Susan Estrich


January 6, 2001



BROOKE GLADSTONE: As the Clinton administration comes to the end of its day, and as we finally shake off the last remnants of the Al Gore Campaign, a small item in Brill's Content magazine reminds us of one loose end -- a newspaper column written but never published by Democratic activist and multimedia pundit Susan Estrich.

BOB GARFIELD:According to her recent book Sex and Power, the column was used as a bargaining chip in a grievance with the Gore Campaign raising questions about journalistic weapons in the hands of working political operatives. Estrich, a law professor at the University of Southern California, is also a contributor to Fox News, the Los Angeles Times, American Lawyer and USA Today. Professor Estrich, welcome to On the Media.

SUSAN ESTRICH: My pleasure to be here!

BOB GARFIELD: I'm looking at your resume, and I see--: lawyer, academic, author, TV pundit, politico, columnist. When you look in the mirror in the morning, who do you see?

SUSAN ESTRICH: I'm a law professor, a mother-- and someone with a lot of opinions who's lucky enough to have many forums in which to express them.

BOB GARFIELD:All right, please put on your journalism hat for a moment. Do you find yourself negotiating some sort of hazardous mine fields as you try to maneuver among your various roles in writing your newspaper column.

SUSAN ESTRICH: I think everybody's negotiating hazardous mine fields these days, and I think there's more self-censorship than most of us would like to admit.

BOB GARFIELD: Well listen, I'm not asking these questions for no reason--

SUSAN ESTRICH: [LAUGHS] Really!

BOB GARFIELD: I'm sitting here [LAUGHS] holding your book Sex and Power.

SUSAN ESTRICH: Right.

BOB GARFIELD:And I get to page 3, and I find you discussing with yourself about whether you should write a column suggesting the nomination of Madeleine Albright for secretary of state.

SUSAN ESTRICH: Right.

BOB GARFIELD: And I guess ultimately you decided not to, but what strikes me is that your deliberations on this matter have to do not with which is most interesting as a newspaper column but which is most likely to get Madeleine Albright nominated for the job.

SUSAN ESTRICH: Well I think of myself as an activist, and I think of myself as someone who does have an agenda. I don't work as a reporter per se, and I'm a journalist only in the sense that opinionated people in our society who are trying to effect change often use the news organizations or use their pens and papers or, or computers in my case, to effect change. But I think you know I make no bones about that. That's who I've always been.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, here it comes. Calling your attention--

SUSAN ESTRICH: The hard one?!

BOB GARFIELD: -- [LAUGHS] calling your attention, counselor, to pages 218 and--

SUSAN ESTRICH: I know where you're going.

BOB GARFIELD: -- yeah -- in your book about - in the chapter on political power--

SUSAN ESTRICH: Right.

BOB GARFIELD: -- you, you talk of an episode--

SUSAN ESTRICH: In which I didn't publish the column.

BOB GARFIELD: -- you were trying, as I understand it--

SUSAN ESTRICH: To get women hired in the Gore Campaign -- not to hurt the vice president.

BOB GARFIELD:All right, I just want to get the, get the--get this clear here. It says here in your book "I don't send the column to my syndicate or to USA Today which has already offered to run a piece on Al Gore's women problem--

SUSAN ESTRICH: Right.

BOB GARFIELD: -- sight unseen. One last try; I send it overnight mail to the vice president--

SUSAN ESTRICH: Right. Right.

BOB GARFIELD: -- himself, and I place a call to him making it clear--

SUSAN ESTRICH: Right.

BOB GARFIELD: -- that I want to speak to the vice president himself; not to one of the princes. Two days pass. No word."

SUSAN ESTRICH: Right, right, right, right, right.

BOB GARFIELD: "USA Today wants to run a piece on the following Monday, but there's a problem anyway," on and on.

SUSAN ESTRICH: I know, I know, right.

BOB GARFIELD: The, the Gore Campaign, from your perspective, caves--

SUSAN ESTRICH: Well, no, not caves - sees the - I finally get to the vice president, and he for the first time is-- he has a discussion; I think it's probably the first time he'd had a discussion with anybody on the topic, and he says, you know, "we gotta do something!"

BOB GARFIELD: And the column doesn't run.

SUSAN ESTRICH: Well, the column doesn't run. Yeah.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, professor, you're a lawyer. Isn't there a word for this sort of behavior?

SUSAN ESTRICH: Pressure?

BOB GARFIELD: Extortion?

SUSAN ESTRICH:I mean you know I, I think it depends on what you -- where your starting point is. It is a tradition among those of us who take an activist role in politics to use the press and to use disclosures to the press and to go public with certain things and try to deal with other things privately, and that's what I did! My goal was not to make a name for myself in newspapers. My goal was to get the vice president: to hire women!

BOB GARFIELD:Put yourself in the place not of academic, lawyer, mom, author, TV pundit, politico, columnist or anything else. Make yourself the editor of a national newspaper. Knowing what we now know, would you hire you? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

SUSAN ESTRICH: I'd have to -- would I hire me? Yeah, I think I'm ethically cleaner than a lot of people who make no effort to separate or understand their roles. We've got a whole generation of journalists who purport to be reporters who spend half their time in my business, and you don't know what hat they're wearing when.

BOB GARFIELD: Professor Estrich, thanks very much.

BRIAN GALLAGHER:I think the goal of anyone writing for us should be to influence through their opinions; not use the threat of the paper as leverage or the threat of not writing something as leverage.

BOB GARFIELD: Brian Gallagher is editorial page editor for USA Today.

BRIAN GALLAGHER: Now in our conversations with Estrich since this whole issue came up she has agreed with that premise.

BOB GARFIELD: As far as you're concerned, she's invited back?

BRIAN GALLAGHER:If it is her view that it is appropriate to use the threat of a column on a routine basis to effect public policy as opposed to simply stating her views, then-- we may have to reconsider that.