Ten years later, we are still assessing the relevance of our carnivorous press corps’ carnal knowledge. Vanity Fair published a long story this month alleging that the mayor of New York and his communications director, Cristyne Lategano, ““were intimate,’’ a charge both denied. Granted, Rudy Giuliani may be, as GOP consultant Mike Murphy says, the only politician in America who can make sex boring. But the allegation by the artful tattle sheet has kicked off a racy media debate. The bottom line: Vanity Fair was right that the absence of Donna Hanover from her husband’s side (even after the story appeared) and the apparently dismal state of their marriage is a legitimate news story. And it was right that the senior-staff turmoil caused by the relationship between Giuliani and his subordinate - whatever the truth is - was undercovered, a point first made in 1995 by New York Magazine. But Vanity Fair was nonetheless wrong to print the adultery charge and wrong to so confidently predict their marriage will end after the November election, even if both turn out to be true.
We’re talking here about the unlikely juxtaposition of not just ““hot sex’’ and ““Rudy Giuliani’’ but ““tabloids’’ and ““standards.’’ The reason the New York Post and the Daily News failed to run a story about the mayor’s alleged adultery despite two years of rampant rumors was not just because he was friendly with the publishers. The more formidable obstacle was that the papers simply didn’t have enough to go on. Without some evidence of an affair, reporters were forced to resort to coy nods and winks in print. This is often the tool of choice when there is no firsthand evidence; remember the assistant to a member of the Bush cabinet who was described by The New York Times as having ““served under him in a variety of positions’’? Vanity Fair believed that it was time to move beyond euphemism. ““We stopped being cute,’’ the article’s author, Jennet Conant, told me. But the magazine lacked the evidence to take that last step. Besides the unconvincing account of a security guard (almost certainly secondhand) who heard extra footsteps on the second floor of Gracie Mansion and a few overnight trips Giuliani and Lategano were said to have taken together (which the magazine admits it may have gotten wrong), the allegation had no details. It hung on the general assertions of anonymous sources.
Why does that matter? Doesn’t the press use anonymous sources all the time? Yes, but not about sex, that most unverifiable of activities. When it comes to moving beyond innuendo toward an explicit story, even the tabloids have standards. The rules - if they can be called that - sound complicated, but they are surprisingly clear. To publish a sex story about a celebrity or a politician, most news organizations don’t need proof, but they do need one or more of the following: someone coming forward publicly (usually a scorned woman like Gennifer Flowers); an incident in a public place; a legal filing (NEWSWEEK held off publishing the latest charges about Bill Clinton’s alleged advances toward a woman who worked in the White House until she was subpoenaed by Paula Jones’s lawyers); allegations of criminal conduct; firsthand observation (Dick Morris and the mistress on the balcony), or an incriminating photograph (Donna Rice on Gary Hart’s lap). Vanity Fair makes a point of saying that if you substituted the name Clinton for Giuliani, the rumors would have been published long ago. But they wouldn’t have been unless they had met one of these standards.
Of course, the most common reason for running a sex story is that someone else has run it before. The media are no stronger than their weakest link, which is why once Vanity Fair broke the story, everyone followed, including me and NEWSWEEK. This is at once craven and perfectly practical. Toothpaste can’t go back into the tube.
Vanity Fair argues that its rationale is no weaker than the tortured list above. Under this argument, all that matters for vindication is that it is right. True, Giuliani is the one who will have a problem if incriminating information ultimately surfaces: he and Lategano (though not Hanover) unequivocally denounced the story. But even that will not justify Vanity Fair’s approach. The reason is that if anonymous sources without incriminating details are good enough for a story like this, then no one is safe anymore. Publications can simply assert an affair took place and insist that their reporting be ““trusted.’’ The bar, already depressingly low, will notch down even further, especially for public figures like Giuliani who cannot easily sue.
Fortunately, we aren’t heading there as fast as we thought a decade ago. The main break on the slide into the mud, ironically, was Bill Clinton’s election. By acknowledging that he had ““caused pain’’ in his marriage and still winning, Clinton lowered the political stakes of these kinds of stories. Clinton and Giuliani have given national meaning to the immortal words of former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, who once said the only way he’d lose would be ““to get caught with a dead girl or a live boy.’’ In the years since Gary and Donna, the coverage of sex and politics still sells, but it’s beginning to feel mechanical and tiresome. Maybe we’d all be better off faking a headache, rolling over and reading something significant for a change.
