi, I'm David, and I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna,

Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.