The Clinton/Lewinsky Story: How Fair? How Accurate? Forum Summary

Following are excerpts from an October 20, 1998 panel discussion at a forum sponsored by the Committee of Concerned Journalists on coverage of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. The forum was held in connection with the release of a report by CCJ on the accuracy and fairness of the coverage by a number of print and television news organizations.

Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, opened the forum with an overview of the Committee's written report The Clinton/Lewinsky Story: How Accurate? How Fair?

[1]"The goal of this study was to make a disciplined and detailed examination of the coverage in order to balance claims on both sides that the reporting has been substantiated, or that it has been manipulated by misleading leaks.

"In keeping with the spirit of the earlier studies, this one was conducted not to lay blame, but to raise questions, and to provide some insight in today's journalistic practices. The most important conclusion is that contrary to The White House accusations the relative handful of reporters who did the bulk of the original reporting were not trafficking in false leaks and fabrications. The picture painted overall is of a news media culture that in breaking stories usually relied on legitimate sources and was often careful about the facts in the initial account. The initial reporting of certain now well known stories, such as the blue dress were proven right and none was made, so to speak, out of the whole cloth.

"But other findings of the study make it clear that it is a dangerous oversimplification to say the press has been vindicated. For what the study shows is that even in carefully reported stories journalists intended to accept interpretations from their sources and thereby uncritically helped perpetuate the dizzying battle of spin against spin which came to characterize as news of the day from Washington. There are also cases in which reporting was based on sources with only second hand knowledge, leading to some embarrassing credibility problems for some news organizations. Especially troubling is the reflection of a tendency by reporters to adopt the perspective of the investigators over those being investigated... The apparent conclusion of the Special Prosecutor himself should give us all pause when he eludes to his relationship with reporters as being analogous to a relationship with informants. Whether or not that analogy is correct, the fact that it was raised by the Special Prosecutor highlights the fact that virtually no reporting was done during this period, only activities of the Special Prosecutor and his deputies and their treatment of the people drawn into the grand jury process, long considered the role of watch dog journalism.