[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 72 (Friday, June 10, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      BEHIND THE PAULA JONES STORY

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I am a journalist by background, and 
I confess I am concerned by the lack of proportion that seems to be too 
often typical of the coverage of events.
  I read the accounts--and I have no way of knowing their accuracy--
that the hitting of the knee of Nancy Kerrigan and all that followed 
received three times as much media attention as the fall of the Berlin 
Wall, and that the Whitewater matter has received three times as much 
coverage as health care reform. It would not surprise me if those 
figures are accurate. The Columbia Journalism Review said that the 
weekday coverage devoted to Whitewater by ABC, CBS, and NBC in the 
first quarter of 1993 amounted to 284 minutes, and the weekday coverage 
devoted to health care debate in the first quarter of 1993 by the same 
three networks was 90 minutes or less than one-third of the attention 
devoted to Whitewater.
  Recently, I read an editorial column by Mortimer B. Zuckerman, 
editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, commenting on the role of 
the media in our democracy.
  He comments: ``The sad fact is that the news cycle works in such a 
way that allegations alone, without proof, burst into the headlines. It 
is all very well to say the accused later went free without a stain on 
his character.'' Then he quotes from a character portrayed by Anthony 
Trollope, who was acquitted but was made to feel guilty whenever he 
went into the House of Commons:

       He had been so hacked and hewed about, so exposed to the 
     gaze of the vulgar, so mauled by the public, that he could 
     never more be anything but the wretched being who had been 
     tried for the murder of his enemy. He could never more enjoy 
     that freedom from self-consciousness, that inner tranquility 
     of spirit which [is] essential to public utility.

  Mort Zuckerman, to his credit, says that the field of journalism 
needs a better perspective on things.
  I agree.
  I ask that his editorial be placed into the Record at this point.
  The editorial follows:

                [U.S. News & World Report, May 23, 1994]

                      Behind the Paula Jones Story

                       (By Mortimer B. Zuckerman)

       Every time you think politics and the media cannot get 
     sleazier, there's a nasty surprise around the corner. The 
     escalation of the depressing and disgusting charge of sexual 
     harassment leveled at President Clinton epitomizes how much 
     downscale tabloid values now pervade American discourse. No 
     doubt the alleged scene will soon be on Court TV in some form 
     with a motion picture to follow. The bandwagon everybody 
     wants to jump onto is a garbage truck.
       It does not pass the smell test. Paula Corbin Jones, then a 
     state employee, says that when Bill Clinton was governor of 
     Arkansas he used a state trooper to invite her to a hotel 
     room in Little Rock during a state-sponsored conference and 
     put pressure on her to engage in a sexual act. Why didn't she 
     yell foul the next day? Why did she fail to make the charge 
     during the six months required under law for such charges? 
     Why did she keep silent during the presidential campaign when 
     Clinton's relations with women were a hot issue? Why now? 
     What we have is the moral and legal equivalent of a late hit 
     in football.
       The odor intensifies with the information about attempts to 
     profit from the alleged incident. According to an affidavit 
     signed by a Little Rock businessman, one of Jones's lawyers 
     tried to send word to Clinton that he should reach a 
     settlement with Jones or be publicly embarrassed and that 
     ``it would help if President Clinton would get Paula a job 
     out in California,'' where the president has Hollywood 
     friends. (The lawyer claims he was misunderstood.) Only when 
     Clinton refused was the suit filed.
       Can anybody doubt that this suit would not have been filed 
     if Paula Jones was not counting on the press being right 
     outside the door, salivating to cover the case and offer her 
     money? The down-and-dirty tabloids and that new affliction, 
     tabloid TV, have no qualms about such a story. Digging up 
     dirt, or manufacturing it, is their business. That is not 
     new. What is new is the alacrity with which the mainstream 
     press and television seem to feel obliged to regurgitate the 
     bile.
       Cliff Jackson, the perennial Clinton hater, understood this 
     well. He saw how Clinton's enemies could seize the suit as a 
     political weapon. He recognized that this is a feminist era: 
     The general presumption is that a woman would not claim 
     sexual harassment unless it were true. Otherwise, why would 
     she expose herself to the publicity? Wendy Kaminer has 
     analyzed it in the Atlantic Monthly. ``Sexual violence,'' she 
     writes, ``is a unifying focal point for women. . . . It is 
     heresy, in general, to question the testimony of self-
     proclaimed victims of date rape or harassment. . . . All 
     claims of suffering are sacred and presumed to be absolutely 
     true.''
       That sexual harassment exists is unquestionable, but that 
     many minor acts of sexual misconduct are overdramatized is 
     also true. To avoid trivializing those who suffer the real 
     thing, we must reject the idea that any unwanted advance or 
     remark constitutes harassment. There is a difference between 
     an unwanted encounter, which may upset a woman, and pressure 
     applied--such as threatening a woman's job security--or 
     ongoing demeaning treatment. Those wrongly accused have their 
     own kind of ordeal trying to prove a negative.
       The sad fact is that the news cycle works in such a way 
     that allegations alone, without proof, burst into the 
     headlines. It is all very well to say the accused later went 
     free without a stain on his character. The reality was more 
     accurately portrayed by Anthony Trollope in his account of 
     Phineas Finn, who was acquitted but could never go into the 
     House of Commons without being made to feel guilty: ``He had 
     been so hacked and hewed about, so exposed to the gaze of the 
     vulgar, so mauled by the public, that he could never more be 
     anything but the wretched being who had been tried for the 
     murder of his enemy. He could never more enjoy that freedom 
     from self-consciousness, that inner tranquility of spirit 
     which [is[ essential to public utility.''
       That is the cost to the public in the degradation of 
     standards we are witnessing today. We can do more than regret 
     this. We can take a public stance against the abuse of the 
     courts for political and personal purposes. Let us oblige the 
     plaintiffs to pay all or part of the legal costs of both 
     sides if their claims are found wanting. And it is high time 
     the media forbore to give such claimants a victory in the 
     court of public opinion before they are heard in a court of 
     law.

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