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December 21, 1998
"He defended the Constitution".
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December
21, 1998 Impeachment, Iraq,
and Imagemakers
Special
Journal
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December
21, 1998 President Clinton pulled the trigger last Wednesday, unleashing
four days of aerial raids against Iraq, and we reacted by ordering a half-dozen
pizzas. Mark
Hertzberg
December
21, 1998 As the scene in Washington changed, so did the landscape
of the Bee's front cover.Joe
Jaszewski
December
21, 1998 The events of this week have made me think a bit more about
good photojournalism and history.Tom
Burton
December
21, 1998 Covering
the President's impeachment from ground zero: George
Bridges, Freelance GUEST JOURNAL
December
21, 1998 "He defended the Constitution". Lynn
French
December
20, 1998 Newsday's Page One Dick
Kraus
December
18, 1998 "Who has a valid passport?" Tom
Burton
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That is inscribed on the pedestal of President Andrew Johnson's
statue in front of the North Carolina State Capitol. Johnson was
born in Raleigh. None of the historical markers around the Capitol
note Johnson's impeachment. As I was shooting a story on Raleigh's
native son, I wondered how history will remember Bill Clinton.
There is no video taped testimony of Andrew Johnson testifying
about the dismissal of the Secretary of War. There are no phone
records of President Johnson calling his secretary to hide evidence
of his violation of the Tenure of Office Act. There are no tape
archives of President Johnson saying he did not violate the Tenure
of Office Act. Technology has changed how history is written. A.
Whitney Brown stated in his book "The Big Picture", "We no longer
have history, only news." Does watching the impeachment hearings
live on CNN make them more real to the American public? Or is it
"TV", just like a long episode of "ER" or "NYPD Blue"? The impeachment
hearings are dramatic, there is talk of sex, people yell at each
other, is it just TV? The same little box of tubes and wires that
brings you "Barney" is showing you the impeachment of a President.
History Live has such a strange sound to it. There are several
pieces of video history that come to mind: the Kennedy assassination,
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Neil Armstrong
walking on the moon. As those moments occurred, they had a feeling
of history about them. I can't imagine 30 years from now sitting
down and watching the impeachment proceedings all over again and
having my heart skip a beat knowing I lived through that. But the
thing that bothers me most about this feeling of history I am having
now is knowing what has transpired over the past week is being written
into the history books from which our children will learn about
government.
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I remember reading about Johnson's impeachment in the fourth grade.
It was explained to my fourth grade history class that this is how the
President is fired if he does not do a good job. I understood that Johnson
was impeached because he did not get along with Congress. That is an elementary
explanation for elementary school students. How do you explain to fourth
graders that the President was fired because he had sex in his office
with an intern several times and then lied about it? I am confident history
will find a way to interpret this into a more sterile form for our children,
but unlike the Johnson impeachment, the video will survive. No matter
how romantically the future treats the Clinton impeachment, scholars will
be able to go back to that instant in time on video tape and see the President's
expressions, his verbal pauses, hear the tone of his accusers and rewind
it and watch it again if they did not see everything the first time. At
the same time they will be subjected to the context set forth by the media
of that moment.
Johnson had two basic forms of mass communication to deal with: the newspaper
and word of mouth. Could it be the few surviving view points of the day
have brought us to the few facts we can quickly recall about Johnson:
he was Lincoln's Vice President and he was impeached. Here we stand 130
years later with newspapers, television, radio, the Internet and word
of mouth recording the President's every action. Will the proliferation
of media outlets allow history to be kinder to Bill Clinton due to more
surviving information? Let us hope at least it will be the truth.
As the cliche goes, "Only time will tell". In a few weeks the impeachment
will move off the front pages and the networks will quit interrupting
soap operas with special reports. History will begin to form it's version
of the Clinton impeachment that will outlive us all. And then we can get
back to the news.
December 21, 1998
Lynn French
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