[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.''
____________________