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Furthermore, he felt Salon had been heavy-handed. "The tone of the story was sort of like there was a gigantic scandal, a violation of the First Amendment and payola, etc., etc. That might have been a little overselling it. We wouldn't write it that way."

On the other hand, New York Times media reporter Felicity Barringer saw the story as following a pattern common to other recent media scandals. "In '98, we had all the sins of lying and plagiarizing," she said. "The things that have gotten people into trouble recently are all related to branding, in the case of the Los Angeles Times; and related to revenue, in the case of the TV scripts; and related to competitiveness in other instances. The sins all come from a business ethos."

But to blame the media's reaction to the story as the result of a "slow news day," as "Law & Order" producer Wolf did, seems to miss some of the story's larger implications as well.

True, interest on the Washington end of the Hollywood-to-Washington saga seemed to have fallen off by the weekend -- the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses and the plight of Elián González had pushed it off the map of most of the Beltway media, with the exception of C-Span's "Washington Week in Review."

Outside Washington, others still identified profound implications.

The editorial pages of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune all ran ringing denouncements of the deal in unambiguous language. "The harm, of course," the Trib's editors argued, "is the awful precedent set by any arrangement in which government confers financial favor on selected media based on content."

The stench of favoritism and greed will not wash away easily -- even after McCaffrey's announcement Wednesday that the ONDCP will no longer review episodes until after they have aired. (Besides, the agency -- working with the advertising firm Ogilvy and Mather and the P.R. firm Fleishman Hilllard Inc. -- has created lots of other venues for its messages.)

And finally, if the White House must tamper with TV content, couldn't they do something about "The West Wing"?
salon.com | Jan. 21, 2000

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