[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 84 (Wednesday, June 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H5267-H5273]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW ARTICLE ``WHERE WE WENT WRONG . . . AND WHAT 
                              WE DO NOW''

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, it is coincidental that my good friend, the 
gentleman from Michigan, was here just a few moments ago and entered 
into the Record the article by Stephen Brill which appeared in Brill's 
Content, the Independent Voice of the Information Age, which talks 
about Pressgate.
  In that article, Mr. Brill says on the cover, ``In Watergate, 
reporters checked abuse of power. In the Lewinsky affair, they enabled 
it; that is, the press enabled abuse of power by lapping up Ken Starr's 
leaks, which he now admits for the first time, the inside story day by 
day. Mr. Conyers just entered that article into the Record.
  I would like to take this opportunity to draw the attention of the 
Members of the House and anyone else who is interested in this issue to 
the March-April edition of Columbia Journalism Review. I do so because, 
unfortunately, Mr. Brill's article has been attacked. It has been 
attacked most vociferously by the Independent Counsel and the 
apologists for the Independent Counsel, Mr. Starr.
  However, objective analysis of Mr. Brill's article shows that in 
spite of the attacks against it, the article stands up very well and 
reveals quite clearly the abuse of power engaged in by the Independent 
Counsel in this particular investigation.
  The Independent Counsel, it appears, and it is shown by Mr. Brill's 
article, engaged in a conscious series of leaks of misinformation to 
the press over a prolonged period of time. Now, if additional 
substantiation is needed going beyond Mr. Brill's report, that 
additional substantiation can be found to a remarkable degree in that 
March-April edition of the Columbia Journalism Review.
  The article in Columbia Journalism Review, and it is a cover story, 
is entitled ``Where We Went Wrong,'' and it is an examination of the 
press coverage of the so-called events that the prosecutor is allegedly 
looking into.
  I would like to read a few brief excerpts from the story in the 
Columbia Journalism Review and then enter the entire article in the 
Record.
  The article says, in part, ``But the explosive nature of the story, 
and the speed with which it burst upon the consciousness of the Nation, 
triggered in the early stages a Piranha-like frenzy in pursuit of the 
relatively few tidbits tossed into the journalistic waters--by whom,'' 
the story asks?
  ``That there were wholesale leaks from lawyers and investigators was 
evident, but either legal restraints or reportorial pledges of 
anonymity kept the public from knowing with any certainty the sources 
of key elements in the saga.''
  The story goes on: ``Not just the volume but the methodology of the 
reporting came in for sharp criticism--often more rumor-mongering than 
fact-getting and fact-checking, and unattributed approbation of the 
work and speculation of others. The old yardstick said to have been 
applied by the Post in the Watergate story, that every revelation had 
to be confirmed by two sources before publication, was summarily 
abandoned by many news outlets,'' and no wonder, because they thought 
they were getting the information from the horse's mouth, from Mr. 
Starr and his investigators.
  The story goes on: ``As often as not, reports were published or 
broadcast without a single source named or mentioned in an attribution 
so vague as to be worthless. Readers and listeners were told repeatedly 
that this or that information came from ``sources'', a word that at 
best conveyed only the notion that the information was not pure fiction 
or fantasy. As leaks flew wildly from these unspecified sources, the 
American public was left, as seldom before in a major news event, to 
guess where stories came from and why.
  ``Readers and listeners were told what was reported to be included in 
affidavits and depositions . . . or presented to Independent Counsel 
Starr. Leakers were violating the rules while the public was left to 
guess about their identity and about the truth of what was passed on to 
them through the news media, often without the customary tests of 
validity.''
  Of course, the story goes on.
  I include this article for the Record, Mr. Chairman. We will take 
other opportunities to talk more about this in the future.
  The article referred to is as follows:

         [From the Columbia Journalism Review, Mar./Apr. 1998]

                          Where We Went Wrong

                          (By Jules Witcover)

       In the sex scandal story that has cast a cloud over the 
     president, Bill Clinton does not stand to be the only loser. 
     No matter how it turns out, another will be the American news 
     media, whose reputation as truth-teller to the country has 
     been besmirched by perceptions, in and out of the news 
     business, about how the story has been reported.
       The indictment is too sweeping. Many news outlets have 
     acted with considerable responsibility, especially after the 
     first few frantic days, considering the initial public 
     pressure for information, the burden of obtaining much of it 
     from sealed documents in

[[Page H5268]]

     legal proceedings and criminal investigations, and the 
     stonewalling of President Clinton and his White House aides.
       But the explosive nature of the story, and the speed with 
     which it burst on the consciousness of the nation, triggered 
     in the early stages a piranha-like frenzy in pursuit of the 
     relatively few tidbits tossed into the journalistic waters 
     by--whom? That there were wholesale leaks from lawyers and 
     investigators was evident, but either legal restraints or 
     reportorial pledges of anonymity kept the public from knowing 
     with any certainty the sources of key elements in the saga.
       Into the vacuum created by a scarcity of clear and credible 
     attribution raced all manner of rumor, gossip, and, 
     especially, hollow sourcing, making the reports of some 
     mainstream outlets scarcely distinguishable from supermarket 
     tabloids. The rush to be first or to be more sensational 
     created a picture of irresponsibility seldom seen in the 
     reporting of presidential affairs. Not until the story 
     settled in a bit did much of the reporting again begin to 
     resemble what has been expected of mainstream news 
     organizations.
       The Clinton White House, in full damage-control mode, 
     seized on the leaks and weakly attributed stories to cast the 
     news media as either a willing or unwitting collaborator of 
     sorts with independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation 
     of alleged wrongdoing by the president. Attacking the 
     independent counsel and his office was a clear diversionary 
     tactic, made more credible to many viewers and readers by 
     suggesting that the overzealous news business, so suspect 
     already in many quarters, was being used by Starr.
       Unlike the Watergate scandal of twenty-five years ago, 
     which trickled out over twenty-six months, this scandal broke 
     like a thunderclap, with the direst predictions from the 
     start. Whereas in the Watergate case the word impeachment was 
     unthinkable and not uttered until much later in the game, the 
     prospect of a premature end to the Clinton presidency was 
     heard almost at once. ``Is He Finished?'' asked the cover 
     line on U.S. News & World Report. Not to be outdone, The 
     Economist of London commanded, ``If It's True, Go.''
       ABC News's White House correspondent Sam Donaldson 
     speculated on This Week with Sam and Cokie on January 25 that 
     Clinton could resign before the next week was out. ``If he's 
     not telling the truth,'' Donaldson said, ``I think his 
     presidency is numbered in days. This isn't going to drag out. 
     . . . Mr. Clinton, if he's not telling the truth and the 
     evidence shows that, will resign, perhaps this week.''
       After Watergate, it was said that the president had been 
     brought down by two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl 
     Bernstein, and their newspaper, The Washington Post, and 
     they were widely commended for it. This time, after 
     initial reporting by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, there 
     was a major piling-on by much of American print and 
     electronic journalism, for which they have been widely 
     castigated. A Washington Post poll taken ten days after 
     the story broke found 56 percent of those surveyed 
     believed the news media were treating Clinton unfairly, 
     and 74 percent said they were giving the story ``too much 
     attention.''
       The advent of twenty-four-hour, all-news cable channels and 
     the Intenet assured the story of non-stop reportage and 
     rumor, augmented by repeated break-ins of normal network 
     programming and late-night rebashes. Viewing and listening 
     audiences swelled, as did newspaper and magazine circulation, 
     accommodated by special press runs.
       Not just the volume but the methodology of the reporting 
     came in for sharp criticism--often more rumor-mongering than 
     fact-getting and fact-checking, and unattributed 
     appropriation of the work and speculation of others. The old 
     yardstick said to have been applied by the Post in the 
     Watergate story--that every revelation had to be confirmed by 
     two sources before publication--was summarily abandoned by 
     many news outlets.
       As often as not, reports were published or broadcast 
     without a single source named, or mentioned in an attribution 
     so vague as to be worthless. Readers and listeners were told 
     repeatedly that this or that information came form 
     ``sources,'' a word that at best conveyed only the notion 
     that the information was not pure fiction or fantasy. As 
     leaks flew wildly from these unspecified sources, the 
     American public was left as seldom before in a major news 
     event to guess where stories came from and why.
       Readers and listeners were told what was reported to be 
     included in affidavits and depositions in the Paula Jones 
     sexual harassment case--information that supposedly was 
     protected by a federal judge's gag order--or presented to 
     independent counsel Starr. Leakers were violating the rules 
     while the public was left to guess about their identity, and 
     about the truth of what was passed on to them through the 
     news media, often without the customary tests of validity.
       In retrospect, it was sadly appropriate that the first hint 
     of the story really broke into public view not in Newsweek, 
     whose investigative reporter, Isikoff, had been doggedly 
     pursuing for more than a year Paula Jones's allegations that 
     Clinton had made inappropriate sexual advances to her when he 
     was governor of Arkansas.
       Rather, it surfaced in the wildly irresponsible Internet 
     site of Matt Drudge, a reckless trader in rumor and gossip 
     who makes no pretense of checking on the accuracy of what he 
     reports. (``Matt Drudge,'' says Jodie Allen, Washington 
     editor for Bill Gates's online magazine Slate, ``is the troll 
     under the bridge of Internet journalism.'')
       Drudge learned that Newsweek on Saturday, January 17, with 
     its deadline crowding in, had elected not to publish. 
     According to a February 2 Newsweek report, prosecutors 
     working for Starr had told the news-magazine they needed a 
     little more time to persuade former White House intern Monica 
     Lewinsky to tell them about an alleged relationship she had 
     with the president that had implications of criminal conduct.
       Early Saturday morning, according to the same Newsweek 
     report, the magazine ``was given access to'' a tape 
     bearing conversations between Lewinsky and her friend 
     Linda Tripp. But the Newsweek editors held off. Opting for 
     caution of the sort that in earlier days was applauded, 
     they waited.
       The magazine also reported that publication was withheld 
     because the tapes in themselves ``neither confirmed nor 
     disproved'' obstruction of justice, because the magazine had 
     ``no independent confirmation of the basis for Starr's 
     inquiry,'' and because its reporters had never seen or talked 
     with Lewinsky ``or done enough independent reporting to 
     assess the young woman's credibility.'' If anything, such 
     behavior if accurately described resonated with 
     responsibility, although holding back also left Newsweek open 
     to speculation by journalists that its action might have been 
     a quid pro quo for information received.
       Drudge, meanwhile, characteristically feeling no 
     restraints, on Monday morning, January 19, jumped in and 
     scooped Newsweek on its own story with a report that the 
     newsmagazine had ``spiked'' it after a ``screaming fight in 
     the editors' offices'' on the previous Saturday night. 
     Isikoff later said ``there was a vigorous discussion about 
     what was the journalistically proper thing to do. There were 
     no screaming matches.''
       Drudge was not without his defenders. Michael Kinsley, the 
     editor of Slate, argued later that ``the Internet beat TV and 
     print to this story, and ultimately forced it on them, for 
     one simple reason: lower standards . . . There is a case to 
     be made, however, for lower standards. In this case, the 
     lower standards were vindicated. Almost no one now denies 
     there is a legitimate story here.'' Kinsley seemed to harbor 
     the crazy belief that had Drudge not reported that Newsweek 
     had the story, the newsmagazine never would have printed it 
     the next week, and therefore the Internet could take credit 
     for ``forcing'' the story on the mainstream news media.
       Newsweek, not going to press again until the next Saturday, 
     finally put the story on its America Online site on 
     Wednesday, January 21, after The Washington Post had broken 
     it on newsstands in its early Wednesday edition out Tuesday 
     night, under the four-column banner atop page one CLINTON 
     ACCUSED OF URGING AIDE TO LIE. The story was attributed to 
     ``sources close to the investigation.'' ABC News broadcast 
     the gist of it on radio shortly after midnight Wednesday.
       The Los Angeles Times also had the story in its Wednesday 
     editions, but The New York Times, beaten badly by the Post on 
     the Watergate story a quarter of a century earlier, was left 
     at the gate again. The lead on its first story on Thursday, 
     January 22, however, was a model of fact: ``As an independent 
     counsel issued a fresh wave of White House subpoenas, 
     President Clinton today denied accusations of having had a 
     sexual affair with a twenty-one-year-old White House 
     intern and promised to cooperate with prosecutors 
     investigating whether the president obstructed justice and 
     sought to have the reported liaison covered up.''
       The story spread like an arsonist's handiwork. The 
     Washington Post of Thursday reported from ``sources familiar 
     with the investigation'' that the FBI had secretly taped 
     Lewinsky by placing a ``body wire'' on Tripp and had got 
     information that ``helped persuade'' Attorney General Janet 
     Reno to ask for and receive from the three-judge panel 
     overseeing the independent counsel authorization to expand 
     the investigation.
       On that same Thursday, the Times identified Lucianne 
     Goldberg, the literary agent who later said she had advised 
     Tripp to tape her conversations with Lewinsky. But The 
     Washington Post continued to lead the way with more 
     information apparently leaked by, but not attributed 
     specifically to, lawyers in the case, and in the Paula Jones 
     sexual harassment lawsuit that had caught Lewinsky in its 
     web.
       On network television on Friday, taste went out the window. 
     ABC News correspondent Jackie Judd reported that ``a source 
     with direct knowledge of'' Lewinsky's allegations said she 
     ``would visit the White House for sex with Clinton in the 
     early evening or early mornings on the weekends, when certain 
     aides who would find her presence disturbing were not at the 
     office.'' Judd went on: ``According to the source, Lewinsky 
     says she saved, apparently as a kind of souvenir, a navy blue 
     dress with the president's semen stain on it. If true, this 
     could provide physical evidence of what really happened.''
       That phrase ``if true'' became a gate-opener for any rumor 
     to make its way into the mainstream. Judd's report ignited a 
     round of stories about a search for such a dress. Despite 
     disavowals of its existence by Lewinsky's lawyer, William 
     Ginsburg, stories soon appeared about a rumored test for 
     tele-tale DNA by the FBI.
       The New York Post, under the headline Monica kept sex dress 
     as a souvenir, quoted

[[Page H5269]]

     ``sources'' as saying the dress really was ``a black cocktail 
     dress that Lewinsky never sent to the cleaners,'' adding that 
     ``a dress with semen on it could provide DNA evidence 
     virtually proving the man's identity--evidence that could be 
     admissible at trial.'' The newspaper also reported that ``Ken 
     Starr's investigators searched Lewinsky's Watergate 
     apartment, reportedly with her consent and carried off a 
     number of items, including some clothing,'' which Ginsburg 
     subsequently confirmed. He later said that the president 
     had given Lewinsky a long T-shirt, not a dress.
       The Village Voice, in a scathing retracing of the path 
     taken by the ABC News report of a semen-stained dress, 
     labeled Judd's account hearsay and noted it had nevertheless 
     been picked up by other news organizations as if such a dress 
     existed. Six days after the original ABC story, CBS News 
     reported that ``no DNA evidence or stains have been found on 
     a dress that belongs to Lewinsky'' that was ``seized by the 
     FBI from Lewinsky's apartment'' and tested by ``the FBI 
     lab.''
       ABC, the next day reported that ``according to law 
     enforcement sources, Starr so far has come up empty in a 
     search for forensic evidence of a relationship between Mr. 
     Clinton and Lewinsky. Sources say a dress and other pieces of 
     clothing were tested, but they all had been dry cleaned 
     before the FBI picked them up from Lewinsky's apartment.'' In 
     this comment, ABC implied that there had been stains, and it 
     quoted a ABC spokesperson as saying, ``We stand by that 
     initial report'' of a semen-stained dress.
       A close competitor for the sleaziest report award was the 
     one regarding the president's alleged sexual preference. On 
     Wednesday, January 21, the Scripps Howard News Service 
     reported that one person who has listened to the Lewinsky-
     Tripp tapes said Lewinsky ``described how Clinton allegedly 
     first urged her to have oral sex, telling her that such acts 
     were not technically adultery.''
       That night, on ABC News's Nightline, Ted Koppel advised 
     viewers gravely that ``the crisis in the White House'' 
     ultimately ``may come down to the question of whether oral 
     sex does or does not constitute adultery.'' The question, he 
     insisted, was neither ``inappropriate'' nor ``frivolous'' 
     because ``it may bear directly on the precise language of the 
     president's denials. What sounds, in other words, like a 
     categorical denial may prove to be something altogether 
     different.''
       Nightline correspondent Chris Bury noted Clinton's 
     ``careful use of words in the matter of sex'' in the past. He 
     recalled that in 1992, in one of Gennifer Flowers' taped 
     conversations offered by Flowers in her allegations of a long 
     affair with the then governor of Arkansas, she ``is heard 
     discussing oral sex with Clinton. Bury went on, ``during this 
     same time period, several Arkansas state troopers assigned to 
     the governor's detail had said on the record that Clinton 
     would tell them that oral sex is not adultery.''
       The distinction came amid much speculation about whether 
     Clinton, in his flat denial of having had ``sexual relations 
     with that woman,'' might be engaging in the sort of semantic 
     circumlocution for which he became notorious in his 1992 
     presidential campaign when asked about his alleged affair 
     with Flowers, his draft status, smoking marijuana, and other 
     matters.
       The Washington Post on Sunday, January 25, reported on the 
     basis of the Tripp tapes that ``in more than 20 hours of 
     conversations'' with Tripp, ``Lewinsky described an eighteen-
     month involvement that included late-night trysts at the 
     White House featuring oral sex.'' The story noted in its 
     second paragraph: ``Few journalists have heard even a portion 
     of these audio tapes, which include one made under the 
     auspices of the FBI. Lewinsky herself has not commented on 
     the tapes publicly. And yet they have been the subject of 
     numerous news accounts and the fodder for widespread 
     speculation.'' Nevertheless, it then added: ``Following 
     are descriptions of key discussions recorded on the tapes, 
     information that The Washington Post has obtained from 
     sources who have listened to portions of them.''
       The story went on to talk of ``bouts of `phone sex' over 
     the lines between the White House and her apartment'' and one 
     comment to Tripp in which Lewinsky is alleged to have said 
     she wanted to go back to the White House--as the newspaper 
     rendered it--as ``special assistant to the president for 
     [oral sex].'' The same story also reported that ``Lewinsky 
     tells Tripp that she has an article of clothing with 
     Clinton's semen on it.''
       On television, these details led some anchors, such as Judy 
     Woodruff of CNN, to preface some reports with the kind of 
     unsuitable-for-children warning usually reserved for sex-and-
     violence shows like NYPD Blue. But comments on oral sex and 
     semen may have been more jarring to older audiences, to whom 
     such subjects have been taboo, than to viewers and readers 
     from the baby boom and younger.
       The tabloids were hard-pressed to outdo the mainstream, but 
     they were up to the challenge. Borrowing from The Sun of 
     London, the New York Post quoted Flowers in an interview 
     saying ``she reveals that Clinton once gave her his 
     `biblical' definition of oral sex: `It isn't `real sex.'' The 
     headline on the story helped preserve the Post's reputation: 
     Gospel According to Bubba says oral sex isn't cheating.
       Meanwhile, the search for an eyewitness to any sexual 
     activity between Clinton and Lewinsky went on. On Sunday, 
     January 25, Judd on ABC reported ``several sources'' as 
     saying Starr was investigating claims that in the spring of 
     1996, the president and Lewinsky ``were caught in an intimate 
     encounter'' by either Secret Service agents or White House 
     staffers. The next morning, the front-page tabloid headlines 
     of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News 
     shouted, caught in the act, with the accompanying stories 
     attributed to ``sources.''
       Other newspapers' versions of basically the same story had 
     various attributions: the Los Angeles Times: ``people 
     familiar with the investigation''; The Washington Post: 
     ``sources familiar with the probe''; The Wall Street Journal: 
     ``a law enforcement official'' and ``unsubstantiated 
     reports.'' The Chicago Tribune attributed ABC News, using the 
     lame disclaimer ``if true'' and adding that ``attempts to 
     confirm the report independently were unsuccessful.'' The New 
     York Times, after considering publication, prudently decided 
     against it.
       Then on Monday night, January 26, The Dallas Morning News 
     reported in the first edition of its Tuesday paper and on its 
     Web site: ``Independent counsel Kenneth Starr's staff has 
     spoken with a Secret Service agent who is prepared to testify 
     that he saw President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in a 
     compromising situation in the White House, sources said 
     Monday.'' The story, taken off the Internet by The Associated 
     Press and put on its wire and used that night on Nightline, 
     was retracted within hours on the ground that its source had 
     told the paper that the source had been mistaken (see box, 
     page 21).
       Then there was the case of the television talk show host, 
     Larry King, referring to a New York Times story about a 
     message from Clinton on Lewinsky's answering machine--when 
     there was, in fact, no such story. Interviewing lawyer 
     Ginsburg the night of January 28, King told his guest that 
     the story would appear in the the next day's paper, only to 
     report later in the show: ``We have a clarification, I am 
     told from our production staff. We may have jumped the gun on 
     the fact that The New York Times will have a new report on 
     the phone call from the president to Monica Lewinsky, the 
     supposed phone call. We have no information on what The New 
     York Times will be reporting tomorrow.''
       Beyond the breakdown in traditional sourcing of stories in 
     this case, not to mention traditional good taste, was the 
     manner in which a questionably sourced or totally 
     unsourced account was assumed to be accurate when printed 
     or aired, and was picked up as fact by other reporters 
     without attempting to verify it.
       For days, a report in The Washington Post of what was said 
     to be in Clinton's secret deposition in the Paula Jones case 
     was taken by the press as fact and used as the basis for 
     concluding that Clinton had lied in 1992 in an interview on 
     60 Minutes. Noting that Clinton had denied any sexual affair 
     with Gennifer Flowers, the Post reported that in the 
     deposition Clinton acknowledged the affair, ``according to 
     sources familiar with his testimony.''
       Loose attribution of sources abounded. One of the worst 
     offenders was conservative columnist Arianna Huffington. She 
     offered her view on the CNBC talk show Equal Time that 
     Clinton had had an affair with Shelia Lawrence, the widow of 
     the late ambassador whose body was exhumed from Arlington 
     National Cemetery after it was revealed he had lied about his 
     military record. Huffington, in reporting on the alleged 
     affair, confessed that ``we're not there yet in terms of 
     proving it.'' So much for the application of journalistic 
     ethics by journalistic amateurs.
       With CNN and other twenty-four-hour cable outlets capable 
     of breaking stories at any moment and Internet heist artists 
     like Drudge poised to pounce on someone else's stories, it 
     wasn't long before the Internet became the venue of first 
     resort even for a daily newspaper. The Wall Street Journal on 
     February 4, ready with a report that a White House steward 
     had told a grand jury summoned by Starr that he had seen 
     Clinton and Lewinsky alone in a study next to the Oval 
     Office, posted the story on its World Wide Web site and its 
     wire service rather than wait to break it the next morning in 
     the Journal. In its haste, the newspaper did not wait for 
     comment from the White House, leading deputy press secretary 
     Joe Lockhart to complain that ``the normal rules of checking 
     or getting a response to a story seem to have given way to 
     the technology of the Internet and the competitive pressure 
     of getting it first.''
       The Web posting bore the attribution ``two individuals 
     familiar with'' the steward's testimony. But his lawyer soon 
     called the report ``absolutely false and irresponsible.'' The 
     Journal that night changed the posting to say the steward had 
     made the assertion not to the grand jury but to ``Secret 
     Service personnel,'' The story ran in the paper the next day, 
     also saying ``one individual familiar with'' the steward's 
     story ``said that he had told Secret Service personnel that 
     he found and disposed of tissues with lipstick and other 
     stains on them'' after the Clinton-Lewinsky meeting. Once 
     again, a juicy morsel was thrown out and pounced on by other 
     news outlets without verification, and in spite of the firm 
     denial of the Journal report from the steward's lawyer.
       One of the authors of the story, Brian Duffy, later told 
     The Washington Post the reason the paper didn't wait and 
     print an exclusive the next morning was because ``we heard 
     footsteps from at least one other news organization and just 
     didn't think it was going to hold in this crazy cycle we're 
     in.'' In such manner did the race to be first take

[[Page H5270]]

     precedence over having a carefully checked story in the 
     newspaper itself the next day.
       White House press secretary Michael McCurry called the 
     Journal's performance ``one of the sorriest episodes of 
     journalism'' he had ever witnessed, with ``a daily newspaper 
     reporting hour-by-hour'' without giving the White House a 
     chance to respond. Journal managing editor Paul Steiger 
     replied in print that ``we went with our original story when 
     we felt it was ready'' and ``did not wait for a response from 
     the White House'' because ``it had made it clear repeatedly'' 
     it wasn't going to respond to any questions about any aspect 
     of the case.
       Steiger said at that point that ``we stand by our account'' 
     of what the steward had told the Secret Service. Three days 
     later, however, the Journal reported that, contrary to its 
     earlier story, the steward had not told the grand jury he had 
     seen Clinton and Lewinsky alone. Steiger said ``we deeply 
     regret our erroneous report of the steward's testimony.''
       On a less salacious track, the more prominent mainstream 
     dailies continued to compete for new breaks, relying on 
     veiled sources. The New York Times contributed a report on 
     February 6 that Clinton had called his personal secretary, 
     Betty Currie, into his office and asked her ``a series of 
     leading questions such as: `We were never alone, right?' '' 
     The source given was ``lawyers familiar with her account.''
       The Post, ``scrambling to catch up,'' as its media critic 
     Howard Kurtz put it, shortly afterward confirmed the meeting 
     ``according in a person familiar with'' Currie's account. 
     Saying his own paper used ``milder language'' than the Times 
     in hinting at a motivation of self-protection by the 
     president, Kurtz quoted the Post story that said ``Clinton 
     probed her memories of his contacts with Lewinsky to see 
     whether they matched his own.'' In any event, Currie's lawyer 
     later said it was ``absolutely false'' that she believed 
     Clinton ``tried to influence her recollection.''
       The technology of delivery is not all that has changed in 
     the reporting of the private lives of presidents and other 
     high-ranking officeholders. The news media have traveled 
     light years from World War II days and earlier, when the 
     yardstick for such reporting was whether misconduct alleged 
     or proved affected the carrying out of official duties.
       In 1984, when talk circulated about alleged marital 
     infidelity by presidential candidate Gary Hart, nothing was 
     written or broadcast because there was no proof and no one 
     willing talk. In 1987, however, a Newsweek profile reported 
     that his marriage had been rocky and he had been haunted 
     by rumors of womanizing. A tip to The Miami Herald 
     triggered the stake out of his Washington townhouse from 
     which he was seen leaving with Donna Rice. Only after that 
     were photographs of the two on the island of Bimini 
     displayed in the tabloid National Enquirer and Hart was 
     forced from the race. Clearly, the old rule--that 
     questions about a public figure's private life were 
     taboo--no longer applied.
       But the next time a Presidential candidate ran into trouble 
     on allegations of sexual misconduct--Bill Clinton in 1992--
     the mainstream press was dragged into hot pursuit of the 
     gossip tabloids that not too many years earlier had been 
     treated like a pack of junk-yard dogs by their supposedly 
     ethical betters. The weekly supermarket tabloid, Star, 
     printed a long, explicit first-person account of Flowers' 
     alleged twelve-year affair with Clinton. Confronted with the 
     story on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Clinton denied 
     it but went into extensive damage control, culminating in his 
     celebrated 60 Minutes interview. With the allegations quickly 
     becoming the centerpiece of his campaign, the mainstream 
     press had no recourse but to report how he was dealing with 
     it. Thus did the tail of responsible journalism come to wag 
     the dog.
       From then on, throughout Clinton's 1992 campaign and ever 
     since, the once-firm line between rumor and truth, between 
     gossip and verification, has been crumbling. The assault has 
     been led by the trashy tabloids but increasingly accompanied 
     by major newspapers and television, with copy-cat tabloid 
     radio and TV talk shows piling on. The proliferation of such 
     shows, their sensationalism, bias and lack of responsibility 
     and taste have vastly increased the hit-and-run practice of 
     what now goes under the name of journalism.
       The practitioners with little pretense to truth-telling or 
     ethics, and few if any credentials suggesting journalistic 
     training in either area, now clutter the airwaves, on their 
     own shows (Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy, conspiracy-
     spinner Rush Limbaugh, Iran-Contra figure Oliver North) or as 
     loud mouth hosts and guests on weekend talkfests (John 
     McLaughlin, Matt Drudge).
       In the print press and on the Internet as well, journalism 
     pretenders and poseurs feed misinformation, speculation, and 
     unverified accusations to the reading public. The measure of 
     their success in polluting the journalism mainstream in the 
     most recent Clinton scandal was the inclusion of Drudge, as a 
     guest analyst on NBC News' Meet the Press. The program also 
     included Isikoff, the veteran Newsweek investigative 
     reporter.
       Playing straight man to Drudge, moderator Tim Russert asked 
     him about ``reports'' that there were ``discussions'' on the 
     Lewinsky tapes ``of other women, including other White House 
     staffers, involved with the president.'' The professional 
     gossip replied, dead-pan: ``There is talk all over this town 
     another White House staffer is going to come out from behind 
     the curtains this week. If this is the case--and you couple 
     this with the headline that the New York Post has, [that] 
     there are hundreds, hundreds [of other women] according to 
     Miss Lewinsky, quoting Clinton--we're in for a huge shock 
     that goes beyond the specific episode. It's a whole psychosis 
     taking place in the White House.''
       Drudge officiously took the opportunity to lecture the 
     White House reporters for not doing their job. He expressed 
     ``shock and very much concern that there's been deception for 
     years coming out of this White House. I mean, this intern 
     relationship didn't happen last week. It happened over a 
     course of year and a half, and I'm concerned. Also, there's a 
     press corps that wasn't monitoring the situation close 
     enough.'' Thus spoke the celebrated trash-peddler while 
     Isikoff sat silently by.
       Such mixing of journalistic pretenders side-by-side with 
     established, proven professional practitioners gives the 
     audience a deplorably disturbing picture of a news business 
     that already struggles under public skepticism, cynicism, and 
     disaffection based on valid criticism of mistakes, lapses, 
     poor judgment, and bad taste. The press and television, like 
     the Republic itself, will survive its shortcomings in the 
     Lewinsky affair, whether or not President Clinton survives 
     the debacle himself. The question is, has the performance 
     been a mere lapse of standards in the heat of a fast-
     breaking, incredibly competitive story of major significance? 
     A tapering off of the mad frenzy of the first week or so of 
     the scandal gives hope that this is the case.
       Or does it signal abandonment of the old in favor of a 
     looser regard for the responsibility to tell readers and 
     listeners where stories come from, and for standing behind 
     the veracity of them? It is a question that goes to the heart 
     of the practice of a trade that, for all its failings, should 
     be a bulwark of a democracy that depends on an accurately 
     informed public. Journalism in the late 1990s still should be 
     guided by adherence to the same elemental rules that have 
     always existed--report what you know as soon as you know it, 
     not before. And if you're not sure wait and check it out 
     yourself.
       Those news organizations that abide by this simple edict, 
     like a disappointed Newsweek in this instance, may find 
     themselves run over by less scrupulous or less conscientious 
     competitors from time to time. But in the long run they will 
     maintain their own reputations, and uphold the reputation of 
     a craft that is under mounting attack. To do otherwise is to 
     surrender to the sensational, the trivial and the vulgar that 
     is increasingly infecting the serious business of informing 
     the nation.
                                  ____


                             What We do Now

                        (By the editors of CJR)

       Regardless of who ultimately wins or loses, regardless of 
     who is judged right or wrong, regardless of the fate of 
     William Jefferson Clinton--or Monica Lewinsky or Kenneth 
     Starr--what will matter mightily to journalists are the long-
     lasting lessons that we learn from this lamentable and 
     depressing affair.
       However the scandal turns out, the press stands to lose in 
     the court of public opinion. In a Pew Research Center poll of 
     844 people taken from January 30 to February 2, nearly two-
     thirds said the media had done only a fair or poor job of 
     carefully checking the facts before reporting this story; 60 
     percent said the media had done only a fair or poor job of 
     being objective on the story and 54 percent thought the press 
     put in another fair or poor performance in providing the 
     right amount of coverage. ``The rise of Clinton's popularity 
     in the polls is in part a backlash against the press,'' said 
     Andrew Glass, Cox Newspapers' senior correspondent. ``One way 
     the people can say that the press has been too critical is to 
     tell the pollsters that they support Clinton.''
       If the president should fall, then those who jumped the 
     gun, who ran with rumor and innuendo, who published or 
     broadcast phony reports without eventual retraction, will 
     falsely claim vindication and triumph. And if this president 
     should persevere and prevail, many in the public will be 
     convinced that the press and the independent counsel were in 
     some unholy conspiracy to persecute him. Remember that the 
     Clinton controversy is only the latest in a string of 
     stories--Diana, O.J., Versace--that the press has been widely 
     accused of exploiting. Says Los Angeles Times editor Michael 
     Parks: ``We're good at wretched excess, at piling on.''
       the preceding article targeted where parts of the press 
     have gone wrong in reporting the White House crisis, and 
     leads to these further conclusions:
       Competition has become more brutal than ever and has 
     spurred excess. TV newsmagazines are now viewed by 
     traditional print newsmagazines as direct competitors. Thus, 
     says Michael Elliott, editor of Newsweek International. ``The 
     proliferation of TV news shows makes it harder for us to 
     delay the release of a story.'' With the spread of twenty-
     four-hour all-news cable channels--CNN, MSNBC, Fox--there's 
     pressure to report news even when there isn't any. In a 
     remarkably prescient statement last year to the Catto 
     Conference on Journalism and Society, former TV newsman 
     Robert MacNeil said: ``I tremble a little for the next 
     sizable crisis with three all-news channels, and scores of 
     other cable and local broadcasters, fighting

[[Page H5271]]

     for a share of the action, each trying to make his twist on 
     the crisis more dire than the next.''
       The Internet has speeded the process and lowered quality by 
     giving currency to unreliable reports. When a story is posted 
     on the Internet, it races around the globe almost instantly. 
     But the Internet has no standards for accuracy. Web gossipist 
     Matt Drudge once claimed only an 80 percent accuracy rate--
     wholly unacceptable under any journalistic standards. 
     Technology, long the journalist's great and good friend, has 
     turned out to be a dangerous mistress. ``The Internet is a 
     gun to the head of the responsible media,'' says Jonathan 
     Fenby, editor of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. 
     ``If you choose not to report a story, the Internet will.''
       As journalism speeds up, there is less time to think, to 
     ponder, to edit, to judge, to confirm, to reconsider. Never 
     was there greater need for gatekeepers with sound and 
     unimpassioned editorial judgment who refuse to be stampeded 
     in the pressure of competition.
       And never was there a better time to start examining what 
     journalists can do, immediately, to improve and recapture 
     public respect.
       A major step, surely, would be to resolve to make 
     abundantly clear in the reporting of every fast-breaking or 
     controversial story what is known fact and what is mere 
     speculation--or better yet, to swear off disseminating 
     speculation at all except as it can be fully attributed to 
     a knowledgeable source. And to forgo cannibalizing the 
     stories of other news outfits--whether mainstream or 
     tabloid--and to refrain from merely retransmitting them on 
     their face value, without independent reporting.
       Clearly, every news organization needs to establish its own 
     written guidelines for almost every conceivable coverage 
     situation. Many already have them. In Britain, the BBC has a 
     thick book containing policies for everything from covering 
     elections to interviewing terrorists to determining when the 
     people's right know supersedes what may constitute invasion 
     of privacy. The BBC's dedication to the two-source rule 
     caused anchorman Nik Gowing to fill forty excruciating 
     minutes of airtime last August--awaiting confirmation by a 
     second source of Princess Diana's death--before broadcasting 
     the news.
       Journalists must more freely and fully admit--and quickly 
     correct--their errors. More gross missteps were committed in 
     the early stages of the Clinton scandal than in all of 
     Watergate. Just one example: All of those ``sightings'' of 
     the president in intimate situations with Ms. Lewinsky in the 
     White House as reported, variously, by ABC News, The Dallas 
     Morning News, and The Wall Street Journal. As cjr went to 
     press, not one had been confirmed.
       Newspersons must have the courage to stand up to their 
     editors, news directors, and other bosses when the need 
     arises--and refuse to take a story beyond where sound 
     journalistic principles allow.
       In short, the time has come for a thoughtful and 
     uncompromising reappraisal--time to stand back and recall the 
     fundamentals that once made the free press of America the 
     envy of the world. We asked a sampling of journalists and 
     media analysts for their views on what lessons the profession 
     ought to learn from the Clinton scandal story, and where we 
     go from here:
       Walter Isaacson, managing editor, Time: We're in a set of 
     rooms where we've never been before. It's murky, and we keep 
     bumping into the furniture. But this is a very valid story of 
     a strong-willed prosecutor and a president whose actions have 
     been legitimately questioned. Reporters must be very careful 
     to stick to known facts, but not be afraid to cover the 
     story. A case involving sex can be a very legitimate story, 
     but we can't let our journalistic standards lapse simply 
     because the sexual element makes everybody over-excited. One 
     lesson is, in the end, you're going to be judged on whether 
     you got it right, not just on whether you got it first.
       Richard Wald, senior vice president, ABC News: There are, 
     at least, three lessons.
       One: when you are dealing with the president and sex, you 
     must be extremely precise in how you say what it is you think 
     you know. When carefully phrased stories that we ran on ABC 
     were picked up by other news organizations, nobody said: 
     ``ABC News reports they got the story from source A or 
     source B.'' They simply reported it as fact. It then gets 
     into the public vocabulary as fact rather than as 
     allegation.
       Two: People dislike the messenger but like the message. If 
     you believe the polls, the public is annoyed with the media 
     and doesn't want to hear about this story anymore. On the 
     other hand, they're buying a lot of newspapers and driving up 
     the ratings of twenty-four-hour news channels. If you believe 
     surveys that ask people what they watch on TV, PBS is the 
     highest rated network in the world. And ballet is huge.
       Three: We all get tarred with the excesses of a few. Some 
     TV news organizations rush onto the air with bulletins that 
     don't mean anything. Some newspapers plaster stuff over page 
     one that's really quite minor. Each tiny advance in the story 
     is treated like a journalistic triumph. But the bulk of the 
     reporting has been reasonable and in context.
       Marvin Kalb, director, The Shorenstein Center on the Press, 
     Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University: Check the 
     coverage of the O.J. trials; the Versace/Cunanan saga, 
     Princess Diana's tragic death. With each burst of excessive, 
     shallow, intrusive, and hardly uplifting electronic herd 
     journalism, there has been the promise that next time it 
     would get better. The new technology and the new economics 
     have combined to produce a new journalism, which has bright 
     spots but is marked by murky questions about ethics, slipping 
     standards, and quality.
       James Fallows, editor, U.S. News & World Report: When this 
     whole thing is over, we'll be wringing our hands in symposia 
     and postmortem critiques. The trick would be to keep some of 
     that retrospective view in mind while we're in the middle of 
     covering the story. A year from now people will be saying:
       That we shouldn't have let this story blot out so much else 
     of the news, as happened with O.J. and Diana and Flight 800.
       That we should have avoided some of the flights of fancy 
     that come with ever-escalating hypothetical questions. (``If 
     it is proven that Monica Lewinsky killed Vince Foster, then . 
     . . ?'')
       That we should have been more skeptical about single-source 
     anonymous reports--and made the possible motive of leakers 
     clearer to our readers.
       That we should have found some way to retain the proper 
     function of editorial judgment, i.e., waiting to see when 
     there is enough basis to publish a story--rather than just 
     saying: ``It's on the Internet, it's `Out there.' ''
       That we should have recognized that we're in a morally 
     complex situation when it comes to dealing with leaks--one 
     where we really need consider the inherent rights and wrongs. 
     The point is: why wait until next year before trying to let 
     such concerns shape our coverage?
       Anthony Lewis, columnist, The New York Times: The serious 
     press has an obligation to stand back and warm the reader 
     about how thin is the basis for many of these stories. It's a 
     disgrace what the papers are doing in terms of sourcing.
       The obsession of the press with sex and public officials is 
     crazy. Still, after Linda Tripp went to the prosecutor, it 
     became hard to say we shouldn't be covering this. My 
     criticism is in the way it was covered. In general, the press 
     started out rather gullible as regards the Starr operation, 
     and has caught up. The public's been way ahead.
       William Marimow, managing editor, the Baltimore Sun: When a 
     story is sensitive and controversial, you don't go into print 
     until you've done everything possible to interview people 
     on both sides of the issue, until you understand their 
     accounts of what happened. If you're going to report that 
     ``sources'' said a White House butler saw the president 
     and intern in a ``compromising situation,'' you ought to 
     go to the ends of the earth to get the point of view of 
     the butler, the president, the intern, and their 
     attorneys.
       Geneva Overholser, ombudsman, The Washington Post: Again 
     and again, readers complained about how much we in the press 
     have been reporting from anonymous sources that just seems 
     like gossip. And that is, in fact, inexcusable. We aren't 
     clear enough [in our reports] about the possible motivations 
     of these sources. It's not that we can't have anonymous 
     sources, but each one costs us something in credibility.
       And we're too loose with language. One story quoted a 
     source as saying that in her written proffer Monica Lewinsky 
     had ``acknowledged'' having sex with the president. But she 
     may have ``asserted'' it rather than ``acknowledged'' it. We 
     can't use language that hangs somebody before the facts are 
     out.
       The Washington Post conceded that one of its articles was 
     based on sources who had heard the [Lewinsky-Tripp] tapes, 
     not on a hearing of the tapes by the reporter. Yet there were 
     quotes around the president's alleged words to Lewinsky--
     ``You must deny this.'' Here's an anonymous source 
     paraphrasing a woman who is characterizing the words of the 
     president to her on tapes made without her knowledge.
       Deni Elliott, director, Practical Ethics Center, University 
     of Montana and professor in the university's philosophy and 
     journalism departments: In the Monica Lewinsky stories in the 
     February 16 Newsweek, there are at least thirty instances in 
     which information is either not attributed, or attributed to 
     anonymous sources, or attributed to other news organizations.
       News organizations have not differentiated between 
     different kinds of leaks. Leaks of grand jury testimony 
     create information that ought not be disclosed unless it can 
     be explained that the information is so important that the 
     leak is justified. Grand juries have great latitude and are 
     supposed to operate secretly because of that latitude. If 
     information looks like grand jury testimony but is not, the 
     reader should be informed, or readers will be led to believe 
     you can't trust in grand jury secrecy.
       Peter Prichard, president, Freedom Forum, former editor, 
     USA Today: One big lesson: never let hypercompetition take 
     precedence over good news judgment. And be alert to the 
     possibility that you're being manipulated. Also: One 
     anonymous source on any story is simply not enough. The speed 
     of news cycles these days has resulted in errors, but 
     generally the coverage has been good. Newspapers have done a 
     better job than television.
       Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and 
     the Press, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government: 
     It's not hard to identify the standards we ought to have, 
     it's just hard to get everybody on

[[Page H5272]]

     board. It's going to take real leadership--strong voices, 
     editors, reporters who are willing to stand up to management.
       There isn't much real self-criticism among journalists. 
     There has been a flurry of it in the current scandal because 
     so many stories were so outrageous. But where is the same 
     kind of scrutiny the press gives everyone else--really 
     hammering away? These flurries blow over and six months later 
     they're forgotten. Journalists have to say, ``Here's an 
     example of the kinds of things we don't do''--and then don't 
     do it. And if journalists do do it, someone must tell them. 
     ``You're violating the standards of your profession. Stop 
     it.''
       Anthonty Marro, editor, Newsdays; Before self-examination 
     moves into self-flagellation, let's look at the lessons here:
       With the blur that results when television viewers can 
     switch from the CBS Evening News to Hard Copy, Larry King 
     Live, and Geraldo, it's more important than ever for 
     journalists to sort out: What are unproven allegations and 
     what are proven facts? Which facts are criminal and 
     impeachable and which are merely embarrassing? And what 
     information is coming from serious journalism and what is 
     coming from entertainment programs that have some of the 
     trappings of journalism but few of the standards?
       All life is Rashomon, as we seen in early reports on the 
     testimony of [Clinton's personal secretary] Betty Curries, in 
     which two of the nation's very best newspapers produced two 
     very different stories from pretty much the same bits of 
     information. The New York Times gave something very much like 
     a prosecutor's view of the incident (i.e., Clinton was 
     coaching here to lie) while The Washington Post gave 
     something very much like a defense lawyer's view (i.e., 
     Clinton was just trying to refresh his memory about his 
     meetings with Monica Lewinsky). Sorting this out can be both 
     difficult and time-consuming and no one should expect the 
     press even at its best to come up with quick and conclusive 
     answers.
       Reporters need to keep reminding themselves that just 
     because sources say they've obtained information doesn't mean 
     that they've obtained all of it, or that it's fully 
     corroborated, or that it means precisely what they suggest it 
     means.
       James O'Shea, deputy managing editor news, Chicago Tribune: 
     We're in a new world in terms of the way information flows to 
     the nation. The days when you can decide not to print a story 
     because it's not well enough sourced are long gone. When a 
     story get into the public realm, as it did with the Drudge 
     Report, then you have to characterize it, you have to tell 
     your readers, ``There is out there, you've probably been 
     hearing about it on TV and the Internet. We have been unable 
     to substantiate it independently.'' And then give them enough 
     information to judge the validity of it.
       Not reporting it all is the worst thing you can do because 
     you create a vacuum in which people begin thinking a story is 
     true and you're not reporting it because you're a backer of 
     the president. One of the most popular things we did was run 
     a big chart in our Sunday paper that told what's been 
     reported, what is known, and what is not known. We 
     delineated, trying to separate fact from fiction and readers 
     responded very well. The trouble with not reporting anything 
     at all until it's substantiated is that you're not 
     distinguishing between fact and fiction, and then fiction 
     wins.
                                  ____


                       And What Will History Say?

                           (By Lance Morrow)

       It's fascinating, in all of this, to look at the trajectory 
     of the Baby Boomers. In their experience, the presidency was 
     enacted first as tragedy. Now it plays itself out as farce.
       The sixties--the country that Bill Clinton came from, the 
     culture that formed him and his generation--was a carnival of 
     the tragic, with bodies every where. Clinton's Rose Garden 
     hero, John Kennedy, was murdered in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson 
     led the nation into the lost war that eventually killed 
     58,000 Americans and more than a million Vietnamese, that 
     ruined the Great Society and tore America in two. Johnson 
     collapsed upon the stage like King Lear in the fifth act, and 
     six years later, Watergate (that is, scandals arising from 
     the American civil war over Vietnam) forced Richard Nixon out 
     of the White House as well. Large, Shakespearean themes: 
     assassinations, war, usurpation of power.
       In nineties America--the country over which the 
     quintessential boomer presides--we see a good-times 
     presidency brought to peril by . . . fellatio with an intern. 
     A hilariously degrading spectacle, but at worst, perhaps a 
     shame, in a society that is only incompletely vulnerable to 
     shame.
       Journalists should pay attention to an interesting theme 
     that runs through the continuum from sixties to nineties. In 
     both the tragedy and the farce, one notices the central, 
     corrupting role of liars and lies (about Vietnam, about 
     Watergate, about sex) and therefore a concomitant, sometimes 
     illogical ebb and flow of public trust in the president, and 
     in the media. In the sixties, Lyndon Johnson squandered the 
     moral authority of the presidency. Looking at Clinton's 
     astonishing approval ratings last month, it seemed to be the 
     media that had at last exhausted their credibility.
       Are Americans very good judges of character? Short-term, 
     their verdicts naturally tend to be astigmatic. But Americans 
     seemed to have decided that short-term media judgments are 
     even worse: sensational and even hysterical. So citizens may 
     let the president off by a process much like jury 
     nullification.
       Journalists cannot help speculating on what will be the 
     ultimate verdict on Clinton. Close up, he seems to represent 
     an oddly contemporary discontinuum of effective leadership 
     and breezy squalor. But Americans disconnected their judgment 
     of Clinton's moral behavior from their opinion of his job 
     performance.
       History is holistic only in the lives of the saints. 
     Otherwise, the disconnects and ambiguities prevail. Perhaps 
     we journalists should not ask, what place a president will 
     occupy in history, but should try to anticipate the eventual 
     range of ambiguity about him. How widely separated will be 
     the good-bad spectrum of his reputation? As a people, our 
     judgments, after all, run to extremes. Was Jefferson 
     democracy's icon of Enlightenment? Or a slave-owning 
     hypocrite?
       Harry Truman: a squalid mediocrity? So he seemed close up. 
     His approval rating in polls at the end of his presidency was 
     23 percent, an all-time low. Longer range, the second verdict 
     prevailed: Truman as tough, spunky hero of plain folks, 
     common sense, give-'em-hell underdog democracy.
       Eisenhower: somnambulating geezer of good times, or 
     historian Fred Greenstein's cunning ``hidden hand'' 
     president, a kind of Zen hero of all the trouble that did not 
     happen? Reagan the clueless? Reagan the visionary?
       In early February, ABC's Sam Donaldson, wondering on-camera 
     about Clinton's high ratings amid squalid charges, remembered 
     the story of Lincoln's reaction when told that Ulysses Grant, 
     his most effective general, was a drunk. Lincoln is said to 
     have replied: ``Find out what he drinks, and send my other 
     generals a case of it.'' But of course, as Donaldson did not 
     say, Ulysses Grant went on to preside over one of America's 
     most corrupt administrations.
       What will be the range of ambiguity in history's judgment 
     of Clinton? Maybe he will be thought to be innocent of the 
     sexual stories that are told about him. Maybe I am the queen 
     of Rumania. Maybe the accusations don't matter anyway. Paul 
     Johnson, a conservative author, thinks that history will 
     remember Clinton as a mediocrity clinging to a rung just 
     below Chester A. Arthur.
       Or will Clinton be recalled by both journalists and 
     historian as a brilliant politician and admirable president 
     who worked hard, caringly, sensibly, to trim and tune post-
     ideological government and to preside over one of the most 
     successful, prosperous eras of American history--the baby 
     boomers' middle-aged payoff?
       Someone may eventually fit all of this into a Unified Field 
     Theory of Media. So far, we know this: the media in the hard 
     markets of multicultural democratic pluralism, make their 
     living on the excitements of discontinuous reality. At the 
     low end that means the checkout-counter view of public lives 
     (a view that is not necessarily inaccurate). The problem is 
     that, dumbing down, we have too often abandoned the high end. 
     A falling tide leaves all boats in the mud.
       In the third week of February, as CJR went to press, the 
     Clinton-Starr story was changing from day to day. One saw the 
     possibility that it might lead to unendurable mess and 
     resignation. Or alternatively, that the story might subside 
     into chronic soap opera and eventually be canceled due to low 
     ratings. A scandal must keep surpassing itself or lose its 
     audience. A sunny presidency of denial might tootle on across 
     the bridge to the twenty-first century.
                                  ____


                            Fumble in Dallas

                          (By Terry Anderson)

       ``We discovered through the unraveling of a source that we 
     had messed up,'' laments Ralph Langer, editor of the Dallas 
     Morning News. ``We had a bad procedure for vetting sources 
     out of the Washington bureau.''
       On Sunday, January 25, ABC News reported there had been a 
     witness to an intimate encounter between President Clinton 
     and Monica Lewinsky in the White House. On Monday, the 
     Morning News reported a similar story, quoting both ABC and a 
     ``White House source.'' In the first edition of the Tuesday 
     morning paper, the News fleshed out the story: A Secret 
     Service agent had seen President Clinton and Lewinsky in a 
     ``compromising situation'' in the White House, and the agent 
     had agreed to cooperate with special prosecutor Kenneth 
     Starr. ``This person is now a government witness,'' the paper 
     quoted its source. A second source confirmed the report.
       Within minutes, The Associated Press picked up the story, 
     adding the fruits of its own investigations. ``We had been 
     working on the ABC report all day Monday, but had no luck,'' 
     says the AP's Washington bureau chief, Jonathan Wolman. ``But 
     we didn't just pick up the Morning News's story. We added 
     quotes from senior officials of the Secret Service saying 
     they'd investigated the report and had doubts about it. And 
     we had David Kendall, the president's personal lawyer, 
     calling it `false and malicious,' ''
       The qualifications were appropriate. Even as the Dallas 
     paper's first edition hit the streets, the primary source of 
     the story called back saying he had got it wrong. In the 
     ninety minutes between the first and second editions, Langer 
     pulled the story. An urgent retraction was posted on the 
     paper's Web site. The AP quickly issued the much-hated 
     ``Bulletin Kill'' to its members, but

[[Page H5273]]

     that was too late. Many had already printed the piece, and 
     had to wait for the next day to carry the AP's follow-up 
     explanation.
       The Morning News's blunder was easily identified. ``We 
     require two independent sources [on major stories],'' Langer 
     explained, ``and an editor has to know who the sources are.'' 
     So far, so good, While the Tuesday story quoted only one 
     source, a ``Washington lawyer familiar with the 
     negotiations,'' the paper actually had another that it did 
     not reveal, and even a third on a ``tell me if I shouldn't 
     print this'' basis, according to Langer. When the primary 
     source backed out, Langer checked the second source. He 
     found that source had thought he was confirming the vaguer 
     story the Morning News had carried on Monday, not the more 
     specific Tuesday version.
       As all this unfolded, the Monday editions of the New York 
     Post and the New York Daily News splashed identical frontpage 
     headlines, Caught in the Act. Each quoted only ``sources,'' 
     without further elaboration, The Washington Post and the Los 
     Angeles Times ran similar reports from their own sources. The 
     Wall Street Journal did the same. Of course, there is no way 
     short of a public unmasking to tell if all these 
     publications' sources were separate individuals or the same 
     (busy) people talking to all of them. Meanwhile, on 
     television newscasts, the story lost its qualifications, 
     drifting toward a concreteness that still had not been 
     justified.
       The Morning News, strangely enough, later insisted that its 
     original story was mainly correct, and that the mistakes 
     involved only ``nuances.'' ``We thought we had two sources 
     saying a Secret Service agent was negotiating for access to 
     Starr, had gotten it and had talked to Starr's camp,'' Langer 
     says. ``Our source bailed out because it was a `former or 
     present agent'--a nuance, and, second, the negotiations to 
     get this person to Starr were complex, and mediators were 
     involved. The basic facts of a Secret Service agent, past or 
     present, being put in touch with Starr was correct.'' But 
     Langer also downgraded the ``compromising situation'' of 
     Clinton and Lewinsky to an ``ambiguous'' one--a much more 
     important shift.
       Darrell Christian, AP managing editor, says the changes, 
     especially the less damning description of the position 
     Lewinsky and Clinton were caught in involved more than 
     nuances. ``When they [the Dallas Paper] withdrew the story 
     and said those details were inaccurate, we thought we had no 
     choice but to take it off the wire.''
       As CJR went to press, no news organization had been able to 
     confirm any part of the story beyond doubt. No present or 
     former agent had been named. No journalist had claimed direct 
     contact with him or her.
       So, Langer was asked, is the story true? ``Tough questions. 
     I can't personally answer. People in a position to know are 
     saying it is true, and I don't think they're making it up.''

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