Newsweek S*cks Off Our Next Leader -- Thereby Continuing the Death Spiral of Mainstream Journalism

It would be hard to overstate the enormity of the favor that Newsweek is doing for Rudy Giuliani this week. The mag's enormous cover story is a profile of Giuliani bearing the cover line "The Real Rudy," which under normal circumstances would lead you to expect that you'll be getting an unvarnished portrait of the former New York mayor.

But I just checked in with Rudy's preemient biographer, Wayne Barrett. His take on Newsweek's effort? "It's an application for access, that's what this piece is. They wanted access to the Giuliani campaign, they had none. They submitted this application."

The piece actually has this title:

"Master of Disaster"

...and is filled with comically hyperbolic phrases like this one:

Born in 1944, Rudolph William Giuliani was raised to be tough in moments of peril.
What's more, while the piece does revisit some of Rudy's infamous low points, it also recycles myths about Rudy's mayoralty that, to put it charitably, didn't belong in a piece bearing the cover line "The Real Rudy." Newsweek says:

As long as Rudy got results, the public didn't particularly care how he did it, or how many fights he picked. The squeegee men were gone, as were turnstile jumpers and the more notorious pornographic emporiums.
This is bullshit, pure and simple. The public did in fact care "how he did it." Polls showed that while New York City residents did applaud the goals Rudy reached, majorities were decidedly opposed to his tactics. A New York Times poll in April of 2000, in the wake of the police shooting of Patrick Dorismond, found that 50% disapproved of Rudy's handling of crime, his signature issue, and concluded that "New York City residents have a decidedly negative view of Mr. Giuliani's handling of race relations." This is not a small falsehood on Newsweek's part, incidentally. The discomfort New Yorkers felt with Rudy's tactics, as opposed to his results, go directly to the heart of questions about the man's character -- and whitewashing this discomfort out of the public record is just dismal journalism.

That's not all. The notion that Rudy banished the "squeegie-men" from New York is another myth, according to Rudy biographer Wayne Barrett -- yet there's little question that this myth will figure centrally in the heroic narrative of Rudy that's taking shape with the help of publications like Newsweek. Barrett told me: "The squeegie men were gone before Rudy took office. Ray Kelly [the top cop under former Mayor David Dinkins] got rid of them. [Rudy police commissioner] Bill Bratton admitted this in his 1998 book. He wrote that `ironically, Giuliani and I got credit for the initiative,' and that `only politics prevented David Dinkins and Ray Kelly from receiving their due.'"

Finally, there's the small matter of Rudy's conduct on 9/11. Barrett's latest book details a wealth of counterintuitive info about his performance that day. Barrett tells me that he spent an hour and a half on the phone with a Newsweek reporter, much of it discussing the stuff he uncovered about Rudy and 9/11. But get this -- while Newsweek did credit Barrett for a revelation about the criminal past of Rudy's father, the mag didn't include a single word from Barrett's interview or book about 9/11.

"A serious magazine like Newsweek shouldn't refuse to ask any questions about what happened that day," Barrett tells me. "I don't care if I'm quoted or not -- that's not the point. The only thing I care about is getting journalists to look critically at his 9/11 performance. If Newsweek just rolls over and bows to myths, they will help make him President."

Link.