Not All Foreign-Influence Scandals Are Created Equal

President Bill Clinton & Al Gore at the 96 Democratic 
Convention in Chicago (Reuters photo: Win McNamee)

Two decades ago, the media weren’t obsessed with Chinese interference in a presidential election.

This summer we mark the 20th anniversary of a major investigation by Congress of attempts by a hostile foreign power to influence an American presidential election.

I’m glad the news media is pursuing the Trump–Russia scandal, but let’s not forget the differences between how they are covering Russia compared with how they reported a similar story — this one involving Communist China — that developed during Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign. The Washington Post reported in 1998 that “evidence gathered in federal surveillance intercepts has indicated that the Chinese government planned to increase China’s influence in the U.S. political process in 1996.”

Many people still believe that a major cover-up of that scandal worked — in part because the media expressed skepticism and devoted only a fraction of resources they are spending on the Trump–Russia story. Network reporters expressed outright skepticism of the story, with many openly criticizing the late senator Fred Thompson, the chair of the Senate investigating committee, for wasting time and money. On June 17, 1997, Katie Couric, then the Today co-anchor, asked the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward about the story: “Are members of the media, do you think, Bob, too scandal-obsessed, looking for something at every corner?”

According to an analysis by the Media Research Center, the news coverage of the congressional hearings on the China scandal in the summer of 1997 were dwarfed by reports on the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace and the death of Princess Diana.

Read the rest from John Fund HERE.

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