The Clinton/Lewinsky Story: How Fair? How Accurate? Session 1: Panel Discussion

The forum then moved to a panel moderated by Deborah Potter. The panelists included Jim Doyle, a veteran news executive and assistant to the Special Prosecutor during the Watergate investigation, who helped supervise the Committee report; Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Washington Post; Michael Oreskes, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times; Robin Sproul, Washington bureau chief of ABC News; and Michael Isikoff, an investigative reporter for Newsweek who broke several stories in the initial reporting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair.

Jim Doyle expressed concern that the story was alienating the public from government, from its system of justice while, at the same time, planting doubts about its leaders. From a journalistic standpoint, he had praise for most of the reporting but many doubts about the editing process and judgment:

"The press has got higher ratings and sales, but this story at least has the potential of being another black eye for the press at a time when it doesn't need any more bruises. The Prosecutor in many ways has won his case, but he seems to have lost public confidence and I think there are reasons for that. The result of all this is alienation--alienation from the Government, alienation from politics, doubts about the criminal justice system, doubts about our leaders, doubts about credibility for all these institutions.

"My impression [on] this story is that the reporting was good, but the editing leaves a lot of questions. I think you have to look at the detail of the study and decide for yourself. But this is a story that those who did best were not those who were first or those who were most aggressive."

Regarding the Watergate coverage: "Its astounding how given the sensationalism of the event how sober that coverage was. How steady it was. How even handed it was... I looked the standup of Tom Brokaw after [the Saturday night massacre] and Brokaw was fabulous. He was low key and gave the White House version. But there was no alarm, none of the cynicism or sarcasm.

"Watergate was a story where the editing was very cautious. People didn't want to believe that story... People were shaking their heads so The (Washington) Post had to be very careful with that story and I think they were. The Government watched every day to see what The Post would come up with. And if the early stories had a comma in the wrong place, Ben Bradlee heard about it big time.

"In this [current] story everybody in town believed that the President did it. From day one it was, there has been enough smoke there for all these years so the press yelled fire."

Robin Sproul of ABC News answered that, at least at ABC, the editing of the story did not fall short of the reporting:

"I can certainly say at ABC there was no breathless recklessness in high places. Our editing process was at times tortured and heated and thorough. I'm proud of our record on the story and we haven't put anything on the air that we've had to retract. I can't speak for any other television organization. I do have some concerns about pressures put on us, particularly in broadcasting because of this endless news cycle. I think we first saw it in covering the O.J. story... [Then] with this story in the last 10 months, everybody in journalism is very aware that not only do you have the on air, all the time television news networks, but you also have the Internet which has played a very big role in this story. And it's even caused newspapers to put things on their Internet sites far before they would ever had to in the past... I think that's changed the pressure involved in the editing process and certainly has for us.

"I feel very strongly that we resisted those pressures. At times we didn't put things on the air as quickly as we could have because we went through another round of the editing process."

Michael Oreskes of the New York Times agreed that news organizations who did their own work and required multiple sources for information came out ahead:

"There is an old piece of advice I think every young reporter in a good news room gets: Do your own work. And I think the lesson of this whole thing for reporters comes down to some pretty simple standards like that one. That's what worked here. The people who got it right were those who did their own work, who were careful about it, who followed the basic standards of sourcing and got their information from multiple sources. The people who worried about what was "out there," to use that horrible phrase that justifies so many journalistic sins, the people who worried about getting beaten, rather then just trying to do it as well as they could as quickly as they could, they messed up. It's amazing really how some simple virtues are re-proven by this whole thing. I think fundamentally the people who tried to do it themselves and did their own work came out of this fine.

"[With] this new electronic world we're in with deadlines every second competition is not new to the news business. Deadlines are not new to the news business. In my hometown of New York there used to be 12 daily newspapers and they had deadlines all the time and they were all competing with each other... The problem is that people just have to keep their balance. You get beaten some days and you win some days. It isn't being first that's the most important thing, although to many of us it is important, but it isn't anything to be first and wrong. It's wonderful to get it first, but first get it right."

Deb Potter: "Do you think, that ultimately when we look at this coverage that it's been vindicated or do you see holes in it that concern you about the sort of methods and practices of the news media in general?"

Isikoff: "On every hotly competitive story, the press makes mistakes. People go with stories before they are totally nailed down. That is the nature of the beast and it has been true on every hotly competitive story I've ever covered or watched. But I have a particular perspective on this.

Isikoff took strong issue with the criticism of the press in the Content magazine in a story by Stephen Brill.

"The press usually relied on legitimate sources and often was careful about the facts in the initial account. And that is my experience, both personally at Newsweek and in all the mainstream news organizations that I watched very closely. It was a very difficult story. It was a story in an incredibly contentious atmosphere in which the White House was on everybody's back for every misstep, just as it was in Watergate. And it was an unseemly story. It was dealing with an aspect of life that we don't usually report about. So I think by and large people did a pretty good job in a very difficult environment. Sure, some people ... made mistakes. But go back and look at Watergate or Iran Contra or any big story. You can always find these sorts of examples. But I think by and large we got it right.

"The Internet ... [is] a classic example of the difference between a news organization that does try to apply all the traditional standards and this new medium where people don't apply any standards. I still think I prefer to be on my side of the fence rather than the other one."

Deb Potter asked Ben Bradlee, the final panelist, whether standards in the news business have changed. Bradlee emphasized that people are lying more than ever before in their dealings with the media. "Spinning," he said, had become a nice term for lying. The intense competition today, the drive to get it first, was leading the media in a dangerous direction:

"Certainly, things have changed. Reporters and editors today, certainly compared to Watergate, have it much harder. There are several things making it harder to find the trust and once you find it to evaluate it. The first thing is lying. I mean people lie now in a way that they never lied before. And the ease with which they lie, total ease. I really hate this word spinning because it is a nice uptown way of saying lying. And people expect no consequences from lying. One of the interesting things about President Clinton is that he lies to correct a lie... This whole question of lying ... is new and it makes it harder.

"The second thing ... is competition. I am beginning to rethink competition. When I started there were four newspapers in Washington and you got your ass beat off by your editor if you got beat. I think competition now is driving us in a way that is potentially enormously dangerous. When the history of the world is written it really doesn't make any difference whether you got the story on Saturday or you got in on Sunday. You sell more papers on Sunday. When the history of the world is written, I dare say that nobody is going to know that you had the dress first...

"Also, I find it interesting that it doesn't seem to pay off. It pays off in this room by people like Michael who are so good at it, but it doesn't do much for circulation as far as I can find out. The last time I checked The Washington Post circulation it continued sort of a dreary slight decrease per year. The last time I checked network news audiences they are down. ... I know it's disloyal to my profession, but and I think editors who make this a plank in their platform are probably misguided. If you let a reporter know that it doesn't make much difference whether he gets it or not you're going to get screwed.

"So I think, editors more than reporters, ought to really get comfortable with this question of competition and whether it's really improving the breed or not. I don't think it is.

"The third thing that's different is what I call the kerosene press which didn't exist really 25 years ago. Those are the guys on the extremes who put kerosene on the slightest wisp of smoke hoping for a conflagration. We don't know how to handle that..."