The Clinton Story: A Crisis for the Press? Forum Summary

This is a summary of the fourth session sponsored by the Committee of Concerned Journalists examining the core principles journalists share. This one, held at the National Press Club on February 18, 1998 in Washington, D.C., dealt with the press' coverage of the White House crisis. At the forum, the Committee released a study, The Clinton Crisis and the Press: A New Standard of American Journalism? [1], on the media's coverage of the story in its first days.

The forums are not intended as definitive, but rather for a kind of coordinated reporting effort which will be the basis for other research, follow-up interviews, survey work, some content analysis, a video series and ultimately a monograph. The Committee is underwritten with a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Overall Summary

Much of the press coverage of the early days of the Clinton crisis was commentary rather than reporting, the study found. And the fabled "two source" rule that the Washington Post established for anonymous sourced stories in Watergate while not dead was hardly the rule. In response, a group of journalists who have covered this and earlier presidential crises, suggested various factors have made this story extraordinarily difficult to cover. Among them: the speed of the news cycle, a trend toward chat and tabloidization in the media culture, and a long and not always happy history with Bill Clinton. Despite all this, they agreed there were problems.

BILL KOVACH, Chairman, Committee of Concerned Journalists, explained the purpose of the day. From the earliest moment of the current crisis, there have been complaints and charges that the American press was out of control on the [Clinton-Lewinsky] story. The Committee decided that it would be useful for all of us to find out just what it was the press reported in those early days when the story first broke, how it was reported, and what Americans got from the media.

Now let me turn the program over to Tom Rosenstiel who you also know as a media reporter for both the LA Times and Newsweek, before he took on this current role.

TOM ROSENSTIEL, Vice Chairman, Committee of Concerned Journalists, introduced the study and discussed its findings: The picture that emerges from this story is of a news culture that is increasingly involved with disseminating information rather than gather it. News organizations that had the least facts and the weakest sourcing tended to pretend that they knew the most. They engaged in the most conjecture, speculation and opinion.

We also discovered, second, that this is not an entirely anonymous source story. Of that universe of factual reporting that looked at what happened, more than half of it was based on named sources. Forty percent was based on anonymous sources. What we didn't expect to find was that half of all the anonymous sourcing was based on a single anonymous source.

What we also, I think, didn't necessarily expect was how little effort there would be to describe the biases or the level of knowledge of anonymous sourcing. Generally it was a source close to the event or something like that, but there was very little effort made by news organizations to say this source might have an ax to grind and here's what it is. In fact in general I would say that the coverage demonstrated a kind of lack of modesty on the part of the press to say here's what we don't know.

If you look at the five most common statements or allegations in all of the almost 1600 statements that were studied over this period, it's interesting that three out of the... six most common statements were not allegations or statements of fact, but of opinion. In fact the most common statement in all of the coverage was that Clinton is in big trouble. Now that may not be a stretch, but we're talking about the first few days of the story. A third of the time that that statement was made, it was not attributed to any sourcing whatsoever. It was purely punditry -- 34 percent of the time.

[The two statements tied for fifth] were perhaps the most judgmental, and today may not stand up very well. First, Clinton is dissembling or not telling the truth or doing double-talk. This was attributed a third of the time to simply punditry; and a quarter of the time to analysis that was attributed to some reporting. But only a quarter of the time was that attributed to a source.

Second: impeachment is a possibility. But what's particularly interesting about that, I think, is that that was the best-sourced statement probably of anything we found. Forty-three percent of the time that somebody said that Clinton was looking at a possible impeachment over this, there was a named source to base that on.

There were some differences between news outlets. [N]ewspapers were engaged in what we call factual reporting, substantially more than any other kind of news outlet. [T]he evening news is second in this area. What we see here is that the most traditional kinds of news outlets are the ones that are more oriented towards gathering and reporting facts. [T]he newer kinds of media outlets and news outlets, are more engaged in commentary, in conjecture, than the traditional ones, and yet this is where the real growth in the media seems to be.

A remarkable 75 percent of what appears on the McLaughlin Group is basically opinion, speculation, and judgment -- very little is what you'd call reporting.

What we're seeing here is a story in which the headline may not be so much how much we relied on anonymous sources. Indeed, as we looked at the coverage, some of the stories that held up best were based on anonymous sources, although clearly they tended to be those that were based on multiple anonymous sources and not single anonymous sources. But the more surprising finding, is the degree to which the media culture today is oriented around talking about the news rather than reporting it.

It's interesting, also, that as this story progressed day by day the level of conjecture and interpretation declined each day and the level of reporting based on facts grew.

That tells us we sort of leapt to conclusions first and found out what the facts were later. But it also suggests there was a calming down process that kicked in at least over the first few days.

BILL KOVACH: Doyle McManus, maybe the most important question raised by this study is whether or not we're seeing new standards of sourcing and accuracy in American journalism emerging in the coverage of this story. I wonder what your take on that is.

DOYLE McMANUS, Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau Chief, discussed the speed of the breaking story and how his newspaper covered it: Bill, I think what we are seeing is a struggle to maintain old standards. Old standards that have, as Tom was kind enough to point out, never been as crisply or as clearly lined as we sometimes pretend they have been. We are in a struggle to maintain those standards in an environment created by a very big story that has made that very difficult.

I guess it was only four weeks ago. I had seen something on the Drudge Report. I hadn't passed it on to anybody because it seemed to be about sex, and we don't pursue stories about sex -- we're sort of an old fashioned, victorian kind of newspaper. But early in the evening of Tuesday, January 20th, one of our investigative reporters, the indefatigable David Wilman came into my office and he said, "I've been talking to some sources and I think we have a problem."

"What's the problem?" I said. He said, "Well, Ken Starr has gone to the Attorney General and the Attorney General's gone to the three judge panel and the three judge panel has allowed him to broaden his mandate" and there followed a string of extraordinarily arcane legal terms, and at the end of it he said, "and it's about sex."

I said, "David, that sounds like a story that's not about sex. It's about perjury and the independent counsel. And you're right, we don't pursue stories about sex, but I don't see how we can not pursue a story about the President being investigated for perjury by the independent counsel."

We had three good sources. I guess they were unnamed sources, come to think of it -- three good sources by about 8:30 that evening, and went with the story. We were trying throughout that evening to figure out how are we going to frame this story? What is this story about? If you go back to those first stories, those stories were about perjury.

The other little bump that evening was we knew the name of the young woman quite early. I said it's a terrific solid story, but I don't think we're going to use the young woman's name. That line lasted until about oh, 9:30, when I got a call on a cell phone -- I was in a taxi cab -- saying, "Well her lawyer's all over LA and he's talking her name up and down...

That just makes a little point about the velocity of this thing. If an individual newspaper or broadcast network had gotten that story all by itself, these are all questions we all would have taken two or three days walking around desks and arguing with each other to figure out. [Instead] we were busting through a new wall 20 minutes after the other. It is true that the Internet and Drudge and his kin have created a new environment of universality. Anything that is reported one place or even rumored one place is now published everyplace and instantly. And that's different.

A second point, most of the core of the information, virtually the entire core of information, came out in the first three days. We have been elaborating on it, we've been around the edges of it ever since. But if you look back, I'm not sure we have learned a single story-changing fact after week one.

The third point is [there] are very few sources in this story. Very few sources that know what is on those tapes who know what is really going on in the Grand Jury room, and that, after all, is still the core of this story. Almost none of those sources are named or are willing to be named. But I hope we will keep in mind that the goal at the end of the day is not to be able to name all your sources. The goal at the end of the day is to present the fullest and most accurate and most balanced and fairest picture of what went on.

There's an old saw in journalism, a cynical saw, that says "There's no penalty for being wrong. The only penalty is for being second." I think we're seeing that change a little bit here. There has been a penalty for being wrong in this story, and that I think is what's going to help push us back to the standards we hope to keep.

BILL KOVACH: Carl, one question that you have dealt with for a long time is sourcing, and I'd like you to talk about that, but before you do, I want to ask you a question about a piece that you had in the LA Times last week.

Two points you make in there: one, all the discussion about the press coverage of this crisis and the crisis itself will lead to an overdue question about the wretched excess of our media culture. And if the President is telling the truth or is sufficiently muddy, there could be a tremendous day of reckoning for Kenneth Starr and the media.

Is the press participation now delving into that idiot culture that you've written about?

CARL BERNSTEIN, Freelance Writer and half of the reportorial team that broke Watergate, defended anonymous sourcing, but criticized the trend toward tabloidization and commentary in the media culture: In the idiot culture piece that I did for the New Republic, what I said is that driving too much of mainstream journalism today are the values of tabloid journalism. That, however, I'm not sure is the most relevant thing about this story.

I believe, as you know, in the work of the Committee wholeheartedly. [But], I don't think you can quantify coverage in terms of numbers and evaluate our performance on that basis.

For instance, the whole question of anonymous sources. If we're looking at that as a gauge to excellence in reporting we would have gotten a zero in Watergate. I don't think we ever named a source. It would have been impossible to pursue the story without the use of anonymous sources. Much the same is the case in this story.

I think the coverage of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Newsweek especially, has been really first rate on this story. And generally, the three networks, the old networks, have done all right on it.

There have been egregious problems. Much of the dynamic that Doyle was talking about was generated by this drumbeat on the 24 hours news channels that gave the appearance of movement. I think it gave a distorted picture of what was going on and really drew the picture of intense crisis that then tended to dominate both conversation and media. At the same time, it seems to me that when the Attorney General of the United States enables a special prosecutor to investigate the President for obstruction of justice, perjury, or subornation of perjury, that, and particularly in this case, that that's a big story and it indicates big trouble for the President.

One of the things about this new media configuration is true talk show environment. We have a talk show nation. And mainstream journalism has moved over into that area. The Sunday shows tend to be a reflection of that. Some of it with journalistic values, some of it with no journalistic values. I think there was, indeed, some wild speculation by people covering the story in those first days.

Also, the question of the President's truthfulness which really, I think, is one of the reasons for the numbers in this study, was the immediate question raised both by the President's record, by people around him in the White House who were having some doubts about his truthfulness, and certainly by people on Capitol Hill and in the political process. So right away that became an absolutely necessary part of the story, of the dynamic of the story.

So I think on balance the traditional media have done quite well on this story.

Now because it's a sex story as well, and the question of whether criminality is involved turns as well on the sexual question, obviously it's a titillating story, it's a great tabloid story. Television, particularly 24 hour newscasts and Fox loves the sexual aspect of this story. And there's going to be wretched excess because of that element.

DOTTY LYNCH, Senior Political Editor of CBS News, was worried about the hidden agendas and sometimes unreliability of unnamed sources: The three old networks have very different mandate and very different interests than CNN, MSNBC, and the other 24 hour shows. We are still, in an old fashioned way trying to do old fashioned reporting where there are very few sources.

One issue on sourcing that I just want to bring up, we rarely name sources even if we know them and people have gone on the record, mainly because the names don't mean that much to the average viewer. Lots of people would love to have their names on the evening news and would be willing to go on camera saying all kinds of stuff. It makes our reporting, therefore, much more important that we get it right because we don't have the name of a person attached to a piece of information either on a CYA basis which we could then attribute to that person. We've got to say it ourselves and be sure that we're right on it.

An argument that we've had internally, and I assume most news organizations have, is the characterization of sources which I think we've all fallen down on: presenting information as fact or truth that's coming from prosecutors, that's coming from the Clinton White House, from democratic sources. Almost everybody that we're all talking to has agendas here, and I don't think we've been very straightforward with viewers or with readers on where that information is coming from and how it might be tainted as a result.

The double sourced rule is something that I think we've almost all abandoned unless we really are unsure of our source. In these cases, I'm very unsure of these sources.

I think maybe print organizations are becoming a little bit more sympathetic to television on is the whole issue of immediacy. With the mistake that the Wall Street Journal made on their throwing a story on a web site that wasn't fully reported, that was even changed for their own newspaper the next day, and then eventually retracted, the urgency to report something and to get it out first is something that we've all felt.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: One of the things that sort of emerges from the totality of the study is the sense that much of the coverage was aimed at getting allegations into print. if you were technically covered, you played by the rules enough to say I've got sourcing, put this in the paper or on the air.

In the contemporary media environment, is that the best we can do? is it still realistic to think that our job is to publish the truth as Walter Lippman described it? To sift out the rumors and the innuendo from fact and to publish what I think Carl called the best obtainable version of the truth. Is that still a realistic...

CARL BERNSTEIN: That's a great point because what distinguishes tabloid journalism, is the urge to get something into print. The value not being whether it's true or not, but whether somebody has said it. And in the story, in the tabloids, and on the 24 hour news channels especially, we have seen those tabloid values. Whereas the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the networks for the most part, have used their own reporters to see if something is at least verifiable or credible.

DOYLE McMANUS: On my side of the table, of the stodgy old newspaper side, there has been enormous pressure to get these allegations into print. It may be that the difference is we do it, the pressure comes not from lust but from fear. Where the tabloid may lust to get all this stuff into print, we worry about all these facts rolling around the countryside.

What is different today from Lippman's time is we could sort it out and never print the false and our readers would not be subjected to it. The problem we confront every day is if our readers have been bombarded by the exaggerated, the unfounded and the false, how do we correct that picture for them? That sometimes means publishing the fact of allegations that you then immediately have to say appear to be unfounded. It's a catch-22.

E.J. DIONNE: I think all stories involving Bill Clinton, either you end up having the word paradox or irony in them. In this case it's either a paradox or an irony that on the one hand his opponents have been very good at getting lots of allegations out there through the very process you're talking about

Then we say to ourselves, gee, we've got to write about it because it's out there, even if only to knock it down. So on the one side that has happened and it's happened a lot. On the other side, I think, I've had Republicans tell me that they think the worst thing that happened to them is how many charges that were made against Clinton were untrue because it devalues the whole currency of a charge against Clinton.

QUESTION: Sometimes the spin of our sources gets into our stories. How do we as journalists guard against that and still report what Carl points out is the very valid fact that you need to get from anonymous sources things that actually happened?

GWEN IFILL: I think there's two ways. The best way is obviously trying to check it with another side, and this is one of the frustrations in this particular case. Betty Curry retrieved the gifts. Did she? No answer from the other side. Then a couple of weeks later, well, maybe Monica sent them back, well, buried somewhere else. You don't have the other side coming right back at you so you're stuck with this particular fact. However, I don't think that legitimizes putting it in there if you don't know that from Betty Curry, from anybody else, but somebody who wants to get a story out. And as I said before, I think if you have doubts that she actually retrieved the gifts or that that person is telling you the 100 percent accurate story, I think you have to characterize it for the viewer, for the reader, as coming from who it's coming from and why they're doing it. That's the only responsible way, I think, to do it if you don't have any other contrary evidence or the person themselves won't give you their side of the story.

BILL KOVACH: What about the characterization of the conversation as leading?

E.J. DIONNE: In most kinds of stories I think it's possible for the news organization to insist on look, we've got to say this comes from a Republican source or a critic of Clinton or a Democratic source. In a story like this, especially if leaks may come from some law enforcement agency or the special counsel's office, and I don't know if they do or not. It's much harder. That person won't agree to letting a reporter do that. So then the reporter's sitting there with a bad choice. Either report this story that you know or at least think you know to be the case without saying where it comes from, giving the reader a hint; or try to do that and risk not having the story at all, and that is the pressure on this story that basically your whole report is about.

BILL KOVACH: Is it your assumption that the source in that story insisted that the characterization, leading, be part of the story? Otherwise why use it? Why not let the conversation or the fragment of the conversation speak for itself and let the reader decide was this leading or was this not?

E.J. DIONNE: I'd like Carl to address this whole question, because you had to deal with sources where... Deep Throat is still not known. On a lot of that stuff we had no idea as readers of your stories where they came from or what the tilt of people was.

CARL BERNSTEIN: Interestingly enough, in our reporting the first few months, there were virtually no sources that were in investigative agencies. They all were primary sources who knew tiny little pieces because they worked for the Nixon Reelection Committee or in the White House.

I think 98 percent of the time spin is easily dealt with by good reporting. What you say is that after this story broke, Paul Bagalla or White House people were dispatched and they put the following interpretation on it. I think you can do that in most instances. I think it's obligatory that you do that.

But I think there's another question in this story because a big part of this story is Ken Starr, what are his motivations? I think there needs to be some reporting within the press on the question of are some of these stories coming from Ken Starr's office and why? It's a really tricky question because reporters ordinarily don't go around saying let's find out the source of the story. But the White House has made a serious challenge to the bonafides and motivation of the investigators here. I think we need to find a way to report on that.

The other thing is this whole question of leaks. I am very skeptical that there is anybody in Starr's office or elsewhere that is throwing wholesale information over the transom, laying this stuff out. My guess is that it comes from good, hard reporting where reporters are calling eight, ten, twelve people who they know, or maybe in the FBI who were on Starr's staff, who are on Starr's staff, and are getting tiny pieces. And lawyers for some of those involved, and they're getting tiny pieces and putting it together. That's my somewhat informed speculation but it also involves a little bit of knowledge.

QUESTION: I would ask the question of how far you all think the story has advanced in this last month.

DOYLE McMANUS: This story hasn't advanced, this story has retreated. (Laughter) We now know a lot more about the background and the challengeable veracity of people like Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky than we did on day one.

DOTTY LYNCH: I agree.

What I worry about, I talk to friends who read the paper and watch a little TV, and they know a lot more about this than I do. They have all kinds of facts in their head because they've read this in the paper and they're not sorting out where it's coming from and whether it's true, and November 15th was a start date and all this kind of stuff.

QUESTION: I just wanted to ask Doyle, something you said at the beginning is you said you think there is penalty for being wrong on this story, and I'd like to know what it is and whose paper is being punished?

DOYLE McMANUS: We can cite here two famous cases of publications that were wrong and that got written about with reporter's names and editor's names, for being wrong.

But the Wall Street Journal had to stand up in public and say it was wrong. The Dallas Morning News had to stand up in public and say it was wrong. There are two or three other examples that are still out there. One of them is the different ways, different newspapers and broadcast outlets presented the "fact" of a dress that was stained with DNA evidence. That "fact" has yet to appear, and when the journalism reviews come in, that dirty laundry -- forgive me for that -- I think is going to get a thorough airing.

CARL BERNSTEIN: I think there is a penalty, and that is that we have various communities and constituencies in our national polity in this city, elsewhere. I think the reputation of the Wall Street Journal and the Dallas paper on this story especially, has really been hurt. I think their credibility is in question in terms of future stories they do. I think ABC was hurt by its report. And perhaps a sense that they're out there a little too fast. So I think there is a price to pay.

E.J. DIONNE: I think the price is in our credibility and the price is measured by all of the polls that show what people think of us.

It's an interesting question of how much individual accountability there is. My sense is reporters who make a big mistake get berated by their editors for starters; and don't feel great around their colleagues; and in general the public holds us in lower esteem and trusts us less when we make highly publicized mistakes and I think everybody is aware of that.

BILL KOVACH:The question is, these organizations are embarrassed, but the entire press is penalized by that. I think that's what happens.

QUESTION: If we are in the 24 minute news cycle with no ability to verify sources, much less get double sources on something, much less get responses to allegations in the 24 minute news cycle, what specifically would you do in your newsrooms to fix it?

CARL BERNSTEIN: Why can't you get a response or hold the story until the next 24 minute news cycle?

DOTTY LYNCH: I have the same feeling. We have held the line on things. We may have been penalized, our ratings are not up, and we are considered way down in terms of Lewinsky coverage, in terms of people doing it, but we're holding the line.

We did one thing that the White House started to yell at us about and then they started to laugh. We waited two weeks to report that Linda Tripp had worn a wire when she met with Lewinsky, because we hadn't independently verified that for two weeks. I got a phone call first from somebody saying that's a two week old story, and then he started laughing and he said oh, but I guess you didn't verify it until today.

So you don't get a lot of credit and you get scooped a lot, but in the long run I have to believe that the credibility is what really matters.

E.J. DIONNE: When I covered the state government in Albany I had a wonderful editor called Shelly Binn. One day some story was floating around and it was a very negative story about somebody, and I went right through him what I had as fact and what I surmised and we were trying to figure out what to do with the story. Shelly said there are some occasions when it's better to be second. In that case it turned out the story wasn't true, and he was right. There are times when you have to make that decision. Now it's not easy in this environment. People don't want to be scooped.

But on a lot of these stories the incremental gain you get in being first is pretty small. In other words, some of the things on the Watergate story, some of these breaks proved very important, but there are a lot of these breaks, especially on a story like this, that may not be important in any historic way.

QUESTION: I heard from the panel that the two source rule has gone by the boards. What is the difference in quality between that story and the present story that say we've abandoned a two source policy?

BILL KOVACH: I'm not sure that the study says the two source rule is dead. I think in fact it says it's not dead, but it's not observed as diligently as it was in the past. Because there were a number of two source stories in this study.

CARL BERNSTEIN: The two source rule, which we used for good reason, is a pretty good thing for a reporter to have almost all the time. At the same time I can certainly envision a circumstance in which one source has a document or something that is irrefutable, or a fact and you know this one source for an awful long time in which you can use one source. I don't think that it's got to be an absolute standard. But certainly myself, I always feel a lot better when I know two people are giving the same version.

QUESTION: I agree with you. But it just seems much looser in this situation than it ever did in the Watergate situation.

CARL BERNSTEIN: I think that's true.

DOYLE McMANUS: It may seem that way in part because of the nature of this story. Let me cite what I think is the most important consistent use of one source stories here.

There is one document at the heart of this document, and that is the Monica Lewinsky tapes. A lot of the reporting going on has been reporters trying to contact people and they are in various places in the drama and in the city -- not only in the independent counsel's office -- who have access to those tapes. Now if you have a source with whom you have a long relationship who is reading to you, let us say hypothetically, from transcripts of the tapes, even if you had the tapes themselves, the tapes are only one source. That characterizes the real world dilemma here.

It is not only the number of the sources, it is not only the characterization of the sources, it is the quality of the information and the characterization of the information. You can take an allegation and if you accept everything your source says including the spin and the value judgments and the speculation and the hypotheses about where this may lead next that your source gives you, you've got one kind of story. If you take what your source is giving you and you say all right, I'm going to leave aside his notion of what this means and simply stick to a very careful presentation of what I truly know in a moral sense this source is giving me that is really there, then you may have a one source story, but it's a one source story that will stand up.

QUESTION: Is there any penalty for information (inaudible)? No matter how many sources you had, if you had three names sources on the record for a fact that isn't true. If it gets into all the newspapers, is there any penalty for everyone having (inaudible)?

DOYLE McMANUS: I'd argue the penalties are too low and too slow.

DOTTY LYNCH: I think the penalties are twofold. One is a big one, which is that a lot of readers and a lot of viewers don't believe any of this stuff, or anything they hear anymore. And the unwillingness to retract a story in any big way gets around in the journalistic community, and we love our competitors to be wrong. But the unwillingness, what Tom said at the beginning, to say what we don't know and to admit with some humility here, and also to not retract in any kind of big way when we are wrong I think is causing a big problem for us.

E.J. DIONNE: The Dallas Morning News actually deserves some credit for how publicly and quickly they pulled back. In a situation where people are reluctant to admit error, just as you say, they were amazingly out front in saying gee, we've got to pull this out.

DOYLE McMANUS: As was the Wall Street Journal.

QUESTION: But (inaudible) you admit you were wrong. If you don't admit you were wrong...

BILL KOVACH: You get embarrassed. Whether you're penalized is another question.

QUESTION: Exactly.

DOYLE McMANUS: The larger, the more important issue is all of those stories that took one step across the line, all of the stories about the dress that made the dress a little more real than it turned out to be, and is anybody going to come back around and write the pieces soon that the readers who read about the dress initially are going to see that number one, tell us what we do and don't know about the dress -- the Stout piece in the New York Times is a terrific example of what we need to be doing right now -- sorting out fact from semi-fact.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: One other thing I wanted to point out is that in the study when we say what's a named source. If somebody, if a reporter got a quote from the tapes, even if they didn't have the tapes, hadn't seen the tapes, if there was a quote that was in quote and attributed to Monica Lewinsky, that had to be coded as a named source. So that number may be slightly inflated if somebody took something out of [Newsweek] for instance and put it in the newspapers.

QUESTION: (inaudible) shortcomings the way the story has been reported. So will there be any chance the next time the media is faced with a story, or will we look back on this as the golden age of journalism? (Laughter)

DOTTY LYNCH: I just want to bring out, we haven't, none of us, addressed it enough, I think, is that some of what we've done have been strategies that have worked in the past to force a reaction from the other side and they haven't worked, and we've all gone crazy trying to figure out whether it's the carrot or the stick or what we're doing to get the White House and get the President and get Vernon Jordan and all those people to do interviews and to tell us their side of the story. Part of the justification of a lot of this, even if it's been messy and even if it's been harmful, has been to try to get the other side to give us the facts as they see them and try to get to the truth. So far none of us have been successful in doing that.

BILL KOVACH: That's a really interesting point, and it may be something that we ought to design some journalism workshops to discuss because in fact, beginning with the Reagan Administration, White Houses have learned that one way you keep a story from developing is not to comment. You can't keep it alive. If that's true, that requires a change in the way journalists work, but that change in too many cases seems to be speculation and judgmental reporting which is what I think the danger is.

In terms of what we've learned from this, personally I think the most important thing we've learned is that if the polls are to be believed, the American people have very clearly lived up to the founding fathers' belief that the conflict and confusion of a lot of competing opinions helps the public come to some judgment and they're waiting for that judgment to be made. They have not made a judgment yet. I think after the first four or five days here in Washington that the coverage in Washington began to ease off on its judgmental nature and to fall more in line with what the American public is seeing. But hopefully we'll have an opportunity to discuss questions like this more.

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