Tsk, tsk, tsk

The journalism reviews don't like Fornigate one little bit

by Dan Kennedy

The church ladies of media criticism have finally weighed in on the Monica Lewinsky affair. And, like Dana Carvey in an old Saturday Night Live skit, they're pursing their lips, narrowing their eyes, and hissing, "Well, isn't that special?"

True, the venerable Columbia Journalism Review, published by the Columbia School of Journalism, and the only-slightly-less-venerable American Journalism Review, based at the University of Maryland's College of Journalism, are supposed to be judgmental in a blue-nosed, blue-haired, tsk-tsk sort of way.

But their March issues, coming six weeks after the Lewinsky scandal broke (and five weeks after the backlash against the media began), indulge themselves in such condemnatory passion that the actual news that touched off the frenzy gets lost. Worrying about media ethics, and how the public perceives those ethics, is fine. But too much of the criticism in AJR and CJR comes off as tautological: the press blew it because its coverage of a sordid, demeaning affair makes it look as if something sordid and demeaning happened. Well?

To be sure, the two magazines take different routes to get to the same place. AJR, the feistier of the pair, splashes a salacious SCANDAL! on the cover. And the package includes a terrific inside look by Alicia Shepard on how Newsweek's Michael Isikoff developed the story, only to be beaten when Internet gossip Matt Drudge revealed that Isikoff's editors had held it. But the tone is set by a lengthy Sherry Ricchiardi thumbsucker titled "Standards Are the First Casualty," in which she complains: "Innuendo quickly replaced hard facts. `Sources say' became the phrase du jour, often without any indication where those sources might be coming from. `If it is true' became the fashionable disclaimer."

But AJR's criticism is mild compared to that of its competitor. To look at CJR's tabloidesque cover, which blares WHERE WE WENT WRONG, you'd think the entire Lewinsky affair was the overheated concoction of a Clinton-bashing media in league, as Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal might put it, with a vast right-wing conspiracy. Inside, veteran journalist and historian Jules Witcover weighs in with an over-the-top screed against his colleagues. "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," Witcover writes. "The rush to be first or to be more sensational created a picture of irresponsibility seldom seen in the reporting of presidential affairs."

Yet AJR and CJR both build their cases on selectively chosen facts and niggling misdemeanors. They blast the likes of U.S. News & World Report, the Economist, CNN's Wolf Blitzer, and ABC's Sam Donaldson for speculating that Clinton might resign, but they fail to note that prominent ex-Clinton officials such as George Stephanopoulos, Leon Panetta, and Dee Dee Myers were saying the same thing. Both journalism reviews rightly criticize CNN's Larry King for hyping a New York Times bombshell that wasn't, and the Wall Street Journal and the Dallas Morning News for rushing onto their Web sites thinly sourced (and apparently untrue) stories about witnesses to presidential sex. But those stories were quickly retracted, and -- more to the point -- they are the most egregious specific examples CJR and AJR manage to come up with.

Ultimately, the case against the media is more about atmospherics, even metaphor, than it is about specifics. Nowhere is that clearer than in the matter of the alleged semen-stained dress, a legitimate aspect of the affair that the magazines dismiss as scandal-mongering at its most voyeuristic. Witcover, for instance, cites "disavowals of its existence by Lewinsky's lawyer, William Ginsburg," and concludes that the tale deserves some sort of "sleaziest report award." Yet the issue was whether investigators were looking for such a dress, and Witcover neglects to mention that Ginsburg confirmed -- on the record -- that they were. Ricchiardi calls the existence of the dress one of "many juicy but unconfirmed tidbits that took on the aura of fact." But as Adam Cohen notes in the February 16 Time magazine, ABC News revealed two days after the scandal broke, based on information from "someone with specific knowledge of the case," that Lewinsky had talked about saving such a dress, "apparently as a kind of souvenir." That account has never been refuted.

Witcover and Ricchiardi also express considerable discomfort with the media's reliance on anonymous sources. Of course, as U.S. News columnist Gloria Borger pointed out at a recent forum at Harvard's Kennedy School, it's hard to imagine how the story could have been reported without the use of such sources. But even if you concede the point, Lewinsky herself -- through her mouthpiece, the ubiquitous Ginsburg -- has all but confirmed the broad outlines of the scandal.

At one point, Ginsburg went so far as to say that Starr was "going to have to give her immunity from any prosecution. We're offering him complete cooperation and the complete truth, and we're promising him we will not go south on him as apparently Susan McDougal did." This supplemented numerous reports -- apparently based on leaks from Starr's office, although possibly from Ginsburg himself -- that Lewinsky had agreed to testify that she and Clinton had had a sexual affair, but that she would not say the president had urged her to lie under oath. Ginsburg and Starr couldn't close the deal, of course, and Ginsburg now insists that nothing sexual took place. Thus may Fornigate be sputtering to some sort of inconclusive conclusion. But just because Ginsburg has changed his story doesn't mean the media were wrong to report it in the first place.

In a muddled editorial, CJR puts the blame on increased journalistic competition, the rise of the Internet, and accelerated news cycles. It also cites as proof of the media's sins the results of a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, in which a solid majority of respondents blasted news organizations for shoddy fact-checking, wavering objectivity, and overkill -- a cop-out, given the scant evidence CJR offers on those very issues.

"However the scandal turns out," the editorial intones, "the press stands to lose in the court of public opinion." As if the Lewinsky affair weren't driving circulation, cable news ratings, and Web-site hits through the roof.

Ultimately, CJR's reliance on poll results to make its case is hypocritical. The media's task is to get the story and get it right. Based on what's known so far, they've done a reasonably good job.

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