San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
John Diaz: How Gary Hart’s fall changed all the rules
It was too good to last. After Hollywood brought a pair of inspiring, based-on-reallife dramas about journalism to the silver screen (“Spotlight,” 2015, about the Boston Globe revelations about the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal and “The Post,” 2017, about the Washington Post publication of the Pentagon Papers), “The Front Runner” portrays a less glorious moment for the profession.
The film stars Hugh Jackman as Gary Hart, the 1988 presidential candidate, in what is widely — at least superficially — cited as a turning point in the rules of engagement between journalists and the politicians they cover.
It offers an abundance of wince-worthy scenes about news people in action and raises thought-provoking issues about how much the flow of information has changed in three decades, for better and for worse.
As with the 2014 book on which it is based, “All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid,” by Matt Bai, the film is generally sympathetic to the former Colorado senator in accentuating his seriousness about public policy and his shock and revulsion (with no small touch of sanctimony) that his private life would become a determining factor in his quest for the White House.
The film is mostly faithful to actual events, with some creative liberties, such as “Washington Post reporter” A.J. Parker (played by Mamoudou Athie), whose scenes represent a composite of Post and New York Times scribes along with a fabricated exchange with Hart after turbulence on the campaign plane.
But the essence of the journalistic foibles surrounding Hart’s downfall are presented in stark terms. The Miami Herald’s stalking of Donna Rice and stakeout of Hart’s Washington apartment was smarmy in concept and amateurish in execution. Its rush to publication was reckless.
Once the story rolled off the presses, the frenzy was on. One of the takeaways from the sordid tale was how the Herald’s story, however flawed, liberated the rest of the mainstream press to lift their inhibitions — or, more pointedly, their standards — about reporting on Hart’s long-rumored womanizing.
Yet watching “The Front Runner” brings home how much news gathering has been decentralized, democratized and desensitized since then. Hart was famously warned by pal Warren Beatty that “cameras are everywhere.” Today, they truly are. It would no longer take an anonymous phone call to a major newspaper to reveal a 50-year-old major presidential candidate boarding a pleasure boat in Miami with a 29-year-old woman who was not his wife. It’s hard to imagine that a similar jaunt on the “Monkey Business” would not have been documented by a passerby on the dock or a passenger with a cell phone — and would immediately go viral on social media, perhaps with a big boost from TMZ.
Alas, Hart’s downfall did not set a new standard for candidate chastity. Americans have since elected two presidents — Bill Clinton and Donald Trump — alleged to be serial philanderers. However, the rise of the #MeToo movement in the past year is likely to heighten the attention on accusations of sexual indiscretion by powerful men.
Yes, the old rules were broken in 1987, and Americans can debate whether they were better served when journalists covering campaigns had a pact with the status quo to look the other way. The quandary continues to mutate, with cell phones at every dock and hotel lobby. Director Jason Reitman’s “The Front Runner,” with a strong performance by Jackman, is a cautionary tale for journalists and politicians alike.
The Fox follies
Speaking of obliterating journalistic standards, Fox News has done it again, this time on President Trump’s favorite show.
The Sierra Club recently used a Freedom of Information request to unearth a May 2017 email exchange between a “Fox & Friends” producer and an aide to then Trump EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. The producer was unabashedly solicitous in not only asking for “bullet points” on what Pruitt wanted to say, but offering to send an introductory script for review.
Pruitt’s team was only too happy to play. The script in question cited the new direction at the agency after “the Obama administration left behind a huge toxic mess.” The EPA aide wrote back, “Yes — perfect.”
This is not journalism; it’s why so many call the Fox News Channel “state media.” Without offering detail, Fox said it disciplined employees involved in the email play, just as it condemned the onstage rah-rah appearances of Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro at a recent Trump rally in Missouri.
Each remains on the air.
Waterfront of dreams
It was all smiles in Oakland last week as the A’s unveiled their latest plan for a new ballpark, this time on the waterfront just north of Jack London Square.
No one was smiling more than Mayor Libby Schaaf, who has advocated the site near Howard Terminal from the day she took office in January 2015. The A’s management at the time had studied the option and dismissed it as too cumbersome and expensive to develop, from toxic cleanup costs to transportation.
Now the A’s have come up with gorgeous drawings of a privately financed ballpark with elements that are alternately throwback and futuristic. But can it really happen as envisioned for Opening Day 2023?
Schaaf, for one, is a believer. She noted that the big difference between last week’s rollout and last year’s announcement of a pitch to build a ballpark next to Laney College is that, this time, the A’s were accompanied by neighbors and government leaders. Last time, they were on their own.
“We were there, all together, around one vision,” Schaaf said in a phone interview Thursday.
Plenty of hurdles remain. Perhaps the most obvious, and potentially the most daunting, is access. The roads around Jack London Square routinely become gridlocked today. BART is a long hike away — and a walk few fans would want to take after a night game. The idea of a gondola capable of shuttling 6,000 passengers an hour from downtown sounds intriguing until one does the math of what it would take to get 30,000-plus fans to a ballgame.
Still, Schaaf is optimistic that the access issues can be identified with an upcoming environmental report, and rectified with an assist from state and federal funds. If it works, it could be the catalyst in the way AT&T Park transformed a San Francisco neighborhood.
“We have such a beautiful waterfront, yet it always seems like it has not quite reached its potential,” Schaaf said. “This, I believe, will change everything.”
It also offers the hope of a reinvention of the Coliseum site that is about to be abandoned when the Warriors cross the bay to their new arena and the Raiders grab the $750 million in corporate welfare and run to Las Vegas. The A’s want to take over the site along Interstate 880 for a mixed-use development that would help fund their new ballpark.
It’s an audacious vision, and a challenging one. If it succeeds, it will be yet another example of how a sports franchise in this region has found a way to build a state-of-the-art venue without heavy reliance on taxpayers’ support.
Now that is something to cheer.