Page 73 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

HART, GARY
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HART, GARY (1936- ), U.S. senator from Colorado from 1975 to 1987, was
twice a serious contender for the Democratic nomination for president. He won
the New Hampshire primary in 1984 but eventually lost out to Walter Mondale.
He was the presumed front-runner for the nomination in 1988. However, on
May 3, 1987, the Miami Herald reported that a woman who was not his wife
had spent the night in Hart's Washington, D.C., town house. There ensued a
torrent of media attention to Hart's sex life outside his marriage, much of it
based on rumor and innuendo.
Hart had been asked before about these rumors and had challenged reporters
to "put a tail on me." The Miami Herald did just that. The appropriateness and
accuracy of the Herald's reporting were the subject of much scrutiny and heated
debate in political and journalistic circles. The effects, however, transcended this
one incident and this one candidate.
Aside from the devastating effect this had on his campaign (he shortly with-
drew, reentered later, but was no longer a serious contender), the frenzy of media
interest in his personal life definitively broke down the barriers that had long
existed between a politician's public and private lives. While such interest might
have been the stuff of tabloids in the past, the elite newspapers were the major
players in this story, with Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor asking Hart in
a press conference, ' 'Have you committed adultery?'' In effect, from this point
on, no aspect of a candidate's or elected official's life was off-limits to the press.

SOURCES: John B. Judis, "The Hart Affair," Columbia Journalism Review,
July/August 1987; 'The Sudden Fall of Gary Hart," Newsweek, May 18, 1987.
David Kennamer

HEARST, WILLIAM RANDOLPH (1863-1951). This media tycoon was also
a significant participant in politics. His father, George Hearst, was a miner who
made a fortune mining silver. Later he became a U.S. senator and for political
reasons bought the San Francisco Examiner. Young Hearst, eager to imitate
Pulitzer's style of journalism, convinced his father he could revive the faltering
Examiner. He took over the paper in 1887 and made good on his promise. His
success there led him to move into the New York market and compete directly
with Pulitzer by purchasing the New York Journal in 1895.
That set the stage for yellow journalism, with its intense competition and
sensationalism. It climaxed with the Spanish-American War. Legend has it that
Hearst sent the famous artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to make pictures of
the war. Remington let Hearst know there was no war, but Hearst wired back,
"You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." When the battleship Maine
was sunk, both Hearst's Journal and Pulitzer's World had artists' drawings of
the explosion covering more than half the front page. Yet historians now doubt
that Hearst was much of a factor in leading the country to war.
Hearst was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1902 and unsuccessfully
sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1904. He ran against Charles