The Hart Scandal:
Questions Concerning Media Ethics,
Candidate's Character

Volume VII, Number 20         May 18. 1987

Gary Hart to The New York Times:

He was wrong.

The former senator and a blonde woman from Florida stepped out of his Washington townhouse about 9:30 on Friday night, May first.
A week later, his campaign for president was over. Polls showed his support was slipping and financial resources were in danger of drying up. As news of other affairs developed, comedian Johnny Carson joked Hart couldn't be president --- "He wouldn't have time."

In Denver, Hart angrily announced his withdrawal from the race saying he refused to submit his family, friends, innocent people and himself to further rumors and gossip.
"It is simply an intolerable situation," he said.
He said the nation must question a system for selecting national leaders which "reduces reporters to hunters and presidential candidates to being hunted."

The Herald's bombshell

The way The Miami Herald covered the story created controversy. News executives faced questions from viewers as to whether reporters had gone too far investigating the candidate.

One Miami News Director who was critical of the paper was WCIX-TV's Larry Wallenstein.
"They wrote innuendo," he said.

He felt The Herald published the story too quickly.
"They were not in a competitive situation, it was their story. They chose to put it on the front page of the Sunday paper, instead of getting all the interviews," he told us. They had talked with the former senator for twenty minutes. However, they had not watched both entrances throughout the night when Hart and Rice appeared to be inside together.

Wallenstein did not have a problem with a presidential candidate "being put under a microscope." But, he felt we in the media have an obligation to make absolutely certain we are accurate in our reporting.

No one could ignore the story once the scandal was broken.
"Once it became a major issue, there was no way any news organization could sit back and say, 'We don't think it's a story and therefore, we're not going to cover it,'" said Mike Beardsley, News Manager at WTVJ-TV, Miami.
He added, "We were dealing with someone's presidential ambitions going down the drain as a result of a story."

The Miami woman became the focus of the story on Monday. Who was she? What did she have to say? What was her version of what had happened?

Initially, Donna Rice held a news conference exclusively for print reporters. WTVJ-TV's Michael Putney got in with an audio tape recorder. He used the tape as the central element of a report on her side of it.
Putney is a veteran political reporter and WTVJ's Mike Beardsley said that was crucial to his getting inside. "He had a reputation of being a hard reporter, but being scrupulously fair," said the news manager.

The fact Rice refused to tell her story before cameras further complicated covering the story.
"It infuriated us," said WSVN-TV Assignment Editor Steve Boyer.
"We couldn't understand why she'd have half a news conference one day and hold a news conference for television the next day," he said.
As Rice left the lawyer's office, it did give stations the opportunity for some cover footage.

Pursuing Rice's connection with modeling paid off. A WTVJ staffer had known her several years before, and knew some people who were friends of hers.
He knew she had done photographic work.
"We began calling people who had taken photos of her, and it turned out one of the photographs which was published was the poster where she appeared semi-nude," said Beardsley.
Through SAG, they were able to get publicity shots used to promote her as a model.

WPLG-TV broke new ground with a story suggesting the pair had dined together in a Bal Harbour restaurant --- a meeting which had not been reported before that.

This story was stimulated by anonymous telephone calls to the newsroom.
"We were called by two people who claimed they had seen Senator Hart and Ms. Rice at a restaurant," said WPLG News Director John Terrenzio.

A signature in the restaurant's guest book said "Gary Hart, Colorado." The owner of the restaurant, the manager, and a bus boy all confirmed Hart had been there. Two of the three also identified Ms. Rice as his companion.
A further check found that Hart was registered at a hotel across from the restaurant, and addressed an AFL-CIO convention the next morning.
However, at his news conference in New Hampshire, Hart denied that the woman, who witnesses say was with him, was Rice.
"I'm convinced Hart was there. And, I believe Donna Rice was there in that restaurant that night, too," said Terrenzio.

With Rice in seclusion, the story moved north as Hart made appearances in New York and New Hampshire, trying to repair the damage done to his campaign.

In Boston, WBZ-TV managers ordered a poll of voters in New Hampshire. Hart was scheduled to campaign in the state which has the first primary election.
The station could measure the impact of the scandal because their pollster, Ed Reilly's KRC Research, had just sampled the state for them the week before. They were particularly interested because Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis was a competing candidate.

"Tuesday evening, after the show was over, we were looking at our plans for the next day, and we decided to do the poll," said WBZ-TV News Director Stan Hopkins.
It was done overnight on Tuesday and they had the results Wednesday morning.

The poll showed Hart had lost about half of his support. He had dropped from 32% to 17%. This was exclusive, hard news which was picked up by the networks and other media.

"It turned out to be an interesting insight into a state which happens to be key," said Hopkins. WBZ did its polling in cooperation with The Boston Herald. The station ran it Wednesday, and the paper the next morning.

"From a competitive standpoint, the poll was very advantageous. Your competitors, radio and newspapers are basically following your story and reporting on your story. In a case where there is an unexpected poll like this one, whoever generates the idea first gets to break it," explained Hopkins.
Spotted in the right place, your own poll on a major issue can be of great value to you. In this case, it provided fresh information no one else in the media had.

By a big 3 to 1 (68%-22%) margin, New Hampshire citizens who were interviewed by WBZ's pollster said they did not think the media should be reporting about candidates' sexual behavior.
When KRC polled Iowa, they found popular opposition was even higher.

In Miami, WPLG ran an audience response tally using a 900 phone number.
The question: "Has the Miami Herald acted responsibly in covering the Gary Hart story?"
"We thought that was a very clear-cut 'yes' or 'no' answer in most people's minds," said Terrenzio.
"We wanted to know the answer, so we asked," he said.

Viewers who called WPLG were overwhelmingly against what the Herald had done. The question drew about 7,000 calls. More than 70% of them said the paper had not acted responsibly.

"It was one of the largest logistical nightmares we've had here in a long time," said Marv Rockford, News Director KCNC-TV, Denver.
"It began for us when we got the word he had already left New Hampshire and was on his way back to Denver by private jet," he said.
Hart's pilot deliberately switched flight plans.
"We ended up with three live crews at three airports trying to be prepared for all eventualities," said Rockford.

They were able to cover the landing live, and after a live cut-in, they began a long chase. NBC rented a helicopter to follow Hart's car and a KCNC ground crew followed him by car.
"What ensued was a wild chase up the mountainside with his people trying to block our car. They were running red lights to try to get away from us," said Rockford.
There was what the news executive called, "an entire Roman division of media" waiting for them at their home in Kittredge.

Picture a small home in the mountains. A dirt road leads up to it. There are at least 100 media people, two satellite trucks and a microwave van waiting outside, along with a forest of tripods, cameras, and people running around with microphones and notepads.

"This wasn't on the steps of the Capitol building. It took place at a little mountain retreat," Rockford points out.
He said the obvious solution was a pool arrangement. But given the competitive nature of the business, it was a difficult thing to negotiate, particularly during a breaking news story.
"I don't know what the answer is. We need to take a serious look at it. We are damaging ourselves in the eyes of our audience," he warned.

All three local stations pre-empted portions of the network coverage in favor of local talent telling the story.

KUSA-TV, did an hour special, including:
--- Re-cap of Hart's announcement 25 days earlier and his first campaign swing.
--- A summary of what had happened.
--- Live reports from the hotel where Hart gave his speech.
--- Live to their Washington Bureau with reaction from the Capitol and The Washington Post angle.
--- Analysis of the way The Miami Herald handled the story.
--- Live from Hart headquarters and from a restaurant where people were watching the speech.

KUSA also ran a special after the newscast with local guests analyzing the events of the week and looking at how the media handled it.

Butch Montoya, KUSA's News Director, felt it's extremely important when the media undertakes investigations like this, that we do it with a sense of balance and fairness, and not a vendetta.
"If you're doing it for a vendetta, you're doing it for the wrong reason. If you're doing it for the citizens' right to know, then anybody is fair game. The media certainly has a responsibility to question and to investigate, but it needs to be done very thoroughly and with a lot of thought and a lot of documentation," Montoya stressed.

Rockford felt a candidate's private life was appropriate for investigation.

"Gary Hart, in seeking public office, should understand that his private life-is fair game, because of what it tells us about the man," said Rockford.
He said he would quarrel with what The Herald did if Gary Hart had not sought to present himself to the American public as a "family man."

"Before he ran the last time, he went to great lengths to demonstrate that he had patched up his marriage, and that he and Lee were on the campaign trail together," said Rockford.
"He had gone out of his way to portray himself as a family man running for president. Given that, and if these stories are true, then the public image he presented is false, and that represents an hypocrisy that is worth knowing about," he explained.

Rockford said KCNC pulled their crews out of Kittredge after Hart's speech.
"Gary Hart has returned to private life now, and we'll treat him as a private citizen from now on. That means not staking out his home 24 hours a day," he added.

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