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American Morning

First Daughter Faces More Alcohol-Related Troubles

Aired May 31, 2001 - 11:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush's daughters face a police investigation in Austin, Texas. Investigators are trying to determine whether one or both of the young women illegally tried to buy alcohol at an Austin restaurant on Tuesday night.

Jenna, according to police, allegedly tried to use someone else's ID to buy alcoholic drinks. Her sister Barbara was with her at the time. No charges have been filed. In a recent incident, Jenna pleaded no-contest to alcohol possession by a minor.

Marshall Maher is the editor of "The Daily Texan." He's joining us from Austin with more. Marshall, good morning. Thanks for joining us.

MARSHALL MAHER, EDITOR, "THE DAILY TEXAN": Hi, Daryn. How is it going?

KAGAN: I'm good. We are doing OK here. How about in Austin? Did your paper choose to cover the story?

MAHER: We did not, actually, on this story. The previous editors, Cecily Sailor (ph) and Jenny Kennedy (ph), decided on a policy where they said that we weren't going to treat the Bush family -- George P. also goes to UT Law School here -- and we weren't going to treat the Bush family like anybody else. They're going to be private citizens like any other student. And consequently, they're going to get the same kind of coverage that every other student got.

And I think that was a good policy. And that's what we chose to stick with under my reign.

KAGAN: So the idea of any typical student trying to pass, allegedly trying to pass, a fake ID would not make news with your paper?

MAHER: Right. I mean, we have 50,000 students here at UT. And if we're going to start writing a story about every one of them, we'd have no room in our paper for anything of worth. So just like we're choosing every other student, we're choosing not to write a story about this.

KAGAN: That sounds like a similar policy that the "Stanford Daily" had for Chelsea Clinton. MAHER: Right. And I heard a few things about that as well. On another network, they mentioned we were giving them kid-glove treatment. And I'd probably take offense to that. I don't think it's kid-glove treatment. We're not treating this situation like we did any different than we did the previous two situations.

We think we are just keeping to a good policy that makes sense for a school newspaper where the family goes to school.

KAGAN: Well, you bring up a point in your number there. Is there a certain point where it would become a story?

MAHER: Like I said, maybe if the crime became a little more serious. But as far as I understand, this is a class-C misdemeanor. We don't really think that merits coverage in the paper because we have a quite of a few students. And there are a lot of misdemeanors going around in this town.

So had the charge been a felony for some kind of assault or any other situation, then different questions would arise. But right now, we didn't think that it merited a story.

KAGAN: Marshall, is there another story to be done here about the tough gig of being a first daughter, how it's not easy to grow up in the spotlight like that?

MAHER: Yeah, I think that's a fair story as well as she chose and the Bush family chose to send her to school at a large publicity university here in Austin. And there's a lot of media here in this town. And Bush lived here for six years while governor. And he has a lot of friends and enemies here.

So the question could be asked was it the smartest choice to send her to a large public school? But that's the decision they ultimately chose. And we are respecting that.

KAGAN: And there is the question of how tough of an act is it to follow Chelsea Clinton to seemed to kind of just sail through her adolescence and through college without making much news?

MAHER: Right. If you remember at beginning of the tenure, I believe she was the butt of a few jokes on "Saturday Night Live" and I think some late night talk shows. But I think that's to be expected.

But I think ultimately the media respected the Clintons' wishes to leave her alone. And as far as on her, she did a good job of staying out of the news. And so I think there might be a few different factors between the two.

KAGAN: There you go. Well, Marshall Maher, thanks for joining us and giving us your perspective from UT there.

MAHER: Thank you, Daryn.

KAGAN: Thank you. Good talking with you.

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