…

 

 

WARPSPEED

America in the Age

of Mixed Media

 

 

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel

 

THE PARAMETERS OF THE

MIXED MEDIA CULTURE

 

            In the third week of the Clinton‑Lewinsky story, amid growing concerns of declining standards, the Committee of Concerned Journalists —an ad hoc group of journalists who had formed several months before — commissioned a study to find out precisely what the press had reported in the first week of the story, what the sourcing was, and how much was actual reporting versus commentary and opinion.

The study's most important finding was the extraordinary degree to which reporting and opinion and speculation were now intermin­gled in mainstream journalism. A snapshot of network news, news­paper reporting, and cable news that typified what an American might see showed that a remarkable 41 percent of all the reportage in the first six days of the Clinton‑Lewinsky story was not factual reporting at all —here is what happened — but was instead journalists offering their own analysis, opinion, speculation, or judgments — essentially commentary and punditry. Another 12 percent of reportage was reporting attributed to other news organizations and unverified by the outlet now repeating it. Taken together, that means that more than half of the reportage in the first week (53 percent) of this story was either passing along other people's reporting or commenting on the news. While we know of no other story that has been analyzed quite this way to offer a statistical comparison, we think it is fair to assume that such levels of commentary and repetition of others' work are unprecedented. The number of talk shows has exploded, and the speed of new technology has dramatically increased the ability and the inclination to pass on what others are reporting without indepen­dently verifying it.

What this reveals is the degree to which the supposed infor­mation revolution is not actually about gathering information but instead about commenting on information that others have gath­ered. The effects of this shift toward interpretation, or the "argu­ment culture," would permeate coverage of the Clinton‑Lewinsky story. The argument culture, which we will discuss at more length later, is one in which discussions are framed around polarized extremes and are designed to raise the ire of participants and citi­zens. In this culture, facts are often subordinated to emotion and common ground is subordinated to conflict. Problem solving becomes more difficult.

The study also cataloged what the press was reporting in that first week. Six assertions or allegations dominated the coverage. The most common was that Clinton was in big trouble. The second was that Clinton was denying there was any sexual relationship. The third was that Lewinsky had alleged sex and perjury. The fourth was that Lewinsky was negotiating immunity. The fifth was that Clinton was dissembling. The sixth was that impeachment was a possibility.

Interestingly, three of the six most common assertions in the press that first week were essentially subjective or interpretative: that this spelled big trouble, that Clinton was not telling the truth, and that impeachment was a possibility. Within a few weeks, each of those interpretations looked to be premature or false. In time, however, the story would regain political momentum, and these prophecies came true.

If the press rushed to judgment in the first week, it did appear to calm down somewhat over time. A second study by the Committee of Concerned journalists, monitoring coverage six weeks into the story, found that the level of punditry in the coverage (reporters offering their personal opinions, speculations, or judg­ments without attributing them to any reporting) fell markedly, from 13 percent to 8 percent of the coverage. They were also less analytical in their reporting six weeks later. The amount of analysis reporting (interpretation attributed to some reporting) fell from 24 percent of the coverage to 18 percent.

In time, however, the level of argument, speculation, interpreta­tion, and judgment began rising again. A pattern seemed to emerge. When there was a fair amount of new information breaking at once, the press demonstrated skill in covering it, as with the impeachment proceedings in the House and Senate. But when the flow of informa­tion slowed, particularly in the aftermath of a big break in the story, the press seemed to try to fill the void with chatter and speculation. In the weeks after Lewinsky struck her immunity agreement with the independent counsel's office, for instance, the press seemed to become impatient as it waited for Starr's report to be delivered to Congress. In those five weeks, eight‑month‑old rumors speculating that Clinton had relations with still other women in the White House resurfaced in the press, as did gossip about what Starr's report might say about a cigar and other matters. During the Christmas break after the House impeachment of Clinton and before the Senate trial, old rumors about an illegitimate child Clinton had fathered with a black Arkansas pros­titute resurfaced.

Why doesn't coverage of a story diminish when the flow of new information declines? Two reasons, we think, principally explain the phenomenon. The first is that so many news or information programs now exist with time to fill that there is a problem of excess capacity. Between 7 A.m. and midnight on a typical weekday in Washington, for instance, there are now 146 hours of news, information, and talk avail­able to viewers on the local cable television system. A kind of Parkinson's Law comes into play here: the news expands to fill the time allotted‑even if there isn't really enough news. (Increasingly, as we will discuss later, these channels also have not invested particularly in a reporting infrastructure, so they depend on inexpensive chat formats to fill the time.)

Second, when new information does break, there is a genuine surge in interest by the public to assimilate it. When the information flow slows, news organizations, trying to hold that audience, tend to overestimate how long the interest lasts and then tend to manu­facture material to pass on. The effect is that of an aircraft carrier at full speed. Its sheer momentum propels it long after engines have been put to full stop.

In the end, how well did the press do? After the House judiciary Committee finally took up the work of considering the evidence of the independent counsel, journalists had an unusual opportunity to assess the quality of their reporting in the form of the Starr Report and the more than three thousand pages of the supporting evidentiary mate­rial. The Committee of Concerned Journalists identified six story threads that went to the crux of the Clinton‑Lewinsky case‑whether the affair occurred and whether the president had obstructed justice and tampered with evidence to hide it.

The group then tracked the first appearance of each of these threads and its subsequent development in major news outlets in print, television, and the Internet, comparing what was reported to what was eventually contained in the Starr Report and evidentiary material. The goal was to make a disciplined and detailed examina­tion of the coverage so as to balance accusations on both sides that the reporting had been proven substantiated or that it had been manipulated by misleading leaks.

The six threads were the existence of a blue dress with DNA evi­dence of the affair, the existence of witnesses of an affair, the existence of other staffers who had also had affairs with the president, the exis­tence of talking points for Tripp and Lewinsky to lie about what they knew, the role of Vernon Jordan, and the role of Betty Currie.

We found, contrary to White House accusations, that those doing the bulk of the original reporting did not ferry false leaks and fabri­cations into coverage of the Clinton‑Lewinsky story. At least in break­ing stories initially, the press usually relied on legitimate sources and often was careful about the facts in the first account.

However, while the initial reporting of certain well‑known stories such as the blue dress was proven right and none was made out of whole cloth, it is an oversimplification to say the press was vindicated.

Even in these careful stories, the press often tended to accept interpretations from sources uncritically and had a penchant to emphasize the perspective of investigators over those being investi­gated. In several important cases, the press leaned on suspicions of investigators that did not hold up. This was a factor in the coverage of Vernon Jordan, who (it was even reported at one point) had accept­ed a plea agreement with prosecutors, and of the so‑called talking points, which some press reports falsely alleged that Clinton might have penned himself.

At other times, reporting was based on sources whose knowl­edge was secondhand, and this occasionally got journalists into trou­ble. This may have been the case in trying to report, without having heard the tapes, more subtle questions of law such as what Lewinsky told Tripp about Vernon Jordan.  It also may have occurred in coverage of whether there was a third-party witness to an intimate encounter between the president and Lewinsky. The Wall Street Journal and the Dallas Morning News both ended up having to retract stories about possible third‑party witnesses to encounters between Lewinsky and Clinton, in both cases, it later emerged, because their sources were second‑ or third‑hand.

Others then used the reporting from elsewhere to engage in some­times reckless speculation and propaganda. On occasion, the press also ferried speculation — some of which could have been construed as threats —from investigators into news accounts, raising questions about whether the press was sufficiently wary of being used by sources, especially law enforcement sources. This may have been the case, for example, in reporting on the so‑called talking points Lewinsky gave Linda Tripp.

These tendencies to run with material call into question not only the fairness and accuracy of the coverage but also whether journalists in cases such as this stray into becoming in effect agents of the pros­ecution. In court papers, Starr himself, as we will discuss later, described his relationship with reporters as analogous to a relation­ship with informants.

Lastly, so much of the news media culture today involves com­menting on the news rather than reporting it that in follow‑up cov­erage, especially on television, the principle of keeping fact separate from suspicion and analysis separate from agenda‑setting is no longer clearly honored. It was in the talk show arena that many of the rumors and unsubstantiated suspicions found their way into the main­stream media. The press itself has encouraged this by helping create a new class of activist pundits: loosely credentialed personalities who often thrive on being provocateurs. These people are treated as authorities, but they actually are neither news sources nor journalists. They lack the expertise to offer informal analysis. They also have no responsibility for impartiality or even accuracy. But the simple fact that they appear on these shows lends them and their assertions whether solid facts or base rumor and innuendo‑weight comparable to all other forms of journalism. Vague descriptions like "former prosecutor" or "senate aide" often mask their true function‑TV personality. The argument culture may be undermining the reporting culture, and news organizations are helping encourage the process as they increase the range of programming and material they produce to chase a fragmenting audience.

Take a look at some of these story threads more closely.

The Blue Dress: ABC was accurate in its first reporting that a stained dress of Lewinsky's would prove central to the Clinton Lewinsky story. ABC's early reporting turned out to be highly accurate. The stain did turn out to be the president's semen. And although Lewinsky in her testimony maintained the dress wasn't, as ABC called it, "a kind of souvenir" (she said she thought the stain might have come from "spinach dip"), Linda Tripp's tapes of Lewinsky indicate otherwise.

ABC's initial report was based on a single source who, according to ABC, had "specific" knowledge of what Lewinsky had claimed.

Various factors may have led the media to later discount the story — its potential impact, its unsavory nature, the possibility that Lewinsky was lying, and the fact that ABC cited only a single source. On January 24, the New York Times incorrectly reported that the supposedly stained dress had been a gift from the president.

Other organizations picked up on the Times's story, and when "the gift dress"— rather than the blue dress, which Lewinsky's moth­er was now holding — came back as "clean" from DNA testing, the media speculated, and the public assumed, that the stained dress story was wrong. The speculation spawned a series of reports on how the media had botched the coverage of the story in general, such as Time magazine's February 16 story "The Press and the Dress. The Anatomy of a Salacious Leak." This discounting was fueled by comments by William Ginsburg, Lewinsky's attorney, in which he dissembled about the dress enough to sound like a denial.

The attacks on the dress story, along with testimony leaks, made it easier for columnists and commentators to downplay the dress story after it reemerged. The attacks also made it more likely that the stories could be spun by the White House. One such comment: Geraldo Rivera's July 8 declaration, "[there is] absolutely no possi­bility that a so‑called semen‑stained dress exists," which was based on the fact that "Monica has insisted to everyone that things never went that far."

This confusion over the dress story points out an interesting argu­ment. Was the reporting of the blue dress vindicated because it turned out to be accurate? Some journalists have argued no. It is not good enough that stories turn out to be correct, they argue. ABC was lucky, they contend, not good.  The ends — whether a story is true — do not justify the means — a thin level of sourcing.  That judgment may be too harsh.  If ABC had good reason to believe its lone source — and it contends it did — that may be the result of having reliable sources, not luck.

The problem may be more subtle. Accuracy is certainly the first goal of journalism, but it is not the only one. Credibility and clarity are important as well. Before a news organization goes with a story, it needs to consider whether it has sourcing that is thorough enough that the account will be understood and believed. Making stories as clear and credible as possible, even if it means waiting, may also pro­tect against stories' being mischaracterized in subsequent versions as they echo through the media.

The Talking Points: The day after the in Clinton‑Lewinsky story broke, news organizations learned that on January 14 Monica Lewinsky had handed Linda Tripp a three‑page document that began, “Points to make in an affidavit." The memo, which was dubbed the “talkpoints" in Newsweek's America Online report, bedeviled news organizations for months though it scarcely makes an appear­ance in the Starr Report. At the height of the coverage, several dif­ferent versions of the "official" memo emerged. In the January 22online story, Newsweek reported that it was not clear who wrote the tailing points, "but Starr believes that Lewinsky did not write them herself. He is investigating whether the instructions came from [Vernon] Jordan or other friends of the President." Because the memo was in pseudolegalese, it was assumed that Lewinsky did not write the talking points. In the coverage that followed the Newsweek report, many journalists accepted and repeated this line of thinking. The memo became a potential "smoking gun" (NBC, January 22, 1998; USA Today, July 1, 1998) that many news organizations were chas­ing and trying to link to various Clinton friends and confidants even after it was clear there were different versions of the memo. In its February 9 issue, Time magazine said, "Starr may have good reason to press [Bruce] Lindsey under oath."

On February 23, Fox News reported that Starr thought Clinton himself might have helped write the memo.

Talk show hosts and guests speculated about the authorship and the likelihood that the talking points represented witness tampering.

Fox News reported that it "has learned" that Lewinsky would not be immunized until she told who assisted in their writing.

After Lewinsky received immunity, several stories reported ill, talking points were no longer considered central to the investigation.

The Starr Report devotes just one paragraph and one footnote 1 '' the memo, saying that Lewinsky gave the document to Tripp a ii, I that she testified she wrote it herself perhaps with ideas from Tripp. The footnote says that in contrast Tripp testified she believed Lewinsky had assistance in drafting the talking points. The talking points are not mentioned among the "substantial and credible information that may constitute grounds for an impeachment."

The press cannot be held accountable for not knowing the authorship of the talking points. Nor is historical accuracy the standard by which the press should be accountable. Journalists can strive only for the best obtainable version of the truth at the time. But they can be held accountable for not reporting the limits of their knowledge and for not demonstrating a certain amount of skepticism for the information they gather.

Vernon Jordan: News organizations indicated almost immediately that Kenneth Starr was investigating Vernon Jordan for obstruc­tion of justice. The reports said that Starr had tapes on which Monica Lewinsky said Jordan told her she should lie about her relationship with President Clinton. The initial January 21 Washington Post story, for instance, reported that Lewinsky told Tripp on tape of "Clinton and Jordan directing her to testify falsely."

ABC's Good Morning America reported the same day that sources said Lewinsky could be heard on a tape claiming the president told her to deny an affair and that Vernon Jordan "instructed her to lie."

The coverage in the following weeks included Jordan's denials, but tended to maintain that he might be in big trouble despite them. They sometimes characterized Jordan's statements as strategic or, as Time said in its February 2 issue, he was "wrapping himself in a pro­tective layer of syntax."

The allegations against Jordan also spawned profiles that often depicted him as an amoral character, included pejorative anecdotes, and emphasized stories about his attitude toward women. A Newsweek profile in its February 2 issue, describing Jordan's rela­tionship with Clinton, talked of how their "mutual fondness for the ladies is a frequent, if crude, topic of conversation “ — a point repeat­ed in other media accounts as well.

By February, particularly in talk show venues, Jordan was gen­erally a suspect in the media accounts. Meet the Press aired a rumor, which ABC News later reacted to, that Jordan had been granted limited immunity by Starr, an assertion that implied Jordan was about to be charged with criminal conduct.

When Starr finally made his report to Congress, however, the case against Jordan was missing. Lewinsky admitted that, in fact, nno one had told her to lie and that she had told Jordan she did not have an affair with Clinton. The widely reported allegation that Lewinsky had said on tape that Jordan told her to just lie about it was wrong.

There is a prosecutors' memorandum that says Tripp asserted investigators that "Jordan encouraged Lewinsky to lie." This may or may not have been available to the press at the time of their reporting but it is not supported by the evidence.

The closest Lewinsky comes on the tapes is the following:

 

            Tripp:  But did he address the perjury issue at all? Because this is perjury.

Lewinsky:  OK he — Yeah. He said that — he said, "You are not gonna go to jail. You're not going to go to jail. [and later]: What he showed me is there's no way to get caught in perjury in a situation like this.

 

In her grand jury appearances, Lewinsky said she was lying when she said the above and that no one had told her to lie. Regardless, a careful reporter who heard this FBI tape would be reluctant to report that it makes a clear case for coaching the witness to lie. And a skeptical reporter might have decided the tape had an argumentative tone more than a conversational or narrative tone. If a reporter and an editor had heard this tape, one might have argued Tripp was pushing Lewinsky for answers and Lewinsky was obliging, but somewhat evasively.

The great majority of reporters, however, had not heard this tape, and should have been even more diligently skeptical about receiving investigative or prosecutorial leaks about it. In the Starr Report and supporting documents, the independent counsel does not suggest this tape reflects obstruction or witness‑tampering. The Starr Report summarizes Vernon Jordan's testimony concerning his con­tacts with the president and his contacts with Monica Lewinsky, with­out any suggestion that he urged Lewinsky to lie or otherwise obstructed justice.

            In the Jordan case, the media seemed eager to rush to judgment without having confirmation and to have used the allegations against Jordan to pry into his personal life on topics that would normally be off limits and prejudicial.

Betty Currie: Shortly after the Clinton‑Lewinsky story broke, Clinton's personal secretary, Betty Currie, was named as a potential­ly important link in Kenneth Starr's case — a key White House contact for Lewinsky. A round of personality profiles appeared that tried to put a face on the woman, which ranged from a motherly friend of Lewinsky to an adept keeper of presidential secrets.

The next set of stories, however, placed Currie in the eye of the media's coverage. On February 6, the New York Times reported Currie as telling investigators that Clinton had "called her into his office last month and led her through an account of his relationship" with Lewinsky that "differs in one critical aspect from her own rec­ollections. " The report added, "Currie had also retrieved and turned over to investigators several gifts . . . that the president had given Ms. Lewinsky," though "it is not clear who, if anyone, instructed Mrs. Currie to retrieve the gifts."

The Times piece was accurate and careful about details, both about the leading questioning and about the gift retrieval. A year later, the story holds up remarkably well even in small details. But it did place the response of Currie's lawyer, who said Currie knew of no ethical or legal violations, in the seventeenth paragraph.

Currie's lawyer gave a more detailed statement regarding the story, saying the account had been mischaracterized by a prosecu­tor's office leak. News organizations included the denial, but again tended to play up the angle, reflecting the prosecutors' belief, that Currie was working with the president to keep Lewinsky silent and that her testimony meant big trouble for the president.

Subsequent press accounts were far less careful than the one in the New York Times. The Times's painstaking but suggestive wording of Clinton having "led" Currie through questioning, for instance, had become "being coached" on the NBC News Today Show that same morning. Time magazine would later say Clinton "tried to coach" Currie.

When Starr's report was released, it admitted that Clinton's discussions with Currie could have had other purposes‑that he could have been "trying to refresh his memory" as Currie testified‑but said it was much more likely that he was in fact coaching his secretary. In effect, this suspicion became the press's too.

On the question of the gifts, press accounts generally pointed out that it was not clear who ordered the gifts be returned, but they implied that there was probably a less‑than‑innocent explanation. NPR's Nina Totenberg typified that tone on a broadcast of Inside Washington: "Betty Currie through her attorney has said the New York Times has mischaracterized her testimony. But you can't mischaracterize presents."

In the Starr Report, too, there is conflicting testimony over who called whom for the pickup of the gifts to take place, Lewinsky or Currie, or whether Clinton had instigated the exchange. Lewinsky said Currie called her. Currie said the opposite. The report concluded Lewinsky was more reliable.

Overall, the press performance here was mixed. The initial reporting based on anonymous sourcing was accurate in major details. This was not a case, as the White House alleged, of false leaks or disinfor­mation. The press coverage, even the most speculative, seemed to cap­ture the significance, legal and political, of both of the major allegations, the leading questioning by Clinton and the gift retrieval.

But some journalists declared that the allegations, if true, were proof of obstruction of justice, which may at least have been prema­ture given the paucity of facts beyond what the New York Times was able to establish in its initial story. Regardless, the independent coun­sel's perspective, and that subsequently of the House Republicans, tended to be the prevailing tone of the media coverage.

Currie's side of the story, offered through her attorney, was downplayed.

Third Party Witnesses: From the earliest days of the story, reports were widely published both that there were third‑party witnesses who had observed Clinton and Lewinsky in acts of intimacy, or, some­what more cautiously, that Starr was reaching out to such potential eyewitnesses. Some subsequent reports included not‑so‑veiled warn­ings to Lewinsky that if she didn't agree to cooperate soon, Starr wouldn't need her much longer. Neither the Starr Report nor other supporting documents establish any eyewitnesses to acts of intimacy. Two serious problems are potentially raised here. One is that the press got ahead of the facts because it relied on secondhand sources. The other is that the press was being used by investigative or prose­cutorial sources who wanted to employ the media to apply pressure on Lewinsky or other potential witnesses.

Several stories named potential eyewitnesses. On Sunday, January 25, ABC News reported, "the President and Lewinsky were caught in an intimate encounter in a private area of the White House. It is not clear whether the witnesses were Secret Service agents or White House staff.

The following morning, both the New York Post and the Daily News led with the headline, "Caught in the Act" following the ABC report. Many other news organizations, including ABC, which was now changing its story, were reporting only that Starr was investi­gating allegations that there might be a third‑party witness.

That evening, the Dallas Morning News moved a story on its Web site that it had prepared for the next day's paper, saying that a Secret Service agent would testify that he had seen Clinton and Lewinsky in a compromising situation.

The Morning News later that night would retract the story, but before it did, MSNBC, Larry King, and Nightline, among others, would carry the report and speculate on its consequences.

For the next week, speculation 'swirled about the witness or wit­nesses, with news organizations issuing and retracting reports. And in the months that followed the supposed witnesses surfaced and dis­appeared with little coming of predictions that the case was to be blown open.

On February 4, the Wall Street journal reported on its Web site that White House steward Bayani Nelvis had testified before the grand jury that he had seen Clinton and Lewinsky together in the White House. The report had been posted online before its reporter had received a response from the White House to the allegation. Wall Street Journal Washington bureau chief Alan Murray then repeated the story on CNBC. The next day, however, the Journal changed its story in its print edition to say that Nelvis had not told the grand jury about the account, it had been Secret Service agents.

On February 9, the Journal retracted its story, reporting that Nelvis had told the grand jury that he had never seen Clinton alone with Lewinsky. In the evidentiary material, it would turn out, Nelvis had complained to Secret Service agents about having to clean up lipstick‑stained towels, but he had never been an eyewitness. In addi­tion, Secret Service agent Gary Byrne testified that another agent, John Muskett, told him of discovering Clinton and Lewinsky in a compromising moment. Muskett, however, denied it.

The case of the third‑party witness story appears to raise sever­al concerns.

One is whether the press was relying on secondhand sourcing in reporting about the alleged eyewitnesses. Journalists have acknowledged privately that at least some of the sources for some of these press accounts were not those directly involved in seeing the president and Lewinsky or even the investigators or prosecutors directly involved in the case. While a news organization may have two sources on a story, how much direct knowledge do those sources need to have before one can insist that a story has been verified? In this case, sources with direct first­hand knowledge would have knocked down these press stories and helped news organizations avoid embarrassment. Ironically, ABC to some extent escaped criticism because it never admitted to its error, even though it gave rise to several of the press accounts that followed.

Second, this also appears to be a case where investigators' and prosecutors' suspicions or suppositions made their way into the media coverage. The fact that these suppositions proved wrong raises ques­tions about whether prosecutors' theories should be treated as news oir should be handled with more restraint. It clearly appears that these investigative sources used the press to float rumors, to put pressure on potential witnesses including Lewinsky, and to try out a prosecution theory that included a possible conspiracy to cover up the affair. All this suggests that the press was not sufficiently skeptical in the case of the third‑party witness thread about its sources and their motives.

A Second Intern: From early in the story, rumors circulated in Washington that one or more other women were about to be identified as involved with the president. For the most part, the rumors stayed at the level of cocktail party buzz, but some outlets in the Mixed Media Culture lean toward publication of such rumors, even by journalists who would not apparently do so in other venues.

On January 23 — on Rivera, Live! — GOP pundit Ann Coulter stated as fact that Clinton had sex with "four other interns" in addi­tion to Lewinsky. Two days later, Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge appeared on NBC News's Meet the Press and was asked by anchor Tim Russert about reports that on the tape there are "discus­sions of other women, including other White House staffers, being involved with the president." Drudge replied, "There is talk all over this town. Another White House staffer is going to come out from behind the curtains this week. . . . There are hundreds, hundreds according to Ms. Lewinsky, quoting Clinton. . . . "

The allegation remained dormant in the media until August when Chris Matthews, hosting anti‑Clinton publisher Lucianne Goldberg on his CNBC talk show Hardball, asked — in an invita­tion to float more rumors ­— whether there was another young intern involved with the president. "No, not an intern," Goldberg answered. "I know there were other women who were on staff who were involved.... These were women who were actively involved. It's all going to come out."

Two days later, journalist Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard also floated the rumor on his Fox News program The Beltway Boys. "The Second Intern," he intoned. "Politicians, newspaper reporters, TV people, all around town, were talking about the possibility that there's a second intern who was sexually involved with the president. If there is, that will certainly be dynamite."

The second intern rumor quickly began to spread without docu­mentation. The New York Post reported, "the Beltway is buzzing" that Bob Woodward of the Washington Post was "about to break a big exclusive about a second White House intern" and then included Woodward's response that this rumor was "absolutely untrue." Others followed until, a week later, the media reporter for the Washington Post, Howard Kurtz, did a story about the rumor, trac­ing its roots and showing that there was no substantial reporting behind the story. The rumor then dropped from publication.

The Starr Report has no reference to the rumors. Finally, while the press coverage did become more cautious as time passed, rely­ing somewhat less on anonymous sourcing and punditry, the com­mittee wanted to quantify the fact that this caution tended to be temporary. When the news slowed, the press tended to engage in periods of increased speculation. To track the anatomy of this cau­tion followed by rumor‑reporting, the study added a seventh story thread:

The Cigar: Washington summer gossip included a rumor that Lewinsky had used a cigar as a sex toy while with the president. It started with an Internet posting on the Drudge Report, was broadcast later the same day by Drudge on his Fox News Channel show, then spread to veiled references on the Sunday talk shows, then to the London Times, then to Jay Leno's monologue, then to a column in the Washington Times and elsewhere in the mainstream press as refer­ences to "kinky sex," including on Meet the Press and on one CNN talk program. In general, however, it is fair to say the press resisted spreading such rumors. The Drudge Report turned out to be wrong in some details, as did most of the reports flowing from it. But the Starr Report does include a sentence confirming a Clinton‑Lewinsky use of a cigar in a sexual act.

In late August the rumor of Lewinsky using a cigar as a sexual toy began making the rounds in Washington. News organizations 1argely kept the salacious rumor out of the mainstream press. But the initial account on the Drudge Report, a sanitized version of which was broadcast by the Fox News Channel on Matt Drudge's show, did work its way cryptically into some reporting.

Perhaps on more than any other thread of the Clinton‑Lewinsky story, this one was actually pushed forward by late night talk show monologues. Jay Leno, on August 24, made numerous references to the story. The story also found its way into newspapers through media columns that discussed how the media were handling the issue. On August 28, for instance, a Wesley Pruden column in the Washington Times had it both ways, writing about how newspapers, including his own, had avoided the details of "the President's cigar, the phallic toy, that Monica is said to have employed in the pantry, to the President's delighted applause."

The Starr Report differed in some key areas from the Drudge Report. Lewinsky testified to using the cigar sexually and to Clinton then putting it in his mouth and commenting on it.

But according to Lewinsky's testimony there was no mutual mas­turbation and the meeting was in general less sordid than the leaks.

There is also no support in the Starr Report for Drudge's allegation that Yasser Arafat was waiting in the Rose Garden when an encounter took place (the Drudge Report is not clear about what encounter it is writing about).

It is important to recall that in studies such as this it is not always possible to fully measure the press's caution, since the stories that were not aired because of diligence are impossible to credit. Mountains of accurate reporting about the background of the play­ers on all sides, as well as corroborating evidence about Lewinsky's actions, about the Constitution, and the history of the White House, have all deepened the public's understanding and perceptions.

On the most basic level, however, the coverage of the Clinton­-Lewinsky scandal demonstrates that the new Mixed Media Culture still relies for its initial breaking information largely on legitimate sources. Almost immediately, however, the Mixed Media Culture begins to push the story forward, even in the absence of new facts, and it is here that the weaknesses and tensions of the culture are exposed.

There is a growing tendency to follow stories up hastily by rely­ing on thin or secondhand sources adding provocative new twists and what‑ifs. This can involve ferrying speculation from sources who know some things but are only guessing about others. It also involves relying on prosecutors and accusers, who may be using the press to promote their agenda, threaten witnesses, or send up trial balloons. Whatever the case, follow‑up stories today often include material that the originating news organization rejected as unsubstantiated when it was doing the more detailed initial reporting. This clearly occurred in the Betty Currie story. New York Times reporters and editors were careful to include only what they could verify from mul­tiple sources. Within hours, material they had gathered but left out because they doubted its truth or found it impossible to prove was aired by competing news organizations that had done less reporting.

Beyond the problem of follow‑up reporting being thinner than the original work, there is a growing tension, as we will discuss later, between the press's role as gatherer of information and the press's role as merely a supplier of infotainment product. Much of the rush to judgment in this story, and in the new Mixed Media Culture, is a function of the press's relying on inexpensive chatter to fill space or air‑time, or to appeal to an audience that wants emotions stirred rather than information.

The Clinton‑Lewinsky story suggests that there is a growing problem of incompleteness in the Mixed Media Culture. Stories come out in piecemeal, an allegation now, followed by the counterallegation a few hours later. This not only makes tuning in inefficient, like look­ing at only one part of an elephant, it also creates a kind of numbness for the audience. In the continuous news cycle, the press never rests to sum up: here is what we know at the end of the day. It is forever pushing forward, grasping for the latest twist or dollop. Stories appear more confusing, more contradictory. Separating fact and allegation becomes more daunting.

This encourages sources, whether from those inside or close to the independent counsel's office or the White House, to manipulate the press. Haste and pressure to publish make the threshold verifica­tion easier to meet. And this is nowhere clearer than in the changing way that the press now deals with anonymous sources.

 

 

THE RISE OF

ANONYMOUS SOURCING

 

The second major finding of a close examination of the Lewinsky coverage and the New Media Culture concerns anonymous sourc­ing, both in the way the press described its sources and in the level of verification or the reliance on a single source.

In covering Watergate a quarter‑century earlier, Washington Post executive editor Benjamin C. Bradlee established a rule for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their use of anonymous sources that became accepted as the industry norm and was thereafter devi­ated from only on occasion. Nothing could be used from an anony­mous source unless it was confirmed by a second, independent anonymous source. In effect, the account of an anonymous source was treated as a tip until verified by additional reporting.'

By 1998, the two‑source rule, if not dead, was no longer the rule. Nearly half (40 percent) of all reporting based on anonymous sourc­ing in the breaking days was based on a single anonymous source.

Only one statement in a hundred (1 percent of the reporting) was based on two or more named sources.

Just as significant as the enormous reliance on single anonymous sources was the remarkably vague manner in which the press described the anonymous sources it was relying on.

More than 83 percent of the time when relying on anonymous sources, the press failed to offer the public even the slightest hint of an anonymous source's possible allegiances or biases that might have affected the veracity of what the source was offering.

Indeed, an examination of Clinton‑Lewinsky coverage on selected days in January and March by the Committee of Concerned Journalists reveals that nearly half the time (43 percent), the press used only “source" — or "sources," the vaguest possible characterization — to describe anonymous sources.

Another 16 percent of the time sources were characterized as merely being knowledgeable in a vague way, such as "sources famil­iar with the investigation" or "close to the investigation," a descrip­tion that may establish some credibility but otherwise says little.

Taken together, that means that six times out of ten (59 percent) the characterization of anonymous sourcing was essentially blind. And roughly one out of eight times (13 percent) the press described the job of the anonymous source, so that the public could at least assess on what basis the anonymous source might know the information they were imparting.

Effectively, in other words, the methodology of the press in using anonymous sources was to tell the public, "a source told us this and we believe him and that's all we can tell you. Trust us to trust the source. "

The characterization of anonymous sources varied greatly by media type. Print outlets went further in describing their anonymous sources' biases (23 percent of the time) and jobs (20 percent of the time) than did television outlets, which identified their sources' bias­es only 15 percent of the time and jobs only 5 percent of the time. And television outlets were much more likely to rely on the unattributed catchall phrase "we have learned" than print media, using it in 48 percent of all anonymous sourcing situations, while print media used it in only I percent of their anonymous source reporting.

Was the Clinton‑Lewinsky story unique? Did the press have to rely on a handful of largely blind sources because of the special cir­cumstances in this case, in which a very few sources controlled near­ ly all the information? Or was this a sudden lowering of standards?

Perhaps it was neither. Listening to journalists from different generations react to the case, it becomes clear that there has been a structural change over time in the way the press deals with anony­mous sources, and this change predated the Clinton‑Lewinsky story.

Listen to this exchange at a February 1998 Committee of Concerned Journalists forum between Murray Marder, the retired diplomatic reporter for the Washington Post, and David Shribman, the Boston Globe's Washington bureau chief, as the two discussed iii0iiyinous sourcing by several of the key journalists who covered the Lewinsky matter:

 

[The] reporter can, in many ways which are not being used now in the press ... indicate the direction the source comes from.... Is he coming from the right? Is he coming from the left? Is he coming from the Senate, from the Republicans in the Senate, from the Democrats in the Senate? I don't know what kind of deals you people make with sources, but when I dealt with sources all my life I don't allow them to say what I can't identify them with. All I'm giving them is anonymity for themselves, but I can still go ahead.and say a White House source, a State Department source, a Capitol source. There are thousands of variations one can use.... I don't see why you can't go much further than you do in iden­tifying the direction.

 

Answered Shribman: "I think the identification of a source now is one of theopening parts oof the negotiation in a journalis­tic conversation. I think from what you're saying, that that's a new development. But it surely is one of the opening.... In this context, the first thing you say is we agree, we have to agree on how you are to be described. That's a negotiating point. And not really different from the kind of negotiations, in a way, that Ken Starr goes through when he's deciding whether to offer immunity.

 

Marder: Is that really the way you start your conversation? It's certainly not the way they've been started for the last 50 years that I know of.

 

Shribman: I think increasingly that's the case.

 

Early academic research appears to reinforce that the shift toward a reliance on trusting anonymous sources to make allegations, with a limited amount of independent verification by the press, is a trend long in building. Increasingly, says Tom Patterson of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard, "Allegations that surface in the news based on claims by sources are not combined with factual digging on the reporters' part.... That tendency increased in the 1980s, increased again in the 1990s."

Several researchers are finding a similar trend, even in journalism overseas.

Is there anything wrong with this growing reliance on anonymous sources? On one level knowing the identity of a source is irrelevant. The point of reporting is enlightening the public. As long as a reporter is confident about the information he is getting, does it really matter where it is coming from?

William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, argues thal when he served as former Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff, the Washington Post's White House reporter, Ann Devroy, relied heavily on background information and quotes. And Devroy's approach, he maintained, had gotten "much more information out of the White House than other reporters.""

Kristol is right. Offering anonymity sometimes can be the only way to gain access to certain sources, or to a level of candor from those sources, because it protects the sources from retribution for their cooperation. Carl Bernstein contends, "[In Watergate] I don't think we ever named a source. Because it would have been impossi­ble to pursue the story without the use of anonymous sources."" The amount of anonymous sourcing on the Clinton‑Lewinsky story, roughly 40 percent of all news gathering in the first week, may not be surprising, given the limited number of sources who actually had knowledge on this story.

A source who is anonymous is a source who is less accountable for his or her words. That may allow the source to be more candid to the journalist, without facing consequences. The lack of account­ability, however, can work the other way, too. The source now can mislead, misdirect, control the interpretation of events, or decide how much information is provided with a greater degree of impunity. The source is not only less accountable for telling the truth, in other words, but is less accountable for lying or misleading as well. The source has, in effect, usurped the editor's role in determining how the news will be presented.

A second key issue in evaluating the veracity of anonymous sources involves how many sources are required. Given the selectivity and subjectivity of memory, it might be considered a law of human nature that two sources are always better than one, three better than two, and so on. This holds regardless of whether the sources are named or not. There are cases certainly where a single anonymous source may be impeccable, if he or she is a principal and the reporter knows the information is dead on. When the Washington Post in March reported on Clinton's testimony during his deposition in the Paula Jones case, the paper clearly had a full transcript of the deposition or perhaps even a videotape (since it described his expressions as well as his words). Although the paper did not describe what it had or how it had acquired it, the account was never assailed from any side.

But realistically, such a single source is a rare case. More often, far more often, more sources are better than fewer.

Assuming the journalist is satisfied with a source's honesty, how much description must the journalist share with the audience? Should the journalist share with the audience some of his or her rationale for trusting the source, such as saying it is a source who has proven reliable in the past? How does the audience assess the accuracy of information? Is it enough for a citizen to say, "Well, I trust ABC News.  If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.”?

ABC's Jackie Judd, her network's lead reporter on the story, says had thought hard about the issue of sourcing as Clinton‑Lewinsky developed and decided she was giving viewers the information they needed. "One day when I was sitting at my computer struggling with is, how do I define a source in this story? I said, well, knowledgeable. Of course they're knowledgeable. Why else would I be including them in the story? That doesn't help a viewer.

"I think ... there's nothing inherently awful with just saying 'a source.' Usually in the context of the report you can guess which side the person is coming from.

It is useful to take a moment here to explore what offering anonymity implies. If a basic principle of journalism is transparency, full disclosure, then granting a source anonymity is by definition an exchange in which the journalist is giving up an important principle. The complex test is how much disclosure the journalist is giving up and what level of candor or special access he or she is gaining in exchange.

That trade should not be taken lightly. Journalists should weigh carefully how much they are giving away. What is often forgotten is that in the case of anonymous sources, specificity and precision can make all the difference in determining what information actually means.

Consider for instance, this statement: "Many inside the White House believe the president committed adultery."

Are those "many" two twenty‑something staffers in the Old Executive Office Building, who have no direct knowledge? Do they include the first lady and her chief of staff?

Or consider this statement: "Those familiar with the investigation now believe that Kenneth Starr has the evidence necessary to indict the president for perjury."

If the source is identified as "an attorney close to Paula Jones — it may mean any number of things, from the truth to wishful thinking.  If the source is "an attorney on Ken Starr's staff" it may mean something else — perhaps that the aide wants to push Starr to indict, or perhaps that it will happen, or perhaps that it was floated to put pressure on a potential witness.

If the identity of the source can alter not only the reliability of all allegation but even its possible meanings or implications, then clear­ly more disclosure in characterizing anonymous sources becomes a matter of high importance to the consumer of the news. Although television places a premium on leaving out all but the most essential narrative, in the case of describing anonymous sources we believe Judd is mistaken. This information is vital.

There is another problem with minimal description of a source, which might be called the dissemination factor. Whatever identification a journalist gives a source in the original account is certain to diminish as the story makes its way through the merged media echo chamber, from the AP recap to the thirty‑second "tell story" on the local news, down to the radio news headline and the angry reaction on a talk show. In many cases news organizations are held to account by the public for how their stories are treated elsewhere. It is increasingly important for journalists to anticipate these consequences of dissemination and try to write their stories in ways that make their original context clear.

ABC's Judd admitted suffering the ravages of the echo chamber in the case of a piece she did about Kathleen Willey, another woman who had alleged President Clinton had pursued her sexually. Judd's story reported that Willey was claiming she had been pressured to deny that Clinton had groped her. Specifically, Willey was claiming that a Democratic fundraiser named Nathan Landow had pressured her. Judd's story was full of careful nuancing. She wasn't reporting that Landow had done this, only that Willey was claiming it. In fact Judd reported that Landow denied it.

But her delicate qualifiers disappeared as the story was retold. "What happened with what we thought was a well‑reported piece was, it shows up in other media as 'ABC News has reported that Nate Landow pressured Kathleen Willey not to tell about this alleged advance by the President.' That is not what we reported."

If journalists anticipate the echo effect, they could make the limits of what they know and report clearer. Judd, for instance, might state explicitly what this story is not saying, as a way of warning others away from misinterpreting it. The echo effect makes the need for precision greater than ever before.

The most important question, in the end, is, how can journalists tell the truth from a lie? One answer is that this is what journalists are paid to do.  It might be considered the professional instinct model.  It is often called "a bullshit detector." If gut feelings were adequate, however, why was there a two‑source rule in the first place? The argument for journalistic instinct implies that journalists have some kind of common training or that over time they develop an ability to see through deception. Accordingly, there would evolve a kind of marketplace of truth, in which the work of the sloppiest journalist is drowned out by the work of the best, in which errant information is quickly corrected by more accurate, perhaps even in which there is a penalty for being wrong. Unfortunately, while it is sometimes true ­ reporting by other news outlets quickly helped raise doubts about CNN's flawed report repeated in Time magazine of the use of nerve gas in Vietnam — it is clearly not always the case that accuracy prevails. The Clinton‑Lewinsky story showed how live reporting of unverified information often moves faster than that which is verified.  In the current climate, spectacular simplification easily overwhelms the dull and complex truth.

News organizations may even be penalized more for admitting their mistakes at times. The Boston Globe, for instance, became the object of high controversy when its own in‑house policing blew the whistle on one of its columnists, Patricia Smith, for making things up. The Globe's high standards then forced it to examine another popular columnist, Mike Barnicle. Months of public and internal agonizing followed, until Barnicle was eventually forced to resign. Hic paper's desire to have and make clear its standards, in other words, came at great public and internal cost, at least in the short run. Standards are also difficult to manage and oversee, the Globe case revealed. Globe editors and its publisher suffered through a lengthy period of criticism because of their good intentions. In a similar manner, the Dallas Morning News is remembered in the Clinton‑Lewinsky saga as the paper that fumbled the third‑party witness story, largely because it had the courage and honesty to retract its story when one of its sources got cold feet, a source that turned out to have only indirect knowledge. Other news organizations, such as ABC News, had similar reports of a third‑party witness ­that to this day remain unsubstantiated. But they have escaped some of the criticism because they have never admitted the story wrong.

As painful as they can be and as difficult as they are to man high standards serve a larger purpose that makes the negative publicity they may bring worthwhile. Standards that are enforced publicly make reporters and editors more careful and more skeptical of the information they receive. They create an incentive for accuracy, rather than just for exciting copy. They raise the stakes of failure.

Journalists who believe they can simply tell when a source is offering the full truth, based on professional experience and instinct, are probably fooling themselves. In the case of a fast‑moving national story, journalists would be better served by developing some concrete protocols within their individual newsrooms to evaluate a source's reliability.

A few journalists have. New York Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld, for instance, describes two questions that he believes his reporters and editors should ask themselves before using an anony­mous source:

 

·        How much direct knowledge does the anonymous source have of the event?

·        What if any motive might the source have for misleading us, gilding the lily, or hiding important facts that might alter our impression of the information?

 

Only if they are satisfied by the answers will they use the source. This test protected the New York Times on multiple occasions in cov­ering the Clinton‑Lewinsky saga.

Deborah Howell, the Washington editor and bureau chief of Newhouse Newspapers, also has a set of protocols about when and how she will use anonymous sources:

 

·        She will use them only to provide information that can be independently verified unless the source has unique direct knowledge.

·        She won't use anonymous sources to render opinions.

·        She won't allow her reporters to lead a story with a blind quote.

 

Lelyveld’s test helps sort out whether to believe an anonymous source.  Howell’s test guides how to use them. They complement each other.

We suggest they can both be strengthened by adding two more rules.

 

·        How well does the journalist know the source? In other words, has the journalist relied on this source in an investigative and anonymous context before? If so, has the source ever misled the journalist?

 

If you add this question of personal history to the question of the source's knowledge and motives, it covers much of the ground one might have for deciding whether to trust a source.

If one then applied Howell's rule of using only what can be and has been verified with other sources, you may have reached the high­est level of subjective testing you can give.

Yet even on top of that, we suggest one other additional concept to raise the level of accuracy. Implicit in the bargain is that the source is telling the truth.

 

·        If it turns out the source is lying, journalists should make it clear that any anonymity agreement is voided. In other words, the anonymity protection does not extend to cases of deliberate dis­information. If the news organization establishes a penalty for lying, it can help reset the balance, somewhat, between sources and journalists in the context of anonymous sourcing.

 

Journalists, however, must be careful. There is a difference between disinformation and misinformation. As Clinton's impeach­ment trial was winding down in the Senate, English journalist Christopher Hitchens involved himself in the story by telling friends that White House aide Sidney Blumenthal had misled prosecutors.  Blumenthal had denied in his sworn testimony to House impeach­ment managers that he was the source of erroneous stories charac­terizing Lewinsky as a stalker of the president. Hitchens announced that over lunch one day Blumenthal had passed along that allegation about Lewinsky, though Hitchens himself had never turned around and published the allegation. Was Hitchens right in outing Blumenthal this way? The case is difficult for two reasons.

First, Hitchens and Blumenthal were personal friends, and it was not at all clear that Blumenthal was acting as a source in this case. "We knew each other too well to have, so to speak, groundrules," Hitchens said of the encounter. What's more, even Hitchens didn't believe Blumenthal intended to plant a story with him. "He [Blumenthal] has known since at least 1992 that I have nothing but contempt for President Clinton. So I don't think that he can possibly have expected that I would do him this favor" [of publishing the rumor that Lewinsky had stalked the president].

Second, it is not clear that Blumenthal was deliberately lying if he did pass on this rumor. If he repeated only what the president had told him and was clear about the limits of what he knew, then Blumenthal would have been telling reporters the truth as far as he knew it.

If journalists are to employ an anonymous sourcing contract, first they must make the contract known to the interviewee — it works as much as a preventive measure as punitive one. Second, journalists probably should set the bar at disinformation. Any source can be mistaken. If a journalist errs by publishing information a source knew only secondhand, it is the journalist who is at fault, not the source.

Some might suspect that exposing sources who lie wouldn't work in practice because journalists would worry that other sources might get cold feet. In fact, it has happened. Actually, this has been a rule at the New York Times since the 1960s. A handful of other news orga­nizations have instructed sources in this manner. The rule may not always be universally observed or even fully made clear to reporters. It should be. The so‑called contract of anonymity becomes merely a way in which sources manipulate journalists if it is a one‑sided bar­gain. It must contain risk for the source who abuses it.

If the tests we suggest here for anonymous sources seem subjec­tive, having some method at least implies that the journalist is seek­ing truth, not just looking for an excuse to go with the story. Establishing even that much with the public is a step in the right direction toward reaffirming credibility.

 

###

 

.