Last December The Boston Globe ran an editorial with the provocative headline WHY POLITIC$ $TINK$. Martin F. Nolan, political correspondent turned editorialist, opened the piece like this:

"In 1986, when he ran for the U.S. Senate from Colorado, Timothy E. Wirth asked his campaign staff to keep track of how he spent his time. The answer shocked Wirth, even though he had been a member of the House for six terms. He spent 85 percent of his time raising money."

One point Nolan makes in POLITIC$ $TINK$ -- that too many U.S. representatives and senators spend too much time hustling for election-campaign funds -- is just part of the larger story of how profoundly money in politic$ corrupt$. Almost always the press's role in covering this larger story is passive. A dramatic scandal involving the likes of Jim Wright, Tony Coelho, the Keating Five senators, or multiple members of the same state legislature (as in Arizona and South Carolina recently) falls into the reporters' laps; at that point, the media, aroused, set about pursuing the story to its sleazy denouement.

After the pack has done its job on this single story, however, its members seldom pause to consider that the problem may be systemic -- that other politicians, subjected to the same financial pressures as the latest one to be publicly shamed, may have succumbed in a similar manner and accepted large sums of money in return for future favors. The rot is by no means limited to the legislative branch: money sometimes corrupts decision-making by executive-branch bureaucrats at all levels of government, and reaches into the court system as well.

While the pack goes its own reactive way, a handful of journalists has provided models of in-depth coverage, year in and year out. An example is the staff of the bimonthly Common Cause Magazine, created eleven years ago in Washington, D.C., to rack the muck of politics. Three recent titles are "BackPocket PACs: New Ways to Skirt the Law," by Peter Overby, and "The Brooklyn Bundler: A Lone Political Operative Masters the Art of Buying Entree in Washington" and "Money On the Line: Political Parties, Members of Congress, and Special Interests Are Spending Millions to Influence the Next Round of Gerrymandering," both by Viveca Novak. The staff of National Journal, a Washington, D.C.-based weekly magazine, also regularly comes up with thoughtful and well-reported pieces about the impact of money on politics. After that, the pickings are pretty slim.

Granted, virtually every daily newspaper, some public affairs magazines, and some broadcast news operations do stories about campaign finance, mostly in congressional and presidential races as election day nears. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of those stories possess a disturbing sameness. Too often, the piece is pegged to and based solely on the most recent financial filings by the rival politicians' organizations. A typical story starts off like this:

Senator Slick Fox raised $ 2 million during 1990 for his re-election campaign on the GOP ticket, according to the latest report filed by Fox's campaign at the Federal Election Commission. Fox's only declared challenger, Democrat Wiley Coyote, currently state trasurer, reported raising $ 100,000, FEC reports indicate. Most political analysts give Coyote a poor chance of unseating Fox, who has served in Washington since 1968.

An exclusive diet of such stories serves the audience poorly for a number of reasons:

* They fail to look at the "who" of income, never distinguishing among grass-roots giving by in-state individual contributors who can actually vote for the candidate and don't expect any favors; political action committees with roots in the state that seek access to or specific legislative favors from the candidate, or both; and out-of-state givers, including wealthy individuals with special-interest agendas, as well as selfishly motivated corporate, labor, single-issue, and ideological political action committees. Any time a candidate receives money from donors ineligible to vote in his or her jurisdiction, a journalist ought to be especially curious about what the donor is seeking. Talking to the people whose names appear on the contributor's lists almost always leads to a more informative story.

* They fail to dissect the incumbent's record on the floor of the legislature, in committee sessions, and in backrooms. That dissection must examine the public policy initiatives blocked by the incumbent, as well as those he pushed or at least supported. Unearthing such examples takes skill and diligence. For example, a manufacturers' political action committee might support an incumbent because of a job-safety bill that he bottled up in committee. Nowhere is it recorded for public consumption that the incumbent is responsible for the bill's demise. But the PAC's decision-makers know. Left in the dark are the assembly-line workers whose health and very lives may be jeopardized as a result of the incumbent's desire for a large contribution. * They fail to examine spending. Income is significant, but so is outgo. How is the candidate spending the money? Who is receiving the largesse, and why? Interviewing the recipients of the candidate's expenditures should be de rigueur, but most journalists never do it. An enterprising reporter might discover that the candidate, ostensibly needy, is actually quite well off and is passing contributors' money along to an incumbent or challenger in a different district or state. Or the reporter might find that campaign contributions are being used to line the pockets of family members who own printing businesses, political consulting firms, and the like. the possibilities for legally and morally questionable expenditures are virtually endless, yet journalists seldom explore this terrain.

* They fail to provide historical perspective. How much money did the winning candidate raise and spend during the last few election cycles? How much did the loser raise and spend? Did they raise money differently this time around -- and is their pattern of spending it noticeably different? Although every election cycle has its own dynamic, it is still possible to learn from recent history.

* They never discuss the ethics of the system. A contribution or expenditure may well be legal, but is it ethical? Is it the way a responsible person in a policymaking position should act?

Coverage need not be so superficial so often. Journalists wanting to provide the best possible coverage of money in politics have a wealth of resources to consult. Among them are:

PAPER AND COMPUTER TRAILS

The Federal Election Commission is generally regarded as a toothless tiger when it comes to enforcing campaign law violations. The toothlessness is partly a lack of meaningful power coferred by Congress, partly a lack of will by some of the appointed commissioners. But the FEC is an easily accessible gold mine of raw data, thanks in large part to Kent Cooper, the agency's public disclosure chief. Many journalists say that Cooper is the best-informed, most helpful, tuned-in bureaucrat in their experience. The agency's address is 999 E Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20463, tel. (202) 376-3140 or (800) 424-9530.

FEC information comes from candidates (incumbents and challengers) for the U.S. House, Senate, and White House. It is computerized and accessible electronically or in hard copy at the FEC's public disclosure room, in U.S. House and Senate records offices, in state capitals, through the mail, or via a personal computer hooked to a modem. Journalists can request a variety of indexes listing, for example, contributions received by a federal candidate during a two-year election cycle, expenditures by any federal candidate, all contributions by a specific individual or political action committee to one or more candidates, and contributions by every person listed in the same zip code area or same state.

The FEC publishes guides to its resources, all of them easy to understand. Probably the most comprehensive overview is titled "Combined Federal/State Disclosure Directory," showing where to locate information about campaign finance, personal finances of officeholders, lobbying and lobbyists, corporations, and election results.

Organizations have evolved to help journalists by organizing FEC data on computer, combined with information from ancillary sources, in new ways. Among them are the Center for Responsive Politics, 1320 19th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 857-0044 (Larry Makinson); the Campaign Research Center, 1010 Vermont Avenue, N.W., Suite 710, Washington, D.C. 20005, (202) 347-5400 (Gary Schmitz); and the Missouri Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, University of Missouri School of Journalism, Neff Hall, Columbia, Missouri, 65211, (314) 882-0684 (Elliot Jaspin).

CONGRESSIONAL LEADS

Journalists might also want to consult three U.S. Senate committees -- rules and administration, ethics, and appropriations (particularly the appropriations subcommittee on general government) -- plus the corollary House committees.

PEOPLE AND GROUPS

Ellen Miller, Center for Responsive Politics; the staff at Common Cause Magazine or its parent organization, 2030 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 833-1200; Public Citizen/Congress Watch, 215 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003, (202) 546-4996; and Charles Lewis, the Center for Public Integrity, 1910 K Street, N.W., Suite 802, Washington, D.C. 20006, (202) 223-0299. Those four groups are reform-minded but generally nonpartisan. Journalists can also consult sources within other think tanks and self-styled public interest groups, or university campuses, within the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as individual lobbyists, individual political action committees, incumbent politicians and their current and former staff members, their challengers, and retired officeholders. The Center for Responsive Politics has published a list of key sources, called "Experts on Money and Politics." Similar lists may be found in various books. Probably the best is Congressional Quarterly's Washington Information Directory, especially Chapter 17.

SELECTED READINGS

Three classic works should be required reading: Louise Overacker's Money in Elections, published in 1932, which demonstrates how the U.S. political system has been corrupted by money; Politics and Money: The New Road to Corruption, published in 1983, by Elizabeth Drew, The New Yorker's Washington correspondent; and Honest Graft: Big Money and the American Political Process, published in 1988 (and updated in 1990), by Brooks Jackson, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, now a member of CNN's investigative unit.

Other useful books are: PAC Power: Inside the World of Political Action Committees, by Larry J. Sabato, a political science professor; Wild Blue Yonder: Money, Politics, and the B-1 Bomber, by journalist Nick Kotz; The Best Congress Money Can Buy, by Philip M. Stern, a journalist and philanthropist; and Interest Group Politics (third edition), a collection of academic essays edited by political scientists Allan J. Cigler and Burdett A. Loomis.

Many other books and monographs show up in "Selected Print Resources," available from the Center for Responsive Politics. Numerous books on investigative reporting contain examples of political corruption and offer step-by-step advice on how to ferret out stories. Among the best are The Reporter's Handbook: An Investigator's Guide to Documents and Techniques (second edition), edited by John Ullmann and Jan Colbert for Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.; Investigative Reporting (second edition), by Peter Benjamison and David Anderson; Investigative Reporting and Editing, by Paul N. Williams; and Investigative Reporting, by Clark Mollenhoff.

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