82546 D-34

THE RISE OF THE “NEW NEWS”

A Case Study of Two Root Causes

of the Modern Scandal Coverage

Marvin Kalb

Discussion Paper D-34

October 1998

■

■■

The Joan Shorenstein Center

Harvard University

John F. Kennedy School of Government

PRESS POLITICS

PUBLIC POLICY

The Joan Shorenstein Center

on the Press, Politics and Public Policy

John F. Kennedy School of Government

Harvard University

79 John F. Kennedy Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

Telephone (617) 495-8269 • Fax: (617) 495-8696

Web Site Address: http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/~presspol/home.htm

Marvin Kalb 1

Never in history have the educational and

professional standards of American journalists

been higher; seldom in history has the perfor-

mance of American journalism been lower than

in the first half of 1998, when the Monica

Lewinsky scandal obsessed the nation. Rumor

and opinion have been passed off as fact. Highly

partisan sources have been used, anonymously,

as if they were disinterested fonts of knowledge.

Working reporters transformed themselves into

opinionated commentators and within minutes

shifted back into the pretense that they were

objective observers. News stories routinely

smacked of “attitude.” And that great curse of

American journalism, cynicism, covered the

world like the label on a Sherwin Williams

paint can.

In the following analysis, Marvin Kalb uses

coverage of the Lewinsky scandal to explore how

the press has changed—or been compelled to

change—the traditional way it conveys informa-

tion to the public. New information technolo-

gies have dramatically increased the pressure to

work fast, too often at the sacrifice of accuracy

and objectivity. And Kalb persuasively traces

part of the lapse of standards to the profit

motive. Television networks and newspapers,

now owned by market-dependent financial inter-

ests, sacrificed traditional objectivity and profes-

sionalism in hopes of winning bigger audiences,

higher ratings, more national attention and

greater profits, if only for a moment—for only

the moment matters. Tomorrow is another con-

test, and there is no real penalty for being wrong

so long as the money comes in. Reporters who

would once have been slapped down for letting

their opinions leak into a news story now found

themselves invited onto TV talk shows to air

their personal views. Television, especially, has

blurred any distinction between reporter, com-

mentator and principal; all are just talking

heads. Yes, you could sometimes find “the

press” among the faces on Meet the Press; you

can also find maidens on Maiden Lane. The hard

part is figuring out exactly which ones they are.

“Journalists have become too big for their

britches,” Kalb writes. Merely reporting fact is

no longer enough for them. Now they must ana-

lyze and interpret. The result has been a period

far more cynical than that previous low point in

American journalism, the McCarthy era. Then,

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.) made the

most outrageous accusations about Communists

in government and reporters blandly relayed his

accusations without question or skepticism.

Their “professional” reasoning was, “He said it.

It’s not my job to question it.” But say this for

McCarthy-age journalism: When McCarthy

made an accusation, you knew the source was

McCarthy and you could credit or disbelieve

him as you chose. Contrast that with the sleazy

performance of today’s reporters who write leads

like, “Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr has

evidence that President Clinton suborned per-

jury, lawyers with knowledge of the case said

yesterday.” In the McCarthy days, the source

was known to be not merely a partisan but a

recklessly irresponsible one; today reporters rou-

tinely pretend that their sources are dispassion-

ate, disinterested and non-partisan. Throughout

the Kenneth Starr investigations, journalists

have reported one side of an adversarial proceed-

ing, Starr’s version of events, without revealing

that fact to their readers or viewers.

In his four-year investigation of President

Clinton, Independent Counsel Starr has man-

aged, as a by-product, to corrupt the American

press. He would leak information to chosen

reporters on the condition that they not identify

him as the source and not question his motives

or his facts. One of the difficulties in appreciat-

ing the magnitude of this transgression is that

many of the accusations from Starr and his allies

have proven to be accurate. There was, in fact, a

semen-stained dress. Clinton did, in fact, cover

up a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky

by lying about it to close aides. An outsider

looking at the insidious inter-relationship

between Starr and the reporters who covered

him (by accepting his version of events unques-

tionably) might conclude, “No harm, no foul.”

But there is harm. Among the casualties is the

notion of truth, which was once the objective,

however unobtainable, of journalism. The quest

for truth, the notion of credible evidence and

believable testimony have been replaced by spin.

Today it is Starr’s spin vs. the President’s spin,

not Starr’s testable evidence vs. the President’s

rebuttal. As Kalb has memorably written else-

where, journalists too often abdicate their role of

trying to sift this conflicting evidence and

instead transform themselves into drama critics,

interpreting for the public how one side’s spin

will fare against the other’s. “So tell me, Steve,”

says the TV host to his guest reporter, “how will

this play with the public?” At this point, the

INTRODUCTION

2 The Rise of the “New News”

reporter needs to know nothing at all. He can

merely pontificate.

Is there any way to restore standards? Kalb

points out how the much-derided mainstream

media have lost their monopoly. Instead of three

TV networks, there are now a variety of cable

outlets, plus the Internet and talk radio. Inter-

net gossip Matt Drudge could never establish a

widely read newspaper with correspondents,

printing presses and delivery trucks to match,

say, the New York Times. Drudge is absolutely

capable, however, of setting up an Internet Web

site that competes on an equal footing with the

Times Web site. And if both Drudge and the

Times are playing the game of “spin,” who can

judge between them?

This new confusion and breakdown of tra-

ditional standards puts a far greater burden on

news consumers to become their own sifters of

evidence, their own judges of credibility, their

own decipherers of hidden motives and biased

sources. We can no longer rely on the press to

give us a straight version of yesterday’s events.

News now comes with analysis and interpreta-

tion built-in, and on the worst of the networks

and newspaper chains—Rupert Murdoch’s, for

example—it approaches propaganda. The only

answer to the blurring of roles and the lowering

of standards is, “Think for yourself.” Easier said

than done.

Lars-Erik Nelson

Columnist

New York Daily News

Marvin Kalb 3

This study is about press coverage of the first few weeks of

the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It is not about whether President

Clinton lied, or encouraged others to lie; he said on August 17,

1998 that he had been less than truthful but never encouraged oth-

ers to lie. Nor is it a reprise of the worst in American journalism,

which was on ample display during that time and which, when

appropriate, will be cited.

It is, rather, an attempt to answer the

frequently asked question: what is wrong with American journal-

ism? Asked another way: why has it lost the trust and confidence

of so many of its readers and viewers? The answer does not lie in

the sudden collapse of professional standards; it does lie in the rise

in recent decades of a host of substantial challenges posed primar-

ily by (1) new technologies and (2) a recent restructuring of the

economic underpinning of the industry. Both of these challenges

have forced a revolutionary transformation of the news business

from a public service into a predominantly commercial enterprise,

where profit tends to trump service at just about every bend in the

road. The effect has been to change the very definition of journal-

ism and to produce a “new news.” (This transformation has also

coincided with a drastic decline in confidence and respect for

political authority, growing out of the Vietnam and Watergate

experiences, and with the sudden end to the Cold War, which left

newsrooms without a central, organizing focus for the news. But

these latter issues are for another study.)

Our story follows a traditional narrative path. Part One fea-

tures Michael Isikoff, an old-fashioned investigative reporter for

Newsweek magazine, who finds himself scooped by the new tech-

nology of the Internet on a highly competitive story about Presi-

dent Clinton and a White House intern. Next we shall explain the

conceptual framework for our analysis of the emergence of the

“new news.” Then, in one section after another, we shall provide

illustrations and explanations of the new technology, the new eco-

nomics and the “new news.” Finally, in a conclusion, we shall dis-

cuss what we have learned and what yet remains to be learned.

Marvin Kalb is Director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Poli-

tics and Public Policy and Edward R. Murrow Professor of the Press and

Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Uni-

versity.

*Amy Sullivan, a graduate student at the Harvard Divinity School, pro-

vided invaluable assistance in the research, drafting, and writing of this

paper. She is a careful, dedicated student of press/politics. In the early

months of our work, she was joined by Kendra Proctor, a graduate student

at the Kennedy School of Government, who helped us with research and

insights into this study. Together they composed an exceptional team and

greatly enriched the study.

THE RISE OF THE “NEW NEWS”

A Case Study of Two Root Causes

of Modern Scandal Coverage

by Marvin Kalb*

4 The Rise of the “New News”

Part One: Curtain Raiser

On Saturday evening, January 17, 1998,

after almost 48 hours of writing, editing and

frantic phoning for last-minute tidbits about a

story linking President Clinton to a sexual rela-

tionship with a former White House intern,

reporter Michael Isikoff argued with his

Newsweek editors that his gangbuster exclusive

ought to be published in the next issue. They

refused, believing that the story needed more

work. The bulldog in Isikoff kept arguing. His

editors stood firm. Finally, exhausted, Isikoff

drove home and, almost immediately, fell asleep.

Unfortunately for Newsweek and Isikoff,

today’s news cycle never sleeps.

On Sunday morning, when Isikoff awoke,

his wife informed him that “someone named

Matt Drudge called last night,” but she didn’t

want to disturb him. Suddenly, Isikoff under-

stood that his exclusive might no longer be

exclusive. There was a good chance that for the

second time in six months Matt Drudge, author

of an Internet gossip column called the Drudge

Report, had scooped Isikoff on his own story. In

fact, Drudge, a thirtysomething who wears a

Walter Winchell fedora, was the first “reporter”

to put the name “Monica Lewinsky” into play

in an item he posted on the Web that Sunday

evening. For the scorekeepers, this was a major

scoop, an illustration of the competitive power

and speed of the Internet to beat Newsweek and

other mainstream news organizations to a story.

Once on the Internet, the story was every-

where—and everybody’s.

If Hollywood were casting the role of an

investigative journalist, it would have to look

no further than Michael Isikoff. Blessed with a

perpetual look of skepticism, Isikoff is a rum-

pled, bespectacled, dogged reporter. Colleagues

say his commitment to investigative reporting

borders on the obsessive, not unlike the

sleuthing of Woodward and Bernstein during

Watergate. Isikoff was a college student when

the dynamic duo put Watergate at the top of the

list of national embarrassments. Inspired by

their work, he became a reporter upon gradua-

tion and eventually landed a job covering poli-

tics at the Washington Post.

Among other assignments, Isikoff covered

the 1992 presidential campaign. Like many of

his colleagues, he followed the Gennifer Flowers

story;

but unlike most other reporters, he con-

tinued digging after the election. Isikoff combed

through the voluminous records of the Federal

Election Commission. He discovered that the

Clinton campaign had not reported any pay-

ments to a private investigator who was hired to

look into the so-called “bimbo eruptions.”

Isikoff later explained: “That was something I

fixated on. If you look at FEC reports as some of

us do, you can find . . . every last nickel

reported under expenditures . . . But here was a

rather substantial portion of funds going to a

private investigator for the Clinton campaign,

and it was nowhere reported.”

From the Washington Post, Isikoff moved

across the corporate street to Newsweek, where

he pursued investigative reporting with a zeal

for scandal. Soon on Isikoff’s radar scope were

the names of Paula Jones, who was in the

process of suing Clinton for sexual harassment

in Arkansas; Kathleen Willey, a Democratic

Party volunteer in Virginia; and Linda Tripp, a

staffer at the Pentagon who had served in the

White House under Presidents Bush and Clin-

ton. Slowly Isikoff began to connect the dots. In

early 1997, he learned that Willey was claiming

Clinton had “groped” her at the White House.

His only confirmation was a hesitant Tripp, so

Isikoff therefore had no “story”—until July,

1997, when Jones’s lawyers subpoenaed Willey.

They too had heard about Willey’s claim.

Isikoff sensed that he was on the edge of a

big story, and he began to write his account

when, unexpectedly, he crossed paths with the

up-and-coming Mr. Drudge. On his Web site,

Drudge wrote that Isikoff would soon report

that another woman—not just Jones—was

claiming that Clinton had sexually harassed her,

and that he had done so in the Oval Office,

meaning the alleged incident took place while

he was President. For the first time, Drudge on

the Internet beat Isikoff of Newsweek with a

story. It was later estimated by a proud Drudge

that curious White House staffers, eager for

every juicy detail, clicked onto his Internet page

more than 2,000 times in one day. Interestingly,

though, most Washington reporters ignored the

Isikoff-Drudge report of Willey’s allegations.

When Isikoff first made contact with Tripp

at her job in the Pentagon, she told him that she

didn’t believe Willey’s story and claimed to have

seen the volunteer leave the Oval Office after

the alleged grope, looking quite pleased with

herself. Later, Tripp informed Isikoff that he was

“on the right trail, but barking up the wrong

tree.” Enter Monica Lewinsky, though at this

stage not by name. Tripp said that a former

White House intern had told her that she was

Marvin Kalb 5

having a sexual relationship with the President.

Tripp was taping her conversations with the

intern. In October, 1997, Tripp introduced

Isikoff to her New York book agent, Lucianne

Goldberg, and they offered Isikoff an extraordi-

nary opportunity: did he want to listen to the

tapes? Though Isikoff was severely tempted, he

declined. As a journalist investigating a story,

he did not want to become part of the story. He

wanted to avoid any actions that would make

him a “co-conspirator. . . . That’s not a situation

I wanted to be in.”

During the fateful week of January 12,

1998, Isikoff felt two strong emotions: he was

getting tantalizingly close to the biggest story of

his career, but at the same time, he was losing

control of it. Part of the reason was that inde-

pendent counsel Kenneth Starr had also been

told by Tripp about her surreptitious taping of

Lewinsky. Starr, who had been investigating a

number of other allegations against the White

House and Clinton, now received official per-

mission from Attorney General Janet Reno to

expand his mandate still further to include the

Lewinsky matter. He persuaded Tripp to tape

Lewinsky once more in a calculated effort to

implicate the President in the scandal.

Once Isikoff learned about Starr’s

expanded mandate, he felt he had proper justifi-

cation to publish his story. To provide a full

account of the story beyond the hearsay

accounts he had gleaned from Tripp, Isikoff

now had to listen to the incriminating tapes.

On Friday, January 16, 1998, he tried desper-

ately to get copies of the Tripp-Lewinsky con-

versations. He had been told about the content,

but he wanted to hear copies or read tran-

scripts. At the same time, he phoned a source

in Starr’s office to ask for a comment about his

story, which contained references to Lewinsky

and Vernon Jordan, a well-known Washington

attorney who had been helping Lewinsky get a

lawyer and a job. His source pleaded with

Isikoff not to publish his story and not to call

either Lewinsky or Jordan, implying that the

independent counsel’s office was attempting to

“flip” Lewinsky and involve her in a sting of

Jordan, presidential secretary Betty Currie, and

possibly even President Clinton.

Isikoff had

intended to call both Lewinsky and Jordan—

they were, after all, major characters in an

unflattering story, and they deserved the chance

to respond before publication. Still, Isikoff

agreed to play ball with his source in Starr’s

office and not attempt to call either Lewinsky

or Jordan until that evening.

Shortly before midnight, Isikoff caught the

equivalent of a touchdown pass. From a source

he still refuses to name, but who is widely

believed to be Goldberg, Isikoff finally obtained

copies of tapes containing 90 minutes of highly

explosive conversations between Tripp and

Lewinsky about the former intern’s story of an

affair with the President. If Isikoff had had any

doubts about proceeding with his story, the tapes

erased them, even though they raised one huge

problem. Nothing in the taped conversations

involved Jordan in a conspiracy to obstruct jus-

tice—a major part of Isikoff’s piece. However, the

picture woven by the two women did present a

stunning story about a presidential escapade

with a 21-year-old intern. Isikoff kept pressing

his editors to publish the story, but he encoun-

tered stiff resistance. His editors were reluctant

to publish unsubstantiated allegations that could

disrupt Starr’s still secret investigation of the

Lewinsky affair. They were under no professional

obligation to cooperate with Starr, or to be mind-

ful of the delicacy of his investigation—“Hell,

it’s not like this was the Bay of Pigs,”

Isikoff

complained. But, in fact, like any number of

other editors facing controversial decisions relat-

ing to government secrets, they bent over back-

wards to be as “responsible” as possible.

The battle between Isikoff and his editors

ran into Saturday—decision-day—but there was

still no decision regarding whether or not to

publish. Even though Clinton had frequently

been associated with rumors of womanizing,

this story was different. It placed a sitting presi-

dent in a sexual relationship with a White

House intern; and Newsweek, though locked in

a fierce competitive war with Time, did not

want to be—or appear to be—sensationalist. All

day, in both New York and Washington, editors

argued the pros and cons of publication. Conver-

sations on conference calls grew increasingly

hot and angry. Around Washington, reporters

picked up tips to the effect that Newsweek was

agonizing about publishing a bombshell. Time

heard that it might have something to do with

Starr’s investigation. A few newspaper reporters

had sniffed the same scent. And so, unsurpris-

ingly, had the White House, which that day,

coincidentally, was obsessed by the President’s

deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit.

Normally, it is the reporter who calls the

official source. This time it was the deputy

chief of staff at the White House, John Podesta,

who called Isikoff, asking in effect what he

knew. Isikoff knew enough to substitute a ques-

tion for an answer. What did the White House

6 The Rise of the “New News”

know? Podesta responded that the White House

had heard something about “Starr tapes” and

“obstruction of justice.” Because Isikoff knew

that Podesta had helped Lewinsky get a job

interview, he quickly assumed that Podesta

would connect Lewinsky to the Starr investiga-

tion. But, much to Isikoff’s surprise, Podesta

made no such connection, and Isikoff decided to

probe a bit further. Adopting a deliberately

casual tone, Isikoff asked, “Is the name Monica

Lewinsky familiar to you?” Podesta replied that

he thought she had been an intern. “What’s the

deal [then] with Bill Richardson, getting her an

interview with him?” asked Isikoff. Podesta

answered that Lewinsky was looking for a job

and he helped her. Isikoff thanked him and hung

up with the knowledge that at least some top

advisors at the White House had not yet made

the link between the former intern and his

exclusive story.

On Saturday night, the battle between

reporter and editor had to end. It was decision

time, and Newsweek chairman and editor-in-

chief Richard Smith made the most contro-

versial decision of his career. Apparently

calculating that the Isikoff story would remain

his exclusive property for another week, Smith

decided to hold the story for the next issue—it

needed more work, he thought. Obviously, he

did not know at the time that Drudge had been

briefed about the Isikoff scoop and that it would

shortly be all over the Internet.

By the time Isikoff rolled out of bed on

Sunday morning, his story was already rolling

across the screens of thousands of computers all

over the country. Drudge had struck pay dirt—a

titillating tale of a President with a wandering

eye and a young intern with a fluttering heart.

He didn’t have the details, but he published the

headlines on his Web site. Drudge peddled

unconfirmed information—what might be called

gossip; Isikoff tried, as a responsible reporter, to

publish news. Over a period of many months,

Isikoff had carefully cultivated his sources,

combed through hundreds of pages of election

rules and regulations, refused to cross ethical

lines and listen to incriminating tape recordings

and pursued this story when there were few

leads and little encouragement. Isikoff prided

himself on being a product of the old school of

journalism (however in the current environment

that needs to be defined), but he had been

scooped by the new school and quickly learned

that he had to adapt in order to survive. And

adapt he did!

From Sunday, January 19, 1998, when

Drudge ran the bare outlines of the Isikoff scoop

on the Internet, until Wednesday, January 21,

1998, when the Washington Post and the Los

Angeles Times published the details of an

alleged Clinton-Lewinsky liaison on the front

pages, Newsweek agonized about its decision to

delay publication. Had it made a mistake?

Drudge, undeterred by the fact that he had very

few details, continued running paper-thin

accounts of the scandal, generating a flood of

publicity for his Web site and fanning the flames

of scandal.

On Sunday morning, it was time for Wash-

ington’s press/politics junkies to gather ritualis-

tically around their television sets for the talk

shows. The topic of conversation on ABC’s This

Week was Paula Jones. In a comment that must

seem painfully amusing in hindsight, former-

Clinton-advisor-turned-ABC-pundit George

Stephanopoulos questioned whether the Jones

lawsuit would have any effect on the Clinton

presidency: “What worse can come out than

already has been out? He has been accused of

murder, my goodness, from Jerry Falwell. What

else can come out?” A few minutes later,

another roundtable participant, Bill Kristol, the

conservative editor of the Weekly Standard,

became the first person to mention the Lewin-

sky story on television. Kristol told the TV

audience that “the story in Washington this

morning is that Newsweek magazine was going

to go with a big story based on tape-recorded

conversations, which a woman who was a sum-

mer intern at the White House, an intern of

Leon Panetta’s . . . ”—when suddenly he was

cut off by Stephanopoulos. “And Bill, where did

[the story] come from? the Drudge Report.”

Stephanopoulos argued that the Internet col-

umn had been discredited and should be

ignored. Both men were then interrupted by

Sam Donaldson, who ended the exchange

between them with an interesting disclaimer:

“I’m not an apologist for Newsweek, but if their

editors decided they didn’t have it cold enough

to go with, I don’t think that we can sit here

without—unless you’ve seen what they were

basing their decision on—how could we say

Newsweek was wrong to kill it.”

Nevertheless, the story gained a flicker of

visibility when Washington Post reporter Peter

Baker reported in Monday’s edition that “com-

mentators on ABC discussed reports that

Newsweek killed a . . . sensational story alleging

a long-running tryst involving Clinton while

he’s been president.” That evening on the CNBC

Marvin Kalb 7

talk show Equal Time, host Bay Buchanan asked

Democratic strategist Jennifer Laszlo about the

Kathleen Willey rumors. Laszlo promptly

retorted: “I don’t think that it is true. It’s been

reported by Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, who’s

also claiming that the president had sex with an

intern in the same article. My belief, Bay, is that

he has perhaps confused reality with the movie

Wag the Dog and that they’re making up all

kinds of allegations.”

Still, the story began to develop legs.

Reporters for other news organizations called

every possible source for a sliver of hard infor-

mation about Lewinsky. Very few sources had

any hard information at all. No matter. The

Union Leader in Manchester, New Hampshire

—not known for its Clinton sympathies—fea-

tured the rumored story on its editorial page,

labeling it another “Bimbo Eruption” in its Janu-

ary 20 edition.

By Tuesday, January 20, 1998, the pressure

cooker of Washington journalism was on the

edge of exploding. The Washington Post, helped

by its sister publication, Newsweek, pulled

together the strands of this sensational story. So

did the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles

Times. At 10:30

P.M., eastern time, as they pre-

pared their front pages, both newspapers also

released the story to their Internet Web sites.

Jackie Judd of ABC News came up with the

same story at roughly the same time, perhaps

from these Web sites, from independent report-

ing or from a combination of the two. She was

ready to broadcast the story on Nightline at

11:30

P.M., but anchor Ted Koppel chose to

feature the Pope’s visit to Cuba instead.

Undaunted, she put the story on ABC radio and

the ABC Web site. Within a matter of moments,

the Lewinsky story was everywhere, and

Newsweek’s beleaguered editors reached two

quick conclusions: they had to (1) put the entire

Isikoff story on the Internet, since the next issue

of the magazine would not hit the newsstands

until the following Monday; and (2) blanket the

airwaves with its own people, boasting not only

about their journalistic prowess (they had more

details than anyone else) but also about their

sense of journalistic responsibility—after all,

they argued with questionable logic, they hadn’t

published the Isikoff story the previous week-

end, because they thought it needed more work.

Isikoff took to this chore like a happy war-

rior. On January 21, 1998, shortly after dawn

broke in the nation’s capital, Isikoff embarked

on a tour from one studio to another, telling

the tale of Monica Lewinsky to listeners and

viewers on such programs as Imus In The Morn-

ing, The Today Show, NBC Nightly News with

Tom Brokaw and The News with Brian

Williams on MSNBC. Undoubtedly Isikoff

would have appeared on even more programs if

he had not already had a commentator’s con-

tract with NBC.

Isikoff understood the power of the new

school of journalism to propagate a story, to gen-

erate a public presence on the road to becoming

a kind of talk show celebrity, to parlay a string

of media appearances into lucrative lectures and,

if possible, to use his newfound notoriety to

enhance his position at Newsweek.

For Isikoff, it would not have been “too

wild a dream,” to quote the late Eric Sevareid, to

imagine himself at this heady moment playing

the role of Michael Isikoff in a movie about the

Lewinsky scandal.

Part Two: Conceptual Framework

For anyone old enough to recall the role of

the Washington Post in the unraveling of the

Nixon presidency, the front page of the January

21, 1998 edition must have evoked familiar

memories. The lead story was headlined

“CLINTON ACCUSED OF URGING AIDE TO

LIE.” It was as if Watergate had suddenly joined

hands with Whitewater, and a president’s fate

was again hanging in the balance. Written by

three reporters—Susan Schmidt, Peter Baker and

Toni Locy—the story focused on an expanded

investigation by independent counsel Kenneth

Starr into the President’s private life and fea-

tured such legalistically ominous phrases as

“obstruction of justice” and “subornation of per-

jury.” Highlighted were unfamiliar names, such

as Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, that

would quickly come to be associated with scan-

dal, sex, corruption and—the day was still

young—possibly even impeachment.

The White House, already battle-hardened

to embarrassments of this sort, dressed for com-

bat with political enemies and a press corps that

has been ambivalent about Bill Clinton—admir-

ing his political skills and feisty determination,

but sharply critical of his duplicity and ethical

slipperiness and worried that he was, too often,

taking them to the cleaners. For most of the

reporters, the Post story was like a shot of

adrenaline, converting many into 1998 pop-out

caricatures of Woodward and Bernstein, the two

reporters who, more than any other, uncovered

the cover-ups that ultimately forced Richard

Nixon to resign from office on August 8, 1974,

one step ahead of almost certain impeachment

8 The Rise of the “New News”

by the House of Representatives. They immedi-

ately sensed that Monicagate was Clinton’s

Waterloo; though he had survived other scandals

with relative impunity, he would almost cer-

tainly drown in this one.

From the moment the story appeared,

reporters seemed in a rush to win Pulitzers cov-

ering the president’s anticipated collapse. Time-

honored standards and practices were either

ignored or discarded with the result that in the

early weeks of Monicagate—the focus of this

study—American journalism hit a new low.

Questions were raised about the very nature of

journalism and its impact on public opinion and

policy. Was the frenzy of the moment a journal-

istic aberration, an odd coming together of

embarrassing coincidences? Did it prove that

journalism had mysteriously lost its compass—

and, along with it, its ethical and professional

standards? Or, were we witnessing the tip-of-

the-iceberg excesses of a new journalism, pro-

duced by a combination of powerful forces?

The daily press briefing at the White House

was as good a place as any to measure press per-

formance. It was a living laboratory; a besieged

spokesman using his podium as a shield, scores

of reporters firing skeptical questions at him

and, in the back of the briefing room, which cov-

ers the pool once used by President Kennedy,

dozens of television cameras carried these

tumultuous exchanges “live” to the watching

world. For most reporters, the news environment

had already been bursting with speculation

about the President’s upcoming State of the

Union address and about the consequences of

another buildup of US military power against

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. These two big stories

dominated the journalistic landscape—but now

came Monicagate. Within hours it dominated

every other story, paralyzing the political process

and threatening an administration. How did the

White House press corps respond?

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of

that first week of the new scandal, the Presi-

dent’s spokesman, Mike McCurry, was asked a

total of 304 questions, an average of about 100

questions per briefing, significantly higher than

the norm, which in January and February ran

about 40 to 50 questions. To be specific, on Jan-

uary 21, 1998, 128 questions were asked; 113

were about Monica Lewinsky. On January 22,

1998, 97 questions were asked; 81 were about

Table 1. White House Press Briefings and Monicagate

Date of Briefing Total Number of Lewinsky-Related Other Percentage of Questions

Questions Asked Related to Lewinsky

1/21/98 128 113 15 88%

1/22/98 97 81 16 83%

1/23/98 79 52 27 66%

1/26/98 117 84 33 72%

1/28/98 40 34 6 85%

1/29/98 100 64 36 64%

Nightline programs on Monicagate

• “Dark day at the White House”

• “Crisis in the White House”

• “The First Family in Full Battle Regalia”

• “Scandal at Home”

• “White House Intern”

• “Who is Ken Starr?”

• “The Clintons versus the Media and the

Right Wing”

• “New Revelations in Crisis in Clinton

White House”

• “Hardball Politics or Obstruction of Justice”

• “Battle Lines—Roots of a Scandal”

• “Battle Lines—How did it get so personal”

• “Battle Lines—Hunt for truth in new

media jungle”

• “Jones v. Clinton”

• “The Developing Saga of Kathleen Willey”

• “The Starr Investigation—Why it’s taking

so long”

• “Ken Starr’s End Game”

Marvin Kalb 9

Monica. On January 23, 1998, 79 questions were

asked; 52 were about Monica, 23 about the Pres-

ident’s address. And so this pattern continued

into the next week as well. On January 26, 1998,

the Monday before the day of the President’s

State of the Union address, 117 questions were

asked; 84 concerned Monica, 20 the address

itself. All told, in the week beginning with Janu-

ary 21, 1998, a full 75 percent of all questions

directed to spokesman McCurry concerned the

mushrooming scandal.

The White House questions and answers

flooded the newsrooms and provided nonstop

chatter for the radio and television talk shows.

They also sparked a round of hot stories on Capi-

tol Hill and leaked responses from Starr’s office,

which found itself engaged in a roaring battle

with the President’s minions all over Washing-

ton. The pursuit of scoops reached wild levels of

distortion and exaggeration with one reporter

out-sensationalizing another, using unchecked

sources and rarely pausing to check a “fact.”

Even the best of journalism ran with the Monica

story as if no other existed. Nightline dedicated

every program for three weeks to different

aspects of the Monica scandal. “Crisis in the

White House” was the most commonly used

title for these programs, but others were called

“The First Family in Full Battle Regalia,” “White

House Intern,” “Who is Ken Starr?” or “The

Clintons versus the Media and the Right Wing.”

It was not that Monicagate produced a new

form of journalism; it was rather that the story

accented and accelerated a trend that had been

apparent for the preceding 20 years. The trend

was rooted in two newly emerging factors that

gradually but inexorably changed the core values

of the business. One was the new technological

revolution that started with the explosion of

cable television in the late 1970s and continued

through the rise of the Internet in the late

1990s; the other was the radical change in the

economic ownership and management of the

industry. Both the new technology and the new

economics transformed the news business from

one proudly tied to public service to one

unashamedly linked to the pursuit of public tit-

illation and maximum profit.

The New Technology

For the past 20 years, we have been the

beneficiaries—or the victims—of a vast techno-

logical revolution that has transformed the way

we get and process information. In the late

1970s, most Americans (more than 80%)

watched one of three evening newscasts on CBS,

NBC and ABC—that’s where they got most of

their information about the US and the rest of

the world. Now they have the same three net-

works—though fewer than 40 percent of Ameri-

cans have been watching their evening

newscasts in recent months—but they also have

three cable news networks, ten weekly news

magazines in primetime, three cable business

news networks, two sports news cable net-

works, all with corresponding Web sites featur-

ing constantly updated news reports; and the

number keeps growing, exponentially.

Take CNN, for example. Cable News Net-

work is not just CNN, but a cluster of CNN

offspring, such as CNN Headline News, CNN

International, CNNfn, CNN/SI, CNN en

Espanol, two radio networks, seven Web sites,

CNN Airport Network, the Better Health Net-

work, the College Television Network and a

syndicated news service called CNN New-

source. In much the same way, by acquiring

cable network affiliates, NBC and Fox try to

emulate CNN with mixed results.

This has been called the fractionalization

of the communications market. Where once

there were a handful of news sources, there are

now hundreds, each struggling to compete for a

smaller share of an increasingly distracted audi-

ence. The guessing game of how to attract audi-

ence shares has become a profit-motivated

obsession. Cable television feasts on, among

other things, talk shows, largely because talk

has proven to be the cheapest form of television

information and entertainment, the combina-

tion of which has been dubbed “infotainment.”

The effect has been that talk, unconstrained and

unchecked, has befuddled the viewer or listener

into believing that whatever is seen or heard can

be equated with news.

A few years ago, some observers predicted

a 500-channel universe; although this prediction

proved to be wildly inflated, it did point people

in the right direction. There has been a huge

increase in cable channels, and the public has

responded with enthusiasm. More and more

Americans are buying cable services and watch-

ing cable networks—enough so that, in the first

week of July, 1998, for the first time, the 42

basic cable operations outperformed the top four

broadcasters at ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC in

every category of measurement: total viewers,

ratings and audience share. The cables attracted

21.6 million viewers; the broadcasters, 21.3 mil-

lion. The numbers were not all that impressive,

given the size of the potential audience in the

US (ratings normally dip during the summer

10 The Rise of the “New News”

months anyway), but the trend line was clear. In

1994, 22 percent of the average audience share

went to cable; four years later, the number

jumped to 36 percent.

Perhaps even more significant than the

expansion of cable has been the rather sudden

emergence of the Internet as a force in national

and global communications. Once the exclusive

resource of the Pentagon and scientists, the

Internet has now blossomed into a fairly com-

monplace tool in industry, universities and

many homes. It should therefore not be surpris-

ing that just about every newspaper and maga-

zine has its own Web site, or two or three.

During Monicagate especially, editors and pro-

ducers often hurried to put their stories on the

Internet before they had even been published in

the morning papers. Clearly many Americans

have turned to the Internet for their daily dose

of news. In 1995, only 4 percent did; now 20

percent do.

A safe prognosis is that the use of this

new technology will gallop along with increas-

ing speed.

The New Economics

In December, 1962, William Paley, who

created CBS, outlined his ambitious plans for

the future of CBS News to a small group of

CBS correspondents. One of them, Charles

Collingwood, cautioned that this could be very

expensive. Paley responded: “You guys cover the

news; I’ve got Jack Benny to make money for

me.” Those were the days when news was

assumed to be a loss leader—serious, imposing,

important, but never profitable. Benny and the

other entertainers were supposed to make a

profit, and they did, in part so that the reporters

could go about their business without having to

worry about money. They satisfied Paley’s

desire for respectability and legitimacy. “My

jewels in the crown,” he called them.

Thirty-six years later, the current Chair-

man and CEO of CBS Corporation, Michael H.

Jordan, disavows the idealistic views of his pre-

decessor: “Yes, we want to hold on to journalis-

tic and other standards. But I don’t aspire to that

Paleyesque role. This is a business.”

So it is.

The crown was turned on its head in the early

1980s, when it was discovered that news could

not only buy respectability—it could also make

unimaginable profits; but it then had to live by

the rules of any other profitable enterprise: it

prized its stars but lost its soul to the demands

of the marketplace. News has become a big, big

business, controlled not by powerful families,

but by media moguls who place a higher prior-

ity on the size of their profits than on the value

of their contributions to society.

Networks became so profitable in the

deregulated Reagan years of the 1980s that Gen-

eral Electric acquired NBC, Loews bought CBS

and CapCities picked up ABC. By the mid-

1990s, as one megacorporation after another

expanded its technological horizons, pushing

profits into the stratosphere, network ownership

changed hands again. Westinghouse bought

CBS, Disney purchased ABC for a cool $19 bil-

lion in cash and stock, Time-Warner acquired

CNN, Fox was created and conglomerates con-

tinued to wire the world, with satellites, faxes,

cellular phones and cable television. What hap-

pened in the US set the standard for what then

happened around the world.

How profitable is this new world? In 1996,

NBC produced three hours of television news a

day. Two years later, NBC, using its newly-

developed cable subdivisions of CNBC, MSNBC

and others as markets, produced and fielded 27

hours of news a day. The time may not be filled

by the same professionally polished program of

yesteryear, but each hour sets aside at least 12

minutes for commercial advertisements. A

minute can generate $50,000 in ad revenues, or

$100,000, or $1,000,000, depending on the pro-

gram, the time and the size of the audience; but

news now makes enough money to be consid-

ered a profit center. In this brave, new world,

NBC manufactures news in much the same way

and with much the same motivation that GE

manufactures light bulbs.

Newspapers followed the same pattern.

Most have been purchased by chains; few

remain in family hands. Annual profits run rou-

tinely into double digit terrain. At the Los

Angeles Times, Mark Willes, the recently-

appointed publisher with no journalistic back-

ground, decided that each editorial department

was to be run not just by an editor but by a

business manager as well. Two executives now

made editorial decisions—the editor and the

business manager. Every story had a price tag.

Every decision raised a question Paley would

likely not have recognized or tolerated: can we

afford to cover this story?

The “New News”

This technological revolution and this

profit/business-centered news have—not sur-

prisingly—transformed the ethics, values and

standards of journalism. Both should also be

viewed against a background of massive change

in two other areas: the decline of mutual trust

between the White House and the press, and the

end of the Cold War. Vietnam and Watergate

served as harsh wake-up calls to journalists who

previously gave the benefit of the doubt to

politicians and presidents who professed to tell

the truth. The “kerosene journalism” that has

grown in the post-Watergate decades has dra-

matically altered the relationship between pub-

lic officials and the people who cover them—and

nowhere is this difference more pronounced

than in White House coverage.

Additionally, the end of the Cold War has

left news outlets with what appears at first

glance to be a vacuum. It isn’t actually a vac-

uum. History continues; but journalists have

concluded from poll data that the American peo-

ple aren’t interested in foreign and serious

news—and they tend to ignore it. Without one

central story around which to focus and compare

other stories, a free-for-all followed. While this

absence of an overriding focus has had some pos-

itive effects—the coverage of education and

health issues has risen dramatically in news cov-

erage—the opportunity is mostly being squan-

dered by the domination of tabloid stories. In

this world, anything goes and, more often than

not, scandal is king-of-the-hill.

A “new news” has surfaced in this sharply

changed atmosphere. Although the appearance

of this “news” is familiar, its content has sub-

stantially changed.

What are some of the characteristics of the

“new news?”

1. Sourcing—or the Lack Thereof

In one of their books about Watergate,

Woodward and Bernstein relate a conversation

with their editor, Ben Bradlee, regarding the

sources they were using to write their ground-

breaking stories. Although Bradlee understood

the need to keep promises of anonymity to

sources, he wanted to be certain that his repor-

ters were not relying on “people who have. . . [a]

big ax to grind on the front page of the Washing-

ton Post.” Getting the story was important, but

making sure the sources were reliable and hon-

est was even more important. The two reporters

write that the discussion “satisfied Bradlee’s

reportorial instincts and responsibilities as an

editor.”

One of the most noticeable casualties of

good journalism during the first weeks of the

Lewinsky story was sourcing. Many news orga-

nizations dropped the unofficial industry-wide

practice of requiring two solid sources for

information and still others used flimsy, ques-

tionable sources, such as the reports of other

news organizations or anonymous individuals

whose bias or identity was almost never charac-

terized. The new practice clashed directly with

images of the old journalism typified by Wood-

ward, Bernstein, and Bradlee. The result was a

lack of clarity in the press—where were the alle-

gations, leaks, details coming from? Readers and

viewers were left to wonder while journalists

promised total anonymity to sources in return

for the latest crumb of information.

2. “Out There”

Once the Monica story was “out there,” it

fueled a prairie fire of copy-cat journalism. For a

period of time, a dress stained by presidential

semen was highlighted in the news. Oral sex

was discussed on normally serious newscasts. A

White House valet—named—was widely identi-

fied as someone who had actually seen the Pres-

ident and Monica in a compromising position.

Was there confirmation? No. Were there

denials? Yes. Did the denials discourage

reporters from returning to the same stories—

and rerunning and repeating them time and

again—with videotape? No.

In January, 1992, after a tabloid broke the

story of Clinton’s affair with Gennifer Flowers

(she said they had a twelve-year-long affair; after

first denying it, he later admitted to one

instance of romance), a producer for NPR’s “All

Things Considered” proposed to anchor Linda

Wertheimer that they use the story, too. Why?,

Wertheimer asked. Because it’s “out there,” the

producer argued. The anchor’s response was a

classic line from another era: that doesn’t mean

it has to be “in here,” she said.

In the ensuing six years, the distinction

between “out there” and “in here” vanished in

the crush of competition. The Chinese wall that

used to separate tabloid from traditional news

was breached and in some places shattered. Dur-

ing the O. J. Simpson trial, the New York Times

used a tabloid as its source for a major story.

During Monicagate, ABC used Matt Drudge.

The “new news” has emerged on television as

endless, coifed chatter and in print (in newspa-

pers and on the Internet) as the highly commer-

cial and homogenized packaging of information,

whose reliability is often uncertain.

NBC anchor Tom Brokaw has spoken of

the “big bang theory of journalism.” Defined

roughly as follows: a rumor or hint of official

wrongdoing is heard on a morning talk show,

repeated at the office water cooler, echoed on

Marvin Kalb 11

12 The Rise of the “New News”

later talk shows, mentioned at an editorial

meeting and at the White House, gossiped about

in offices, overheard on the bus or metro, until

later in the day it is transmogrified into “news”

by simply being “reported” on an evening news

program. According to this theory, a reporter

can even check and confirm the existence of

such a rumor, and once checked and confirmed,

change the rumor or hint into a fact, or a sort of

fact—suggesting a very odd journey through a

maze of whispered talk and gossip until ulti-

mately it is transformed into perceived truth, or

something close enough to the truth to be

accepted as a reliable piece of information, a

fact. But, in this world of the “new news,” what

is a fact? And how reliable is it?

3. Rush to Judgment

These days, cynicism and distrust are the

middle names of Washington journalism. But it

was not always this way. During hot and cold

wars, presidents and reporters were reading

essentially from the same sheet of music. The

Nazis were a common enemy, and patriotism

bound the press to the cause of “unconditional

surrender.” On December 7, 1941, for example,

the date President Roosevelt said would “live in

infamy,” Edward R. Murrow of CBS joined the

president for a late dinner at the White House.

No reporter had yet been briefed on the devas-

tating dimensions of the Japanese attack on

Pearl Harbor, but Roosevelt told Murrow every-

thing—without any inhibiting groundrules. As

Murrow walked back to his hotel, he considered

doing a broadcast—the news, after all, was sen-

sational, important, and he had it from a superb

source. There is little doubt that the modern

equivalent of Murrow would have rushed to a

studio and broadcast his exclusive, assuming,

quite properly, that in the absence of any cau-

tionary groundrules, the President intended to

disclose the extent of the catastrophe—but

didn’t want to do so officially; but Murrow was

operating at the time on a different set of ethical

and professional standards. He returned to his

hotel and retired. News of that magnitude

could—in those days, anyway—wait.

Then, for more than four decades after

World War II, the Russians were the bad guys,

and the West the good guys. Relations between

reporters and politicians were not always

smooth during these rocky and dangerous times,

but neither were they as strained and adversarial

as they appear to be at this time. Ben Bradlee

maintained a close friendship with President

John Kennedy—Bradlee the enterprising editor at

Newsweek, Kennedy, a friend from their days in

fashionable Georgetown. This closeness allowed

Bradlee to get some sensational inside scoops,

but it also obliged him—for the sake of a friend

he honored—to look the other way on a few

embarrassing tales. TV anchor Walter Cronkite

of CBS, once described as “the most trusted man

in America,” also maintained friendly relation-

ships with a number of presidents, including

President Johnson. Drinks and dinner were often

on their agenda, and just as often the President

made comments, which were assumed to be off-

the-record even if they concerned hot issues

such as Vietnam and race, largely because, as

Cronkite later wrote, “it was clearly private

time, and it should remain such.”

There were

rules, and the rules were respected.

The election of Richard Nixon marked the

beginning of the end of this era of relative good-

will between president and reporter. Nixon was

paranoid about the press, imagining every

reporter to be a member of an enemy camp.

During Watergate, he even produced an “ene-

mies list.” He developed a communications

strategy specifically designed to bypass the

national press and—through televised speeches

and carefully circumscribed appearances—talk

directly to the American public. Nixon’s vice-

president, Spiro Agnew, prior to his forced resig-

nation on corruption charges, delivered a series

of speeches viciously attacking the credibility

and integrity of the mainstream media. Nixon

conducted a campaign aimed at undermining

the press—but he failed abysmally. The people

had a right to know the truth about their presi-

dent, and they ultimately learned the truth. The

Washington Post’s reporting of the Watergate

scandal led to Nixon’s resignation. The Post, the

press and the American people won—a journal-

istic triumph of historic proportions.

But there was a down side of equally his-

toric proportions. Watergate fostered a climate

of cynicism about the political process, affecting

not only the public but the press, which seems

only to have deepened with each administra-

tion. Martin Tolchin, a former New York Times

reporter who now publishes the Hill, a weekly

newspaper, has expressed the unhappy view that

journalists now assume that “public officials

and those in authority are per se dishonest,

incompetent, untrustworthy and more inter-

ested in their own careers than in the problems

of their constituents.”

Tom Brazaitis, Washing-

ton bureau chief of the Cleveland Plain Dealer,

is even blunter. “Hell, we’re the cheerleaders of

cynicism.”

Marvin Kalb 13

With widespread cynicism came a loss of

respect. During the Ford administration,

reporters joked about whether the president

could walk and chew gum at the same time.

During Ronald Reagan’s terms, reporters

ridiculed his apparently limited command of

detail and fact, as he frequently resorted to note-

cards for information most presidents were

expected to know. There was criticism of

George Bush’s awkward windmill hand motions

and stilted speaking style; and when in the early

days of the Clinton administration, reporters

were arbitrarily banished from easy access to

the spokesman’s office, they ripped into the new

president, and haven’t stopped since. Everything

was considered fair game, from the trivial to the

towering, until finally the Lewinsky saga, for

which the President bears ultimate responsibil-

ity, brought him to ruin.

The sad result is that, in recent administra-

tions, the residual respect between president

and press lingering from earlier times appears to

have vanished. A presumption of presidential

guilt and complicity in wrongdoing now satu-

rates journalistic copy about the White House

and its occupants. We have reached a point

where, until the president can prove that he is

telling the truth, reporters presume that he is

lying, dissembling, cutting corners for the pur-

pose of evasion. In this age of contrived images,

Clinton has always wanted to be seen as one of

the boys—not an aloof leader, but an ordinary

citizen, a baby boomer not above disclosing his

choice of underwear on television. Time maga-

zine once ran a cover story about Clinton called,

“The Incredible Shrinking President,” raising

a question about the relevance of the chief

executive and suggesting the shriveling up of

presidential power. When communication is

instantaneous, and the clamor for comment is

constant, commentators comment—endlessly,

whether they are informed about the subject or

not. The rush to judgment is now an

inescapable feature of the “new news.”

4. Blurring the lines

For a long time, journalists were

observers—they were not the observed, they

were not celebrities. Now they are both the

observed and the observers—they have lost their

distinctiveness as journalists but gained another

kind of distinctiveness as instantly recognizable

personalities. No longer will the new technol-

ogy allow them to be flies on the wall of his-

tory. Television, more than any other tool of

communication, facilitates the blurring of the

line between journalism and politics. A govern-

ment official leaves his White House job and

becomes a commentator on PBS’s NewsHour or

ABC’s This Week. David Gergen and George

Stephanopoulos are two prime examples. So

what?, one may ask. The apparent answer is

that the public, after a while, has difficulty dis-

tinguishing who’s who among the Washington

power elite—who’s the reporter? Who’s the offi-

cial? Who’s telling the truth? Who’s shaving the

truth? Indeed, what is the truth? In a democ-

racy, the truth-teller holds the keys to the king-

dom. The journalist used to be the truth-teller,

but now?

Former Washington Post editor Russ

Wiggins was one of the first to spot the prob-

lem. “Journalists belong in the audience,” he’d

often tell his reporters, “not on the stage.” At

the time, in the early 1970’s, many journalists

would have agreed with Wiggins—that is, until

they saw their real-life colleagues, Bob

Woodward and Carl Bernstein, portrayed in the

movie version of their best-selling book, All The

President’s Men, by such Hollywood stars as

Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Suddenly,

the honorable but hardly lucrative craft of jour-

nalism created new horizons; instead of a pat on

the back for a story well done, journalists began

to search the rainbow for a pot of gold. The

placement of a good story on the front page used

to be regarded as the highest form of reward;

now a good story can also be seen as a stepping

stone to an occasional TV appearance, maybe a

book, even a movie. Reporters now appear

regularly in movies, sometimes simply playing

the role of a reporter, at other times playing

themselves.

Ben Bradlee, in his memoir, wrote that

coverage of the Nixon scandal converted the

reporter into a star. “Watergate,” in his words,

“marked the final passage of journalists into the

best seats of the establishment.”

Once in the

best seats, journalists were expected to produce

more than just good, clean copy; now they were

also expected to deliver their opinions, and their

opinions carried weight in a universe dominated

by televised celebrities, strong personalities,

controversial insights, right or wrong. The

upshot for many is that journalists have become

too big for their britches. For journalists who

want to offer commentaries on television,

deliver speeches for hefty fees, even appear in

the movies in cameo roles, the once glorious if

somewhat mundane pursuit of the truth now

seems too humble a calling. The temptation to

perform, to pontificate, to rise above the story

14 The Rise of the “New News”

becomes irresistible; and as the editorial walls

separating straight reporting from commentary,

political participants from political observers,

crumble in a heap, journalism is transformed

into a profitable profession.

Journalism, largely because of the lure of

money and glamour, has become an attractive

alternative to politics. Susan Molinari, a rising

GOP star from Staten Island, leaps directly from

politics to an anchor’s chair at CBS. After a year,

the ratings, which she was expected to boost, do

not revive, and she goes down in television his-

tory as a flop. Bill Bradley, a respected Demo-

cratic Senator from New Jersey, leaves Capitol

Hill, partly to prepare for a presidential run. But

he needs frequent exposure on television to be

considered a live option; he talks himself into

filling the role of “liberal commentator” on

CBS. His pieces are well-written, they make

sense, but his voice is flat and he too is dropped,

rather embarrassingly. But many other politi-

cians take to playing reporters or commentators

with ease. Superficial similarities abound. Both

enjoy the publicity, both love television, both

play to the crowds, both happily give their opin-

ions on anything from Bosnia to baseball. So it

is no surprise really that when Mario Cuomo

vacates the Governor’s mansion in New York,

he practices law but also hosts a radio talk

show. Pat Buchanan shifts between presidential

campaigns and CNN’s Crossfire without miss-

ing a beat. Bill Press, leader of California’s

Democratic Party, and Geraldine Ferraro, Demo-

cratic vice-presidential candidate in the 1984

campaign, represent the left (to Buchanan’s

right) on Crossfire. CNN is also home to Jesse

Jackson, when he is not running for president,

but it is also home to hundreds of first-class

reporters, who are usually overworked and

underpaid. CNN stands for Cable NEWS Net-

work; it is not supposed to be a televised

waystation for politicians between campaigns.

David Broder, dean of political columnists

in Washington, watched the turnstile between

politics and journalism, and on November 19,

1988, he expressed his alarm at the National

Press Club. “We damn well better make it

clear we are not part of the government,” he

declaimed, “and not part of a Washington

insider’s clique where politicians, publicists and

journalists are easily interchangeable parts.

Once we lose our distinctive identity, it will not

be long before we lose our freedom.” He spotted

a “new hybrid creature” slipping suspiciously

between the two worlds of politics and journal-

ism—an “androgynous political insider . . .

blurring the lines between journalism on one

side, and politics and government on the other.”

Speaking from an ethical podium of unblem-

ished accomplishment, Broder added: “We all

know them. The journalists who go into govern-

ment and become State Department or White

House officials, and then come back as editors

or columnists. . . . One day, he or she is a public

official or political operative; the next, a jour-

nalist or television commentator. Then they slip

into the phone booth and emerge in their origi-

nal guise.”

There are other characteristics of the “new

news,” including a fluffy lightness to the presen-

tation of serious information and a predisposi-

tion to emphasize sex and sensationalism in an

appeal to higher ratings and circulation. The ten-

dency to go downscale is too painfully obvious

and persistent. During the Cold War, the sheer

awareness on everyone’s part that nuclear war

was a possibility kept our eye on the sparrow’s

fall. Survival was a central concern in determin-

ing a priority for news. Now anything goes.

Part Three: New Technology

In the first two weeks of Monicagate, there

were many illustrations of the power of the new

technology to affect the nature of news cover-

age. We shall focus on five of them.

1. The Elusive Blue Dress

Matt Drudge’s contribution to the frenzy of

January 21, 1998, was an exclusive item on his

Internet Web site to the effect that Lewinsky

had a dress with “potential DNA” evidence

pointing directly to the President. Drudge, who

had introduced Lewinsky to the public, now

seemed to be suggesting that the former intern

had a dress stained by presidential semen. Most

reporters could not yet focus on this explosive

item, because they were still catching up with

the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times

and ABC on the original story; and for the better

part of a day, the story of the stained dress

remained a Drudge exclusive.

If Drudge does, in fact, become the Walter

Winchell of the age of the Internet—and he

shows every sign of becoming Winchell and

more—he will forever have Monica Lewinsky to

thank for his success. For it was this story that

put Matt Drudge and the Internet on the map of

American journalism.

Within a matter of

hours, he was being invited to cross the moat

separating Internet gossip and information from

mainstream journalism and to appear on pro-

grams such as Meet the Press on NBC. And, of

Marvin Kalb 15

course, he accepted one invitation after another,

becoming in a very brief period of time the per-

sonification of the route by which an item on

the Internet makes the journey to, among other

destinations, ABC’s World News Tonight with

Peter Jennings.

Stop one was the Today show on January

22, 1998, Drudge sitting opposite host Matt

Lauer—one Matt to another—on the highest-

rated news program on morning television.

Drudge was determined to impress not only

Lauer and other big-name television personali-

ties, but also the many millions of potential

Internet customers who might be enticed to

visit his still relatively unknown Web site. “I

have reported that there’s a potential DNA trail

that would tie Clinton to this young woman.”

With this one statement, uttered with total self-

confidence, Drudge introduced his “dress” story

to a national audience. By its very mention on

the Today show, it acquired a semblance of jour-

nalistic legitimacy.

Lauer seemed sufficiently impressed to

raise the allegation with his next guest, Michael

Isikoff. Lauer later explained the Drudge-Isikoff

sequence by saying that he had to pursue the

story—even if in the process he gave it extraor-

dinary exposure on the Today show—because,

he said, it was “out there. People were starting

to talk about it.” But at this point a question

could easily have been raised: which people, and

how many? Was Lauer really talking about only

his executive producer? His writer? Other col-

leagues on the program? In fact, only a handful

of readers of the Drudge Report were even aware

of it, until Drudge took advantage of his appear-

ance on Today to push the story. Isikoff refused,

at least at this point, to join Lauer in heady

speculation about Lewinsky’s wardrobe. “I have

not reported that, and I am not going to report

that until I have evidence that it is, in fact,

true.” Lauer pressed Isikoff with a few more

questions, but to no avail.

Of course, Drudge never mentioned his

source, and Lauer never asked him for a source,

apparently on the rather questionable assump-

tion that a tale-teller, unlike a journalist, had no

obligation to have or disclose one. A few days

later, the New York Daily News reported that

the source was none other than Tripp’s New

York book agent, Lucianne Goldberg, who had

actually been talking to both Drudge and Isikoff.

In an interview, she acknowledged, “The dress

story? I think I leaked that . . . I had to do

something to get their [the media’s] attention.

I’ve done it. And I’m not unproud [sic] of it.” At

this point it was not clear whether Goldberg had

concocted a story about a stained dress, or sim-

ply leaked a true story in order to get press

attention. There might be a dress; there might

not be such a dress—what was relevant was that

an Internet gossip-page item had suddenly

appeared in mainstream journalism, another

question added to the bushelful of other unan-

swered questions demanding immediate

answers.

Goldberg, though unnamed, was also the

source of Peter Jennings’ lead story on World

News Tonight on January 23, 1998—a report

that came to ABC after numerous stopovers at

radio, TV talk shows and the Internet. By this

time every news junkie knew about an incrimi-

nating dress, and every reporter wanted to

advance the story. Jackie Judd, who had quickly

become ABC’s star reporter on the scandal,

thought that she had new and solid information.

Jennings, in his introduction to Judd’s report,

characterized the source as “someone with spe-

cific knowledge of what it is that Monica

Lewinsky says really took place between her and

the President.” Judd stated that “according to

the source, Lewinsky says she saved, apparently

as some kind of souvenir, a navy blue dress with

the president’s semen stain on it.” Was there

such a dress? Was it stained by presidential

semen? Judd’s report strongly suggested that the

answer to both questions was yes. Everything in

Judd’s report depended ultimately on the relia-

bility and accuracy of her source—the ubiqui-

tous Lucianne Goldberg. And did she have

firsthand information? Did she have unimpeach-

able evidence? No, she too was relying on a

source. Months later, in a groundbreaking article

by Stephen Brill in the inaugural issue of his

new magazine, Brill’s Content, the source was

identified as Linda Tripp. Goldberg was quoted

as saying that she was not sure whether the

dress story was actually mentioned on the

famous Tripp tapes. “In fact,” Brill wrote,

“Goldberg is not sure that Tripp said Lewinsky

had talked about having saved a dress, as

opposed to a dress simply having been stained. ‘I

might have added the part about it being saved,’

Goldberg told me.”

Early Saturday morning, January 24, 1998,

many newspapers across the country carried a

UPI report from Washington that quoted the

unnamed ABC source on World News Tonight

as having said, “Lewinsky saved a navy blue

dress stained with President Clinton’s semen.”

UPI offered no qualifications, no sources other

than ABC, no reservations—meaning UPI added

16 The Rise of the “New News”

no independent reporting of its own to this

story. The story of the dress had undergone a

revealing metamorphosis—from an unsourced

Drudge item on the Internet to an unnamed,

single-sourced hearsay report on an evening

news program to a definitive statement of fact

on a wire agency.

That evening, as Time and Newsweek were

putting the finishing touches on their latest

issues, Time’s Web site, foreshadowing what

would appear in the magazine itself, reported

that “a source familiar with the investigation”

said that “Lewinsky once unfurled a dress soiled

by what she said was the President’s semen.

Holding the garment like a trophy, she told

Tripp, ‘I’ll never wear it again.’ ” Who was

Time’s source for this quote? Only a source

loosely and vaguely described as one “familiar

with the investigation,” hardly hard journalism,

which suggested Time wanted the appearance

of something original, and it settled on the

“unfurled” dress.

In the chaotic frenzy of the first weekend of

Monicagate, the talk shows on radio and televi-

sion greeted the dress story as a dream come

true. The alleged dress inspired irresponsible

punditry as well as tsk-tsk commentary on the

dangers of sourceless news. Newsweek’s

Jonathan Alter provided an excellent example of

sober commentary in a journalistic environment

gone wild. On MSNBC, which in fact converted

the scandal into a nonstop series of reports, he

argued against wild speculation. “We don’t know

where [the dress story] comes from, and yet it’s

in the bloodstream now and it’s very, very diffi-

cult once it gets into that national conversation

to get it out again.” Alter then quoted an appro-

priate aphorism from Winston Churchill—“a lie

makes it halfway around the world before the

truth can get its pants on”—as a way of under-

scoring the speed with which rumors can enter

the national consciousness and gain a degree of

acceptability.

A week after the story first broke, the

CBS Evening News tried to put the dress genie

back in the bottle. It reported that “no DNA

evidence or stains have been found on a dress

that belongs to Lewinsky.” CBS, in this way,

continued to confirm the existence of a possi-

bly incriminating dress but not one containing

Drudge’s “DNA” nor ABC’s “semen stain.”

Again, evidence was flimsy to non-existent; and

yet when a story of such mass interest erupts,

it ought to be justified as “news” by more than

its appearance on the Internet and its subse-

quent pick-up by CBS and other mainstream

news outfits. To be considered reliable,

reportable news, it should be independently

verified.

The dress story stood as an example of

journalistic excess diminished over time by the

absence of any hard evidence and by the rise of

new and distracting issues. Only much later in

the reporting of Monicagate, when the endgame

began in late July, 1998, did the dress re-emerge

as a presumed fact. Lewinsky was reported to

have delivered a navy-blue dress to Starr as part

of an immunity agreement. Several journalists

used this disclosure to vindicate their earlier

reporting, conveniently forgetting that all of

those stories were based on one highly question-

able source. Even Michael Isikoff—he of the

Today show dismissal of the dress story—told

Hardball’s Chris Matthews on August 3, 1998:

“As you know, when it was first reported in Jan-

uary, there were a lot of snickers and a lot of

cynics saying, ‘Oh come on’. . . skeptics that the

dress really existed and you had people like

Steve Brill talking about the phantom dress and

how horrible it was that the media would go

with such stories. I mean, the fact is that the

dress has a lineage and, in fact, it was first dis-

cussed, first shown, by Monica Lewinsky to

Linda Tripp late last fall.” Revisionism runs

deep in today’s newsrooms.

2. “Breaking News” in the 24-hour News Cycle

Once upon a time, in that quaint era of

journalism preceding the emergence of the

24-hour news cycle, reporters did, on rare occa-

sions, open a television report by declaring

“CBS News has learned . . . .” It was, for its

time, an arresting phrase—a way of capturing

the audience’s attention for a story of major

importance. It was usually an exclusive story,

the result of an exhaustive investigation or an

illuminating leak. Only on CBS, the announce-

ment seemed to be shouting, could you get jour-

nalism of this quality and insight. Overused, the

catchy phrase (“CBS News has learned . . . ”)

could have lost its value; properly used, it only

served to underscore the special nature of the

report that was about to be aired.

But now, in the era of the 24-hour news

cycle, as competition among the various cable

networks has reached levels of ferocious com-

bat, the urge of even the best reporter to

announce exclusive ownership of a fact or even

of a rumor has become almost irresistible. All-

news networks and Internet Web sites have

been posting an inordinate number of bulletins

(“news flashes,” as they are sometimes called),

Marvin Kalb 17

partly because they want to show off their tech-

nological and journalistic prowess and partly

because they want to discourage their restless

viewers from migrating to other places. The

effect has been to dilute the value of a bulletin.

On CNN, it is not the word “bulletin”

but rather the phrase “BREAKING NEWS,”

splashed across the screen to the accompani-

ment of a Beethovian musical coda, that is used

to introduce a host of major (and not so major)

news stories, such as assassinations, election

results, wars and earthquakes. Properly used, the

dramatic phrase (“BREAKING NEWS”) can

attract an audience for important news. Over-

used, it can easily lose its appeal and be seen as

a PR device of little value.

On Saturday, January 24, 1998, at 6

P.M.,

“BREAKING NEWS” suddenly filled CNN

screens, and the bearded and respected Wolf

Blitzer, a correspondent of uncommon ability,

appeared with the White House as backdrop. He

looked exceptionally serious, perhaps because

he realized that he was about to step into

highly treacherous terrain with the first author-

itative report that the President might have to

resign as a result of the alleged affair. “Despite

the President’s public and carefully phrased

public [sic] denials,” Blitzer intoned, “several of

his closest friends and advisors, both in and out

of the government, now tell CNN that they

believe he almost certainly did have a sexual

relation[ship] with . . . Lewinsky, and they’re

talking among themselves about the possibility

of a resignation . . . .”

White House officials watched Blitzer’s

report in their offices, learning for the first time

about the resignation rumors with astonishment

and anger. They could—at the same time—see

Blitzer on CNN and on the White House lawn

only a few hundred yards away. Several wanted to

wring his neck; a few later expressed their out-

rage to him personally, truly disgusted by the fact

that a reporter of Blitzer’s stature would air a

report on CNN so loaded with innuendo, rumor,

ambiguity and a strong sense of presidential guilt.

Because Blitzer was presumed to have

excellent sources in and out of the White House,

his report picked up an instant following among

journalists with less imposing contacts, and it

rapidly made its way through the food chain of

Washington journalism. It marked a high (and

low) point in scandal coverage, a superb illustra-

tion of the misuse of bulletins for the dissemina-

tion of gossip and rumor.

First Blitzer elaborated on his comment

that “several of [the President’s] closest friends

and advisors, both in and out of government”

believed that (1) he had an affair with Lewinsky

and (2) he would have to resign as a result.

Using language alternately so condemning and

yet so qualified, Blitzer reached for the presiden-

tial jugular, only to seem at the same time to be

pulling back. He said the President’s friends

“don’t know for sure and they were, of course,

not present, if in fact it did occur. They think

that it’s probable; it’s almost certain, that it

occurred, probably, for the most part. And I got

different explanations talking to these people—

for one, they say they think there is a track

record. This is probably not the first such

alleged incident, and they say that the informa-

tion that they’ve been gleaning from various

sources appears to be very, very compelling.”

Throughout the evening and on into Sun-

day morning, CNN led its news and talk pro-

grams with variations of Blitzer’s “exclusive”

story. Unnamed FOB’s (Friends of Bill) thought

that it was “almost certain” that the President

had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky “proba-

bly, for the most part.” The affair was first

described as “alleged” but then later the “infor-

mation” was described as “very, very com-

pelling.” From the beginning, the story lacked

the hard edge of a news bulletin. It was presented

as a breathless expose, typical of the times and

perfect for talk show fodder. And, indeed, it was

feverishly debated on one talk show after

another, acquiring, through sheer repetition, the

appearance of established fact. There was never

any confirmation, but that hardly mattered.

There was no salon in Washington that had

not heard and discussed a rumor about the Presi-

dent’s womanizing. The Blitzer story, packaged

as “BREAKING NEWS” in the hothouse envi-

ronment of a 24-hour news cycle, merely rein-

forced the already widespread perception that

the President was a morally corrupt leader—a

man of superior intellectual capabilities mixed

with an uncontrollable sex drive. Normally this

would have been the story discussed around the

office watercooler or at cocktail parties and,

increasingly, on a succession of talk shows that

thrive on endless chatter about the rich and

powerful. But it would not have been the

essence of a news bulletin—at least, not until

recent years when the line separating commen-

tary from news seems to have melted in the

competitive heat of the “new news.”

3. A Super Bowl Bulletin

Nothing is more sacrosanct in American

television than coverage of the Super Bowl.

18 The Rise of the “New News”

Networks battle for the privilege of carrying this

premier sporting event. Commercials produce

hundreds of millions of dollars. No one—but

absolutely no one—is allowed to break into this

carefully constructed extravaganza, preparations

for which run two uninterrupted weeks. But on

Super Bowl Sunday, January 25, 1998, even the

nation’s most sacred sports ritual proved vulnera-

ble to the hyped bulletin. If anyone needed addi-

tional evidence that mainstream news was being

forced to change its underlying values to compete

with the new technology of cable, the Internet

and the 24-hour news cycle, it was provided dra-

matically by NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw—

he of the “big bang theory of journalism.”

The story actually began a few hours ear-

lier. On ABC’s This Week, Jackie Judd, citing

sources unnamed and perhaps even unknown,

disclosed that one or two witnesses might have

seen an “intimate” encounter between the Pres-

ident and Lewinsky. How would the Sunday

pundits handle the possibility of witnesses?

They loved it. A few even predicted that trapped

in this manner, a deer frozen in headlights, the

President would have to resign—and soon. NBC

felt that it had “no choice” but to do the

improbable, and what up to that moment would

have been deemed the impossible. At exactly

4:30

P.M., less than two hours before kickoff,

anchor Tom Brokaw and White House corre-

spondent Claire Shipman broke into the Super

Bowl buildup with a bulletin.

Brokaw popped up on the screen and

declared, “there’s an unconfirmed report that, at

some point, someone caught the president and

Ms. Lewinsky in an intimate moment.” The

usually unflappable anchorman then turned to

Shipman for more details. Normally he would

have provided them himself, but he didn’t have

any. Nor, for that matter, did Shipman. “Well,”

she replied, “sources in Ken Starr’s office tell us

that they are investigating that possibility but

that they haven’t confirmed it.”

It was obvious to anyone that NBC had

nothing to add to ABC’s story, and the ABC

report was based only on unnamed and unknown

sources. Undoubtedly NBC tried to generate

independent confirmation, but failed, leaving it

in the painfully embarrassing position of having

to echo a rival network’s claim before one of the

largest audiences ever to gather around the tube.

Such a story would not ordinarily merit time on

NBC Nightly News, much less justify a breaking

news bulletin, but in the crazy, competitive mad-

ness of scandal coverage, NBC felt that it had no

choice but to demonstrate that it was on top of

every nuance of this developing story. Brokaw

later admitted that competitive pressures drove

NBC to its extraordinary decision to interrupt

Super Bowl coverage. “I guess it was because

of ABC’s report,” he explained. “Our only ratio-

nale could be that it’s ‘out there,’ so let’s talk

about it.”

One of Brokaw’s colleagues, who refused to

be identified, characterized the network’s moti-

vation a bit more cynically. “Our anchor and

White House reporter come on the air and say,

here’s something that we don’t know is true, but

we just thought we’d tell you anyway just for

the hell of it, so we can say we reported it just

in case it turns out to be true.”

Is his cynicism misplaced?

4. An Embarrassing Retraction

The story of a “witness” to a private meet-

ing between the President and the intern,

already reported by ABC and NBC, led to an

embarrassing retraction.

On Monday evening, January 26, 1998, the

Dallas Morning News posted a story on its Web

site, which ran in Tuesday’s early edition, say-

ing that there was indeed a “witness” to a

“compromising” meeting between Clinton and

Lewinsky and that two “attorneys familiar with

the obstruction-of-justice investigation,”

vaguely linked to Starr’s office, were the

sources for the story. The Dallas Morning News

said, “There is at least one witness who saw

[the president and Lewinsky] together in a com-

promising situation.” Once on the Internet, the

story spread like wildfire through every parched

newsroom in Washington. Almost immediately,

it was picked up by the Associated Press. Larry

King on CNN interrupted his interview show to

read the AP dispatch. Geraldo Rivera on CNBC,

not to be outdone, read it to his audience, too.

A few hours later, Ted Koppel opened Nightline

with the same report. This story was clearly

news.

Yet, when Nightline went off the air,

shortly after midnight, the Dallas Morning

News did what no news organization had yet

done—it issued a retraction. With obvious

embarrassment, the paper acknowledged that

“the source for the story, a longtime Washington

lawyer familiar with the case, later said the

information provided for Tuesday’s report was

inaccurate. The source is not affiliated with Mr.

Starr’s office.” There were supposed to have

been two sources; now suddenly there was one.

We know that the Dallas Morning News

was not the only news organization to run with

Marvin Kalb 19

the original ABC story, but it was the first to

rush into print with additional details that were

inadequately checked and confirmed. Were it

not for the excellent reputation of the Dallas

Morning News, it is likely that its report would

not have echoed through the corridors of jour-

nalism on Monday evening. Larry King later

explained, “You get handed something, you read

it . . . it wasn’t the New York Post. It was the AP

and the Dallas Morning News.”

Editor Ralph Langer took on the confusion

about whether there were one or two sources. In

the formal retraction, he said that the paper had

“unwittingly relied on only one source to pub-

lish its original story. Because of a ‘miscommu-

nication’ between Dallas and the Washington

bureau, senior editors mistakenly believed a sec-

ond source existed.” Even more embarrassing to

Langer and his colleagues was the fact that the

original source proved to be unreliable, initially

confirming the story when it was read to him on

the phone, but later calling back in a panic to

deny it.

As the official explanation by the Dallas

Morning News evolved, the two people who

originally served as sources for the story only

later to retreat into anonymity have since been

identified as one of Washington’s famous cou-

ples—Joseph DiGenova and Victoria Toensing.

Both are veteran Washington insiders, currently

acting as outside counsel for the Republican

staff of a House committee investigation of the

Teamsters union and its ties to the Democratic

Party. In addition, DiGenova and Toensing rep-

resent GOP congressman Dan Burton in a con-

troversial ethics probe, and Toensing also

represents Marianne Gingrich, wife of House

Speaker Newt Gingrich, on yet another ethics

probe. In other words, if anyone needed a model

couple for an advertisement about committed

Republican operatives in Washington, DiGenova

and Toensing would have perfectly fit the bill.

Yet, in their many TV appearances, their politi-

cal affiliation often goes unnoted—they are usu-

ally introduced simply as “legal analysts.” More

to the point, the Dallas Morning News never

mentioned their GOP ties either.

An x-ray of these sources for an especially

sensitive and important story is quite revealing.

Toensing first learned about a possible “wit-

ness,” when she was approached by a friend of

a former White House staffer who had heard

another White House staffer claim to be the one

who saw Clinton and Lewinsky in an “embar-

rassing” situation. The information—at this

point—was third-hand. Toensing was asked

whether she would consider representing the

“witness” if this person decided to talk to Starr.

Husband DiGenova happened to overhear wife

Toensing discussing this possibility, and he then

conveyed his understanding of the situation to

Dallas Morning News reporter David Jackson. In

other words, DiGenova’s overheard and unsub-

stantiated understanding was fifth-hand.

“I thought they’d check it,” DiGenova

later explained. “All I did was give them a vague

tip of what I had heard Vicki talking about on

the phone.”

From “vague tip” to hard news.

Journalism often follows a helter-skelter

libretto, in which a chance occurrence can play

as prominent a role in a news story as a care-

fully researched analysis. For example, on Mon-

day afternoon, January 26, Toensing told friends

in Starr’s office that they might soon be hearing

from a possible “witness” to a Clinton-Lewin-

sky encounter. Jackson, meanwhile, checked

DiGenova’s information with a source in Starr’s

office; he was told that one of Starr’s colleagues

had also heard about a “witness.” Jackson then

felt that he had not only two sources but also

the making of a good story. Unbeknownst to

him, at just about that very time, Toensing

heard that the “witness” had decided not to go

to Starr. She then assumed that this part of the

unfolding drama was dead.

But it wasn’t. Shortly after 5

P.M., Jackson

telephoned DiGenova to double-check his

story. DiGenova was not in his office; he was

away doing a television interview program—so

Toensing took the call. When she heard Jack-

son’s tale, she told him that it was not true. “If

my husband told you that, he’s wrong,” she

said. Jackson faced an awkward dilemma: to go

with the story, or to kill it. He decided, after

consultation with his editors, to go with it. He

wrote the story for Tuesday morning’s paper,

and he posted it on the Dallas Morning News

Web site, where, as we know, it made a splash.

The AP bulletined the information about a

“witness” to a possibly compromising

encounter.

At 9

P.M., Toensing happened to be watching

CNBC’s Geraldo Rivera. She was stunned to hear

Rivera read the AP dispatch about a “witness.”

That evening, as the story picked up momentum

in Washington, Jackson called Toensing once

again; and she told him, in no uncertain terms,

that if he had only her and her husband as

sources, the story was essentially sourceless—it

was wrong. Jackson brought the depressing news

to his editors, and the decision was made shortly

after midnight to kill the “witness” story.

20 The Rise of the “New News”20 The Rise of the “New News”

The “witness” saga demonstrated that the

Internet had transformed the news cycle for

most newspapers. In the old days, the publica-

tion of “exclusives” had to wait for the morning

(or afternoon) edition of the newspaper. No mat-

ter how tempting it might have been to publish

the news earlier, there was no place to do it.

Tabloids, many years ago, ran special editions—

“extras”—with the latest news, but economic

considerations reduced this option to a distant

memory. The new technology now allows news-

papers to scoop themselves by putting exclu-

sives on the Internet before they are actually

published in the papers themselves. In turn, this

breakthrough encourages editors and reporters to

go on radio and television talks shows to sing

their own praises before many of them have

even checked and double-checked the accuracy

of their stories.

The Dallas Morning News had the courage

to check and to kill its “exclusive.” But it had to

pay a damaging price in the form of a retraction.

5. Even the Wall Street Journal

After two weeks of scandal coverage, even

the respected Wall Street Journal fell victim to

the temptations of the Internet.

On Wednesday afternoon, February 4, two

star investigative reporters for the Wall Street

Journal, Brian Duffy and Glenn Simpson, drafted

an incendiary story to the effect that a White

House steward had told Starr’s grand jury that

he had seen Clinton and Lewinsky alone, pre-

sumably in or near the Oval Office, and later,

after they had left the room, he found tissues

with “lipstick and other stains” on them. The

reporters tried checking their story with the

White House press office, but they did not wait

for a response. The Journal posted the story on

its Web site and prepared it for publication in

Thursday’s edition. In less than an hour, Wash-

ington bureau chief Alan Murray, a highly

respected reporter, began promoting the Duffy-

Simpson story on a CNBC talk show. It was

now “out there.”

But, by the time the story appeared in

Thursday’s paper, it had been changed. Instead

of the steward telling his tale to the grand jury,

he was now telling it to Secret Service agents at

the White House—a small but important dis-

tinction in a criminal investigation. Why the

hurry then? Why put the story, which appar-

ently still needed checking, on the Journal Web

site? Murray admitted to Brill that “he had

heard that ABC was also on the story and that

he wanted to beat them.” But there was more to

his admission. According to Brill, he also

“acknowledged that his paper had just com-

pleted a joint venture agreement with NBC to

provide editorial content to its CNBC cable net-

work and that, ‘yes, it was in my mind that we

could impress them with this.’”

The steward story bore a striking resem-

blance to other “witness” accounts, but, surpris-

ingly, it did not spawn a rush of similar stories,

perhaps because after two weeks of sensational

tale-telling, the Washington press corps, rapped

sharply for lousy reporting, began to grow a bit

cautious about sourcing. ABC’s World News

Tonight mentioned only that the steward had

been called as a witness before Starr’s grand jury

and that “he might have been in a position to

observe Mr. Clinton without the president’s

knowledge.” NBC’s Tom Brokaw said that

Nightly News decided that the story, while com-

pelling, “didn’t have legs.”

Finally, on Monday,

February 9, The Journal retracted its story of

February 4–5, saying only that the steward “told

a grand jury he didn’t see President Clinton

alone with Monica Lewinsky, contrary to a

report in the Wall Street Journal last week.”

Managing editor Paul Steiger apologized for the

error. “We deeply regret our erroneous report.”

Part Four: New Economics

New technology changed the physical char-

acter and reach of journalism. Changes in the

economic structure of journalism precipitated

an irrevocable transformation of the nature of

news—marked, most recognizably, by the rise of

“soft” news, the proliferation of pundit televi-

sion and the power of ratings.

The Bottom Line

Somewhere during the merger-mania of the

1980s, as family-owned businesses all but disap-

peared, news organizations became less involved

with disseminating information and more con-

cerned with turning profits. Critic David Shaw

of the Los Angeles Times, one of the sharpest

students of journalism’s bottom line, wrote:

“There is little question that the shift from indi-

vidual and family-ownership to public owner-

ship has increased the demand for higher

short-term profits.”

NBC Nightly News is now

expected to generate revenue in the same way

that ER makes money for the network. By using

news divisions to generate the same type of

profits produced by entertainment programming,

network executives have required news organi-

zations to restructure their format. PBS’ News-

Hour may be the best place to find straight,

Marvin Kalb 21

serious news—“it takes courage to be boring,”

said ex-anchor Robert MacNeil; other networks

can no longer afford the luxury of being simply

serious. Colorful graphics, new sets and easily

digestible “soft” segments compete to attract

today’s rushed viewer.

Newspapers have also joined this new eco-

nomic world. Walter Cronkite has bemoaned the

fact that “stockholders in publicly held newspa-

per chains are expecting returns similar to those

they’d get by investing in industrial enter-

prises.”

In addition, financial incentives are

now linked to the performance of many newspa-

per editors and reporters, blurring the line

between public service and personal gain. As a

result, more print organizations are inching

closer to the USA Today model of “news lite,”

ironically at the same time that USA Today is

trying to be more like the Washington Post.

All of this economic pressure comes at a

time when competition from cable networks

and the Internet has splintered the reading and

viewing audience. These new technologies fit

smoothly into the world of profit margins

because of their easily created products. Internet

Web sites are inexpensive to maintain, so a man

like Matt Drudge, who was once described as

having no real job, can operate out of a one-bed-

room apartment in Hollywood and suddenly

become the buzzman around which a corner of

the political world revolves.

Cable news net-

works fill their programming schedules with

pundit talk shows, instead of relying upon

expensive field reporters. Even with a small rat-

ings percentage or readership, these outlets can

make money simply because of their low cost

and niche market.

In stark contrast, broadcast networks have

been consistently losing viewers for the past

decade. In an effort to stay above the swirling

waters of the new economic system, networks

have been forced to restructure their conceptions

of news and its place within programming. News

must not only inform, but entertain and attract

viewers who are “shopping” for news alternatives.

“Soft” News

Out of this whirlwind mix of news, enter-

tainment and profits has emerged the television

newsmagazine. Once limited to 60 Minutes on

CBS, the genre has exploded. In the fall of 1998,

the three major broadcast networks plan to air

newsmagazines six nights a week—up from just

two nights in 1983. It’s not hard to see why.

During the week of August 10–16, 1998, six out

of the top ten shows in the Nielsen ratings were

newsmagazines. This trend held constant during

the summer re-run months, even though the

newsmagazines themselves were airing old pro-

grams—or updated versions of old programs. An

additional incentive is the relatively cheap cost

of these shows—an hour of Dateline costs NBC

about $450,000, compared with the $1.2 million

that networks pay to produce the average hour-

long drama.

The proliferation of newsmagazines is

not on its own a sign of declining journalism.

60 Minutes used to be synonymous with hard-

hitting reporting and investigative work. How-

ever, in the crowded field, newsmagazines now

rely on “soft,” human interest stories to attract

viewers. In the first six months of 1998, 60 Min-

utes aired 22 episodes—a total of 62 different

stories. Of this number, an astounding 60 per-

cent were celebrity profiles, “can you believe?”

investigative reports, or lifestyle pieces. Only a

small amount—13 percent—would qualify as

“hard” news, and every one of those stories

dealt with international issues. The remaining

17 stories, including the problematic Kathleen

Willey interview, would normally be defined as

falling between “hard” and “soft” news.

Table 2. 60 Minutes Story Segments—

January Through June, 1998

Quality of Number of Percentage of

Segment Shows Shows

“Soft” News 37 60%

“Hard” News 8 13%

Remainder 17 27%

Total 62 segments 100%

The same “softening” of news has taken

place inside print newsmagazines. The focus

has shifted significantly from foreign and

domestic policy news to “lifestyle” and “news

you can use” coverage. While 45 percent of

newsmagazine covers in 1987 featured straight

news topics, the total number dipped substan-

tially to only 20 percent by 1997.

Straight

news fails to generate the type of newsstand

sales that follow covers featuring Princess

Diana or the cast of Seinfeld. And in the new

news market, the consumer knows best. A sur-

vey of network news, magazines and major

papers, conducted by the Project for Excellence

in Journalism concluded that celebrity, scandal,

gossip and other “human interest” stories have

22 The Rise of the “New News”

increased from 15 percent to an astonishing 43

percent of the total media coverage in the past

twenty years.

Pundit Heaven

As the broadcast networks have battled to

recapture a share of the viewing audience, all-

news cable networks have fine-tuned their own

specialized product—political talk. The tantaliz-

ing combination of low cost and acceptable rat-

ings has nourished a growing slate of political

news and opinion shows. And while the genre

displayed its potential during earlier events like

the Gulf War and the O. J. Simpson trial, it has

found its fountain of youth with the Lewinsky

story.

CNN, the veteran of 24-hour news, boasts

ten shows devoted to political talk and news,

including the incredibly successful Inside Poli-

tics. IP began as an outlet for following cam-

paign news, but now stays on-air even between

election cycles to lend its particular brand of

political insight to any kind of news. No matter

what the legislative or policy issue of the day,

on IP it can easily be cast in purely political

terms, with winners and losers. “What’s going

on up on Capitol Hill today?” We may not learn

about the day’s policy debates, but we will cer-

tainly get the latest information on Newt Gin-

grich’s struggle for control of the GOP. The

more recent additions to the cable news line-up

have copied this approach to politics as a model

for forming both straight news and discussion

programs.

The newest kid on the block, Fox News

Channel, was launched in October 1996 and can

already be seen in 33 million households around

the country, because of incentives owner Rupert

Murdoch offered to cable operators. Ordinarily, a

start-up news channel would not automatically

be added to the basic offerings in a cable pack-

age, but by making it profitable for cable opera-

tors, Murdoch established his access to a large

viewing audience from the beginning. The new

network has six full-time political talk shows,

including the scandal spawn Matt Drudge Show

and a summer addition, The Beltway Boys, star-

ring veteran pundits Fred Barnes and Morton

Kondracke.

NBC’s sister channels round out the cast

of cable news networks climbing aboard the

Lewinsky bandwagon. MSNBC operates as both

an on-line site and a cable news channel, using

political talk as a springboard for filling its

programming schedule. Nine hours of purely

political news and talk every day include the

made-for-Monica nightly show White House

in Crisis, starring ex-ESPN anchor Keith

Olbermann. NBC’s business news channel—

CNBC—has found politics more profitable than

business and economic talk. Its schedule is

packed with shows like Hardball with Chris

Matthews, Equal Time, Rivera Live and Tim

Russert. From 7:30

P.M. to 3 A.M.—with the

exception of a 30-minute break for business

news—CNBC is all politics, all the time.

Compared to the traditional broadcast net-

works, which normally only have an hour or two

of punditry per week, cable networks can fill 24

hours a day with political talk, enhancing their

ability to capitalize on a scandal. These huge sto-

ries do not just boost ratings for one evening or

one show—they create a market that never

before existed. As Steve Brill has noted, a single

scandal can “ignit[e] a rocket under the entire

revenue structure of the enterprise,” doing for a

network what coverage of the Iran hostage crisis

did for ABC and Nightline in the late 1970s.

The day the Lewinsky story broke on January 21,

1998, MSNBC producers immediately discussed

using this new scandal to create a new show.

White House in Crisis debuted on February 3, a

mere two weeks after the scandal coverage began,

and quickly signed on respected journalists,

including the Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne, to

act as commentators for the nightly program.

Sharing the Wealth

The only requirements for a basic political

talk show are a studio, a few chairs and a stable

of guests willing to share their opinions. That

cast is never hard to find in a loquacious city

like Washington, but it is even easier when

newsweeklies use the shows for self-promotion.

Print and television organizations have entered

into a marriage of convenience to fill seats on

pundit shows and enhance the visibility of cer-

tain newspapers and magazines. Fifteen years

ago, New York Times reporters and columnists

were not allowed to appear on television inter-

view programs; now they are encouraged to

appear. The Wall Street Journal has an agree-

ment with NBC to provide information and

reporters to CNBC. Several newspapers employ

media consultants to coach their Washington

correspondents for television appearances. Print

reporters are courted by networks for exclusive

contracts as political commentators. The rules

of the game are to be witty, quick and get the

company name out.

Newsweek has been the most blatant and

adept at this venture. Editor Evan Thomas has

Marvin Kalb 23

described how the magazine’s “PR department

decided to do a blitz on television and get all of

us out there . . . It’s something the newsweek-

lies always want to do nowadays—get men-

tioned and get noticed—and in this story we

really wanted to be identified with it because it

was our story.”

Michael Isikoff identified a

direct financial tie-in for reporters when he

revealed that “Newsweek actually pays you to

go on [political talk shows] . . . because they

consider it a promotion for the magazine.”

the span of sixteen hours on Thursday, January

22, Newsweek reporters and editors appeared

40 times on television or radio. Editors and

reporters, and even correspondents with no

direct connection to the story, trooped around

town to remind everyone of Newsweek’s exclu-

sive role in the saga.

The media blitz by PR departments may be

paying off —in anticipation of increased news-

stand sales, Newsweek increased it press run by

50 percent for its February 2 issue. Its main

competitor, Time, published 100,000 extra

copies of the January 25 magazine.

The cover

images of Lewinsky hugging the president may

have more to do with sales than the television

appearances of a handful of reporters and editors,

but these talking heads seem to be in their new

roles for good.

The Elusive Rating

Now that journalism revolves more around

generating profits than performing a public ser-

vice, success is judged by sales and ratings. Tele-

vision seems particularly susceptible to the lure

of a pot of gold at the end of the ratings rainbow.

While “soft” news provides ratings stability, it is

the sensational, scandalous story that provides

the spike in the ratings. Every story with even

the potential of becoming a ratings winner is

pursued by networks in the hope that it will

translate into profits. Even if the story does not

pan out, failure to cover it could result in lower

ratings for a network. Dan Rather candidly

explained: “The answer is fear. That everybody

is afraid that a story will take off and be ‘a stone

cold ratings winner’ and fear runs rampant in

every newsroom in America.”

It all seems to

have started with coverage of the O. J. Simpson

trial. “If I went to our research people,” Rather

said, “the first thing they would do is pull out

their hole card ace, which is, well, look what

happened in the O. J. Simpson case when the

ratings went up.”

So what do ratings numbers tell us about

the power of the Lewinsky story? Good news for

cable, indifferent results for the broadcast net-

works. During the first three months of 1998,

CNN’s primetime programming jumped 22 per-

cent to a 1.1 rating, representing 802,000 house-

holds. CNBC’s overall schedule also increased

viewership by 40 percent, equaling a 0.7 rating.

The newer networks of MSNBC and FNC were

not monitored by Nielsen last year, but Fox

executives say that their 0.3 rating for the first

quarter is three times higher than last year’s

numbers, while MSNBC’s rating for just the first

day of coverage jumped 131 percent, eventually

settling down to a 0.4 rating.

It is important to keep the ratings in per-

spective. Although the all-news networks have

clearly benefited from the Lewinsky story, they

still trail many other cable outlets in the ratings

competition. Comedy Central, for example,

earned a rating of 0.7 for the first quarter of

1998, with Nickelodeon at 1.9, and Lifetime at

1.8. Even so, combined cable outlets have been

steadily gaining ground on the big four broadcast

networks. Just four years ago, broadcast net-

works had a 3 to 1 advantage in attracting view-

ers, but that gap is now just under 2 to 1.

In stark contrast to the rise in ratings for

cable networks, broadcast networks did not ben-

efit from all-Monica coverage during the first

days and weeks of the scandal. In fact, during

the first two days of coverage in January, CBS

Evening News showed absolutely no rating

change, NBC Nightly News posted a 2 percent

increase and ABC World News Tonight gained

the most with a moderately impressive 6 per-

cent increase. The total audience share for the

first two weeks of coverage showed virtually no

change for any of the three networks. Ratings

were actually higher for some of the networks

during the first week of January, for reasons

obviously unrelated to the Lewinsky story. Even

so, network executives continued to trumpet

the call of “ratings” in order to justify the domi-

nation of scandal stories, special programs, and

breaking news reports.

The executive decision to require news

divisions to become profitable has caused an

unstoppable chain reaction in news. Pressure

to produce profits has led to a reliance upon

ratings and sales. How do news organizations

“sell” their product? Often, by watering it

down to attract a common denominator—“soft”

news television programming, magazine spreads

and USA Today-style newspapers reflect this

strategy. In addition, executives look for pro-

grams that are easy to produce, cost very little

and are capable of attracting significantly large

24 The Rise of the “New News”

audiences. Throw the ingredients of Monicagate

into this cauldron and a new breed of journalism

emerges.

Part Five: “New News”

The new news is more immediate, more

sensational, more market- and profit-driven than

previous incarnations. It is not merely the

appearance of news that has changed, however;

the very nature of journalism has been altered.

Never has this been more apparent than during

the early coverage of Monicagate. We shall look

at four characteristics of the new news, magni-

fied through the lens of scandal.

1. Sourcing

Monicagate broke in a story on the Inter-

net, written by a man widely ridiculed within

the journalism community. Matt Drudge told a

squeamish audience at the National Press Club

in June, 1998, that the editorial review and over-

sight of the Drudge Report consists solely of his

personal judgment regarding the credibility of a

source. He almost never requires more than one

source for a report and rarely gives any distin-

guishing clue about the origin of his informa-

tion. While this total reliance on anonymous

sources is not a fixture in American newsrooms,

it is a disease that is catching. Within recent

years—most dramatically in Monicagate cover-

age—viewers and readers have noticed substan-

tial changes in how reports are (and are not)

sourced. Even with a story containing charges as

explosive as Monicagate, an alarming number of

journalists were less likely to abide by tradi-

tional “Woodward-and-Bernstein” standards of

journalism.

The Committee of Concerned Journalists

conducted a study of how sourcing was used in

print and television during the first two weeks

of Monicagate. Their findings should disturb

anyone who cares about the future of journal-

ism. Only 26 percent of the stories during this

period were based upon named sources—the

most open type of reporting. The remainder—

the vast majority of reports—were based on

anonymous sourcing. Although anonymous

sources are acceptable and sometimes necessary,

stories based entirely on such sources leave

readers and viewers with as many questions as

answers. Even so, a full 40 percent of reports

based on anonymous sourcing relied on a single

source for the information. And although anony-

mous sourcing dominated reporting during the

first few weeks of the scandal, journalists were

more likely to characterize these sources in the

vaguest possible terms—“sources said”,

“sources told our news organization”—than

with a specific job description or indication of

political/personal bias.

As the first adrenaline rush of Monicagate

wore off, the press took a collective breath and

began to revert to more traditional practice.

Between the first frantic weeks in late January

and the slower pace of March, the use of two or

more named sources rose from 1 percent to 4

percent of all reporting—still nothing to write

home about. The use of two or more anonymous

sources dropped from 15 percent to 8 percent of

the total coverage, as dependence on anonymous

sources declined.

Cyberspace has generated a corresponding

cyberspeed for the new news—if journalists take

a few minutes to track down an additional

source or double-check their information, they

risk losing their exclusive story to any number

of competitors. Exacerbating this new competi-

tive speed is the breakdown in traditional editor-

ial safeguards that have resulted from new

economic pressures. Many news organizations

have been forced to cut or eliminate fact-

checker positions that might wave red flags at

shaky sources. The Wall Street Journal and Dal-

las Morning News are just two of the most

prominent news organizations to be embarrassed

by inaccurate information or inadequate sourc-

ing. Both relied upon anonymous sources for

their reporting and were burned for their efforts.

The no-holds-barred premiere of Monica-

gate on the Drudge Report was an embarrass-

ment to traditional journalism, but it was the

type of tenuous reporting that was expected of

Matt Drudge. In contrast, the first television

report of Monicagate on ABC’s Good Morning

America should have been rock-solid. Instead, at

A.M. on January 21, 1998, Jackie Judd used one

anonymous, uncharacterized source as the basis

for the explosive charge of an obstruction of jus-

tice investigation involving President Clinton.

Half an hour later, her story was bolstered by

the appearance of another source. Did it matter

that she had not felt comfortable enough with

this source thirty minutes earlier to use it in her

original story? The explosive nature of the story

obviously persuaded Judd to air her report with

just one source in order to break the news. That

very quality and substance of the charge, how-

ever, should also have urged caution. Sources are

not mere items on a check-off list that are nec-

essary before an unsubstantiated report can

become a “story.” They are important guidelines

that journalists ought to respect.

Marvin Kalb 25

2. “Out there”

In the not-so-distant past, stories entered

the national dialogue only after extensive cover-

age in major newspapers, nightly reports on one

of the major television news shows and subse-

quent analysis in barbershops and water coolers

around the country. With the advent of new

technology, an item can emerge on an Internet

Web site, worm its way into a late-night come-

dian’s act, appear as a topic on a morning radio

show and catapult onto the pages of the New

York Times—all within the span of a few hours.

The number of outlets available to track news

reports gives some sensational items the appear-

ance of being “everywhere.” And if it’s on the

radio and television, and in the paper and news-

magazine—everywhere you turn—it seems that

it must be true.

In other words, many news outlets feel

compelled to report a story not because they

have individually followed it or have even veri-

fied the sources, but simply because it exists in

the public domain. Stuart Taylor, of the

National Journal, calls this phenomenon “creep-

ing relevance,” explaining that once such a story

moves from tabloid rumor to mainstream news

item, it acquires authority simply because of its

widespread currency.

The more an item is

reported, the more entrenched and “out there” it

becomes, until the pressure on most news out-

lets to cover it is intense. Dan Rather has com-

mented on this urgency to report questionable

stories by explaining that “the basic fear, the gut

fear is if we don’t do it, somebody else is going

to do it. And they’re going to get on a ratings

rocket up and you’re going to look stupid and be

selling insurance or real estate. That’s the basic

fear.”

His explanation has less to do with a

news organization’s responsibility to share

breaking news with its audience than with the

competitive fear of losing viewers to a news

organization that is willing to cover a sensa-

tional story.

One danger of the “out there” justification

is the tendency to mistake what is often referred

to as “elite opinion” for general public interest.

This can be even narrower than the stereotypi-

cal “inside the Beltway” mentality and repre-

sent the views of a small number of political

junkies within journalism. Read closely the

explanation Don Hewitt, executive producer of

60 Minutes, gave for the decision to allow

Kathleen Willey to share her detailed allegations

against President Clinton on his show: “If it

wasn’t the Oval Office and it wasn’t a subject

that people were talking impeachment over—

I’m not, but they are—I would imagine that we

would not be as graphic as we would let her be

on the air.”

What Hewitt does not say is that

speculation about impeachment was being gen-

erated almost exclusively by television com-

mentators. Up to that point in mid-March, most

members of Congress and other public officials

had studiously avoided the term. The American

public did not seem focused on the possibility at

all. Hewitt’s decision seems based more on a

media-created maelstrom than a national con-

sensus.

Many editors and producers use the lofty

excuse that they are providing a public service by

reporting stories that their audiences have

already heard about and expect to be covered.

George de Lama, an editor at the Chicago Tri-

bune, said that his paper picked up the ABC

story of a witness to an encounter between

Lewinsky and the President, because “we figured

that our readers had seen it and had access to it.

So we had to acknowledge that it existed.” How-

ever, de Lama also acknowledged that “in retro-

spect, I wish we had not published it . . . It soon

became clear to us that there’s gonna be all kinds

of stuff out there floating around and we should

just publish what we know independently.”

None other than Michael Isikoff echoed

this sentiment when he was pressed on the

Today show to comment on the dress story min-

utes after it first made its television debut. “I’ve

heard a lot of wild things, as I’m sure you have,”

he told Lauer, “but you don’t go on the air and

blab them.” Maybe not, but a common practice

during Monicagate has been to blab first and

verify later.

3. Rush to Judgment

Copies of the Washington Post hit the

streets of Washington early on the morning of

January 21, 1998, bringing the names “Monica

Lewinsky” and “Linda Tripp” to doorsteps

across the city. A short time later, before the

sun had even risen at 7:21

A.M., Sam Donaldson

issued the first impeachment prediction.

Appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America,

Donaldson declared that “if sufficient evidence

exists to really prove that [the President sub-

orned perjury], well, clearly an impeachment

investigation will begin on Capitol Hill of a very

serious nature.”

Donaldson’s comments were followed in

short order by those of George Stephanopoulos,

his ABC colleague who had been one of

Clinton’s closest aides. An obviously rattled

Stephanopoulos—he managed to confuse Cokie

26 The Rise of the “New News”

Roberts for Donaldson—told the nation that

“there’s no question that, as Cokie said, if [the

allegations] are true, they’re not only politically

damaging, but it [sic] could lead to impeachment

proceedings.” Stephanopoulos regained his com-

posure long enough to caution that the media

was focusing on “just questions right now, and

that’s why I think we do all have to take a deep

breath before we go too far here, without under-

estimating their seriousness.” The warning was

appropriate, but Stephanopoulos and his col-

league had already gone “too far” by submitting

the concept of impeachment for national consid-

eration.

ABC legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted that

speculation can give a dangerous validity to

ideas that are really just being tossed around by

journalists. Toobin himself refused to engage

questions about impeachment possibilities

because of the inherent risk of prematurely dis-

cussing such serious issues. “The problem,” he

explained, “is that if, for example, you engage in

a . . . long discussion about the legal elements of

obstruction of justice, you are presupposing that

there was an obstruction of some kind.” In addi-

tion, “a discussion about the elements of

impeachment presupposes that there’s some rel-

evance to an impeachment discussion. Worst of

all, all of the Lewinsky discussions were based

on the one hundred percent certainty that they

had a sexual relationship, and there is pressure

in that direction because it makes the discus-

sion interesting.”

While debates about worst-case scenarios

of impeachment or resignation add spice to

political talk shows, when they are based on

unconfirmed allegations, the speculation is at

best moot and at worst irresponsible. According

to the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a

majority of the allegations leveled against the

President in the first few weeks of Monicagate

were voiced by commentators and not by their

sources. The opinion that “Clinton is in trou-

ble” was attributed to “administration”, “con-

gressional” or other sources only 32 percent of

the time, while the other 68 percent of allega-

tions were made by pundits or reporters. Simi-

larly, the idea that “Clinton is dissembling” was

reported as the opinion of sources only 23 per-

cent of the time—Sam Donaldson and Co. were

responsible for three-quarters of the charges that

the President was intentionally misleading the

country.

Journalists may feel vindicated by the

President’s subsequent admission that he “mis-

led people,” but the speed at which they reached

this conclusion is still a valid issue.

On the January 26 broadcast of This Week

on ABC, Bill Kristol, who worked for Vice Presi-

dent Dan Quayle in the Bush Administration,

offered his candid assessment of President Clin-

ton’s veracity: “Everyone knows he’s lying . . .

lies beget lies. Washington is now, I think,

drowning in deceit and it cannot go on long.”

Kristol’s presumption of guilt is characteristic of

the journalism that has emerged since Water-

gate. President Nixon’s unconcealed contempt

for the press, combined with the discovery of

his deception, only reinforced the skeptical

component of American journalism. Former

Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee wrote that

“journalism was forever changed by the assump-

tion—by most journalists—that after Watergate

government officials generally and instinctively

lied when confronted by embarrassing events,”

and admitted that he was not immune to this

altered mindset. “I found it easier to cope with

Washington by assuming that no one ever told

the complete truth.”

The disconnect between

politicians and the press has only worsened

since Watergate; for his book, Out of Order,

Tom Patterson asked reporters why they consis-

tently portray presidential candidates as liars

and was given the answer, “Because they are

liars.”

This conviction, combined with President

Clinton’s record of shading the truth, spawned a

collective rush to judgment that was best exem-

plified by the White House correspondent for

ABC News. On the January 25 broadcast of This

Week, Sam Donaldson informed his round-table

colleagues that the end of the Clinton presi-

dency was imminent. “If he’s not telling the

truth, I think his presidency is numbered in

days,” Donaldson predicted. “Mr. Clinton, if

he’s not telling the truth and the evidence

shows that, will resign, perhaps this week.”

4. Blurring the Lines

Are there any rules in the “new news” to

govern the growing field of punditry and its ten-

uous relationship to straight reporting? Should

audiences be able to differentiate between the

words of a reporter who appears on the evening

news and the opinion of that same reporter later

in the evening on Larry King Live? Should it

matter that individuals leave politics and walk

right into contracts with news organizations?

Should readers be wary of the fact that the

author of the column they’ve just read about the

scandal of the day is currently in negotiations to

work for one of the major players in the story?

The following examples from Monicagate raise

Marvin Kalb 27

these questions and more, while providing very

few answers.

Commentators or Reporters?

For decades, the line between covering sto-

ries and commenting on them stayed fairly

clear. Most newspapers confined analysis to the

op-ed pages and television networks tradition-

ally delegated editorial comment to one particu-

larly prominent correspondent. Today stories

labeled “news analysis” can commonly be found

on the front pages of America’s major newspa-

pers and, on television, White House reporters

often conclude their pieces with a catchy (and,

more often than not, cynical) comment.

This disintegrating line between reporter

and commentator is of particular concern to

those who work in politics and find their

actions analyzed more often than they are sim-

ply reported. White House advisor Paul Begala, a

master spinner for the Clinton administration,

voiced a concern shared by many when he said:

“I think what is . . . troubling are those who

move from commentary to coverage, sliding

back and forth from opining to reporting. That

becomes very difficult for me to deal with when

I watch a reporter or columnist offering very

harsh opinions about me or my boss, and then

they’re on the phone with me the next day try-

ing hard to be objective, but you can’t.”

Michael Isikoff has defended the use of

reporters as commentators by declaring that

objectivity can be retained even in a discussion

format. “I generally don’t express opinions,” he

said about his appearances on political talk

shows. “I’m talking about stories I’ve already

written about, and I’m giving a context, and an

analytical perspective on stuff that I’ve already

reported on.”

Whether or not this is actually

true, most of Isikoff’s colleagues do not pretend

to be objective. Sam Donaldson morphs from

White House correspondent by weekday to head

knight of the roundtable by weekend. Similarly,

viewers would be hard pressed to recall if a piece

of information they heard on CNN came from

Wolf Blitzer the reporter or Wolf Blitzer the host

of The Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.

It is certainly not a new occurrence for

journalists to wear two hats—Washington Week

in Review has been on the air for 31 years with

the same format of print and television journal-

ists who report and then analyze the news.

However, as political talk shows have risen in

popularity and number, many programs have

dropped this old-fashioned concept of journalis-

tic areas of expertise in favor of encouraging

more controversial debate. Margaret Carlson, a

columnist at Time and a regular on the pundit

circuit, admitted in a Washington Post inter-

view that on television, “the less you know

about something, the better off you are.” Carl-

son explained: “What’s good TV and what’s

thoughtful analysis are different. That’s been

conceded by most producers and bookers.

They’re not looking for the most learned person;

they’re looking for the person who can sound

learned without confusing the matter with too

much knowledge. I’m one of the people without

too much knowledge. I’m perfect!”

Monica-

gate, with its few on-the-record statements and,

until the release of the Starr Report, even fewer

facts, was the perfect know-nothing scandal for

the know-nothing pundit class.

Journalists or Politicians?

Washington Post political reporter David

Broder’s warning in 1988 of the rise of “an

androgynous blending of politician and journal-

ist called The Washington Insider”

has been

echoed by Howell Raines, editorial page editor

of the New York Times, who has written about

“the flooding into journalism of people whose

formative experience is in politics.”

Both wor-

ried that the shuttling back and forth of individ-

uals between journalism and politics was

blurring the lines that separate the two worlds,

corroding the barriers that allow both “estates”

to keep each other in check.

Movement between the worlds of politics

and journalism is not new. John Chancellor and

Bill Moyers held positions in both worlds; and

Henry Kissinger and Jeane Kirkpatrick, once out

of government, took to writing newspaper

columns. However, this shuttling has acceler-

ated in recent years, as government officials

move from politics to journalism, back to poli-

tics, and then again back to journalism. Pat

Buchanan seems to live with one foot on each

side of the fence, and critics of White House

aide Sidney Blumenthal dubbed his transition

from New Yorker columnist to presidential advi-

sor as a change “in title only.”

Those who leave the Clinton White House

have been particularly blessed with media

rewards and employment. George Stephanopou-

los has an exclusive contract with ABC News

and is a weekly participant on This Week, for-

mer White House press secretary Dee Dee

Myers served as co-host for CNBC’s Equal Time

before joining Vanity Fair and free-lancing on

other networks, and former White House chief

of staff Leon Panetta is a contributing editor to

28 The Rise of the “New News”

the on-line magazine IntellectualCapital.com.

Even disgraced former advisor Dick Morris

proved that there is life after politics and scan-

dal when the Fox News Channel hired him as a

political commentator.

Yet are these political pros equipped to

move seamlessly into the world of journalism?

While their political insight can provide valu-

able context and background to events, politi-

cians-turned-journalists do not always have the

same instinctive objectivity that newsrooms

still try to foster. Raines expressed concern

about the increasing tendency in news organiza-

tions “to accept people who have been in the

political world as arbiters of what constitutes

good journalism. The problem is that people

whose values were shaped in the government

offices . . . view the world in a fundamentally

different way from reporters and editors whose

values were shaped in the newsroom.”

The dis-

tinctive identity of the press as outside observer

is changed when the individuals who make up

the press come from inside the halls of Congress

or the White House. Can Stephanopoulos and

Myers—two intensely loyal former staffers who

have admitted feeling deeply betrayed by Presi-

dent Clinton—effectively provide commentary

about an Administration they once helped lead?

And even if they can, what is to stop other

White House aides from promoting their own

visibility and “spinning” ability with an eye

toward a future career on television or in print?

Nothing, of course.

Reporter or Participant?

Monicagate has been unique in the number

of journalists who have become involved as

direct or indirect participants in the story. In

addition to Michael Isikoff, who has attracted

criticism for his involvement with sources who

arguably used him as much as he used them,

other reporters and commentators have joined

the dubious cast of characters.

• Steve Brill, whose magazine Brill’s Content

premiered with an in-depth look at press cov-

erage in the first weeks of the Lewinsky inves-

tigation, used an exclusive interview with

Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr to hype

his magazine in the mainstream media. Trum-

peting the “revelation” that Starr had leaked

information to reporters, Brill became the

most sought-after man on television for one

week in early summer. In a whirlwind of

appearances that would be a publicity depart-

ment’s dream come true, Brill was interviewed

on Today, Face the Nation, Late Edition, Fox

News Sunday, Sunday Journal, Meet the Press

and Reliable Sources between June 14 and

June 22. As with Isikoff’s round of appearances

in January, the reporter became newsmaker,

for at least one news cycle.

• Regular viewers of the NewsHour on PBS are

well aware that the program is a more serious,

thoughtful alternative to the “new news” ver-

sions on broadcast networks. Even so, those

watching April 14, 1998, might have been sur-

prised by the quaint formality of the “editor’s

note” that ended the hour-long show. With his

earnest demeanor, anchor Jim Lehrer told his

audience: “It’s about Stuart Taylor, who’s been

doing regular and superb reporting on the

NewsHour about the Supreme Court. He will

no longer be doing such reports, and I wanted

you to know why.” What followed was an

explanation of traditional journalistic principle

and practice that sounded strangely unfamiliar

and old-fashioned in the era of “new news.”

Like a parent patiently explaining the

difference between right and wrong, Lehrer

said that at the NewsHour, “we have always

separated those who report the news from

those who analyze or . . . comment on it . . .

The distinction is very important to us. We

believe Stuart’s recent commentaries in print

and other TV programs about the Starr investi-

gation have caused some blurring of the lines

and some confusion about his role with us.”

What could have possibly prompted this pub-

lic scolding?

Stuart Taylor writes a weekly column

for the National Journal, contributes pieces to

Legal Times and Newsweek and has been a

regular correspondent on PBS’s NewsHour

since 1993. In March, Taylor was approached

by someone in Independent Counsel Starr’s

office about the possibility of joining the staff

to craft the Counsel’s report to Congress on

the President. Although these secret negotia-

tions fell through, Taylor wrote a favorable

National Journal column about Starr the next

week, without disclosing to his editors or

readers that he had been in contact with Starr

concerning a job offer.

Once the news broke, Taylor was ini-

tially defensive, telling Howard Kurtz: “Did

I owe it to my readers to disclose [the offer]?

I didn’t think of it.”

He eased his stance

the next week, apologizing in writing to his

colleagues and readers for failing to disclose

that he had seriously considered Starr’s offer.

The apology was not sufficient to breach the

Marvin Kalb 29

standards required on the NewsHour. Taylor

has had no shortage of requests for television

appearances, putting him in the running for

“most ubiquitous pundit”, but at least one

news organization drew the line on reporters

becoming part of the story they were assigned

to cover.

• In March, 1998, in an episode of strange self-

flagellation, reporter David Brock used an arti-

cle in Esquire to apologize to President

Clinton for his part in creating the feeding

frenzy of sex scandal coverage. Brock is most

famous for writing a December, 1993, article

in the American Spectator that alleged sexual

misconduct by Governor Bill Clinton and

cited “a woman named ‘Paula.’” The article

led to the discovery of Paula Jones, prompted

her lawsuit and precipitated a string of official

and unofficial investigations into the Presi-

dent’s personal life.

In an article advertised on the cover

of the magazine as, “Dear Mr. President:

Oops,” Brock changed his tune, arguing that

investigation into the private lives of public

officials encourages journalists to bring down

politicians over moral peccadilloes instead of

looking for actual corruption and deceit. “I

. . . know that if we continue down this

path, if sexual witch-hunts become the way

to win in politics, if they become our politics

altogether, we can and will destroy everyone

in public life.”

It was a valiant attempt

to reclaim a piece of his stake in the new

scandal, but David Brock faded from interest

after the obligatory week of hoopla over his

“apology.”

• On April 30, several months after Joe DiGen-

ova and Victoria Toensing unwittingly served

as the sources for the retracted Dallas Morn-

ing News story, Howard Kurtz reported that

the couple had signed a deal with NBC

to make regular appearances on CNBC and

MSNBC. Although the two were still officially

on the majority staff of the House Govern-

ment Affairs Committee, conducting a politi-

cal investigation, the network apparently had

no qualms about hiring them for political

commentary. According to Kurtz, an NBC

spokeswoman said, “as long as we clearly

identify what their association is, there’s no

conflict and we’re not doing any disservice to

our viewers.” Kurtz noted, however, that in at

least one newscast, Toensing was introduced

only as “a former deputy assistant attorney

general” and “an MSNBC legal analyst”—not

by her current occupation as GOP House

investigator.

It is not unusual for networks to hire

political players who have left their positions

in government, but they rarely pay commenta-

tors who are still receiving government pay-

checks. Similarly, individuals who are

arguably involved in investigations are rarely

hired to comment on the situation. After

thinking about these potential conflicts of

interest—and following a huge uproar from

livid Democratic congressmen—NBC with-

drew the contract and declined to hire the

controversial couple.

Part Six: At the End of the Day . . .

This case study has focused on journalistic

excesses in the early weeks of Monicagate,

explained by the rise of new technology, includ-

ing cable television, the 24-hour news cycle, the

Internet and other modern electronic wizardry;

the new economic underpinning of the news

industry, highlighted by the absorption of net-

works into megacorporations and newspapers

into national syndicates, producing an over-

riding dedication to the bottom line rather than

to public service; and finally, the emergence of

the “new news,” which features “lite,” fluffy,

often sensational coverage of trivial and serious

issues. At the end of the day, it seemed to many

journalists that they were being driven

inescapably by technical and economic impera-

tives to sacrifice news values for profit maxi-

mization.

Technology and Economics

Andy Rooney, humorist for CBS’s 60 Min-

utes, found nothing funny in the “new news,”

even as practiced by the Tiffany network. “The

emphasis is so much more on money than con-

tent in every decision that’s made,” he said,

“that it’s discouraging to be here.”

Geneva

Overholser, now a columnist but once editor of

the Des Moines Register, where she was named

“editor of the year,” echoed Rooney’s lament.

“Too often by far,” she said, “being an editor in

America today feels like holding up an

avalanche of pressure to do away with this piece

of excellence, that piece of quality, so as to

squeeze out just a little bit more money.”

News has always been a money-making

operation—it is a highly-competitive business.

But, up until recent years, the quest for profit

did not define the pursuit of news. Now in the

lofty suites of managerial power in newspapers

and networks, there is rarely an executive with

30 The Rise of the “New News”

journalistic credentials, and everyone measures

success by ratings points and bottom lines. Pub-

lic trust is important but hardly a priority in a

newsroom. ABC News recently hired a lawyer,

David Westin, to replace a legend, Roone

Arledge. The satisfaction of stockholder greed,

especially in a marketplace of uncertain

prospects after a long run of unbelievable opti-

mism, determines the outcome of many news

decisions. It is no longer the general satisfaction

of the public interest. The model shaped by pub-

lisher Mark Willes of the Los Angeles Times,

bringing the money manager into every editorial

decision, has been copied by dozens of other

newspapers.

Networks followed the same pattern. After

the deregulation of the Reagan years, the Big 4 of

ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC rushed into the vac-

uum, pushing for profit—and, it seemed, their

public obligations be damned! And following

passage of the sweeping Telecommunications

Act of 1996, they continued to take advantage of

the huge financial opportunities built into the

legislation. Radio ownership, for example, no

longer had any limitations. Own a dozen, own a

hundred; one day you could own a thousand or

several thousand, and dominate a radio market of

some 16,000 stations. That appeared quickly to

be the goal of Mel Karmazin, a rising star of CBS

management, who began buying up stations with

determined discipline until now CBS stands as a

giant in the radio industry. William F. Baker and

George Dessart, co-authors of “Down The

Tube,” a study of what they call “the failure of

television,” rip into the Federal Communications

Commission for failing to uphold the public

trust and consistently finding a way to accom-

modate owners and managers of radio and televi-

sion stations. The FCC is guilty, they charge, of

“misregulation and the failure to regulate at

all.”

The incentives in the news business, as

currently arranged, run in the direction of a fur-

ther maximization of profit and minimization of

public concerns. Nothing on the economic hori-

zon suggests that news will awaken one day

soon, as though from a dark, disturbing dream,

and decide to be virtuous pursuers of truth.

Choice

Must it be this way? The evidence at the

moment shouts yes; and yet the evidence is only

the accumulated result of many decisions by

reporters, editors, producers, writers and com-

mentators. If they were to change their ways,

the evidence would change. If they were, for

example, to listen to Sandra Mims Rowe, editor

of The Oregonian and former president of the

American Society of Newspaper Editors, they

might see the light. Speaking at an ASNE gath-

ering in Washington, DC in April, 1998, Rowe

pleaded with the editors to take the “high road.”

“Other media that do not share newspaper stan-

dards,” she said, “are recasting the definitions of

news. But we do not have to be pulled along . . .

New media will not adopt our standards. . . .

The high road is there if we will just take it.

The notion that readers have created the

demand for lowest common denominator jour-

nalism is false. We are doing that ourselves. We

can and must stop.” Editor Rowe was lustily

applauded. Her logic was unassailable. Her mes-

sage was resonant and powerful. But there have

been few takers. Many of her colleagues realized

that they were under pressure to expand tabloid-

style coverage from the O. J./Monica-type story

to more mainstream stories about politics and

economics, and they could do little if anything

to break the momentum.

Whenever there has been a choice in recent

years between the old news and the new news,

the new news has often won. Jonathan P. Wol-

man, Washington bureau chief for the Associ-

ated Press, concluded unhappily that there was

an “imbalance” in contemporary journalism

between factual reporting, on the one side, and

trashy, loose-lipped TV talk and published com-

mentary, on the other. “The reporting has often

been swamped by the commentary,” he said.

Essential Truths and Good Journalism

Still, though there were glaring examples

of journalistic irresponsibility in the early days

of Monicagate, the American people learned the

essential truths about the scandal, suggesting,

ironically, that poor journalistic practice, while

deplorable and distasteful, did not necessarily

deny them the information they needed to

function in a free, open and raucous society.

Even in the high-pitched roar of competitive

journalism, they were able to read, hear and

watch each episode of the scandal unfold in

dramatic form. Moreover, there were shiny

instances of solid, ethical and reflective journal-

ism—rare in the early weeks of the scandal but

there nonetheless.

• The New York Times was ready to publish a

bombshell about the mysterious “witness.”

Michael Oreskes, Washington bureau chief of

the Times, had, he thought, more than the req-

uisite number of sources and confirmations.

“By the time I came in that afternoon,” he

later recalled, “we had four sources. And we

Marvin Kalb 31

were preparing to lead the Times with it the

next morning.” But, after cross-checking,

Oreskes found out that his reporters were hav-

ing second thoughts about their sourcing. It

turned out that their four “sources” had all

learned the same “facts” from the same “wit-

ness,” who acknowledged that he personally

had seen nothing at all. Everything was at

least second-hand. Oreskes and his reporters

decided to “kill” the story. “Sometimes,” he

reflected, “the story you’re proudest of is the

story you don’t run.”

• NBC Nightly News was sorely tempted to

pick up the Wall Street Journal story about the

steward who saw the President and Lewinsky

in a “compromising” position. Anchor Tom

Brokaw checked with Washington bureau

chief Tim Russert. The story had not yet run

in the newspaper; they were discussing its

publication on the Internet. Did they have

confirmation—on their own? No. Did NBC

have any independent information on the

steward’s tale? No. Brokaw later told Brill:

“The Journal’s Web site story was moving

toward a full-blown story. But we decided,

after talking to Tim, that it didn’t have legs.”

• Nina Totenberg on Nightline provided an

excellent example of the importance of identi-

fying a source. The story focused on how,

allegedly, President Clinton had briefed his

assistant, Betty Currie, on what she should say

before Starr’s grand jury. The suggestion was

that she had been “rehearsed” by the Presi-

dent, which, if true, could have been seen as

the equivalent of “obstructing justice.” Toten-

berg explained: “This story . . . is fairly clearly

a leak from the prosecutor’s office and with

the exception of [the gifts] . . . It is their char-

acterization of what Betty Currie has said.

• Sourcing, as we know, has been an aggravating

problem from the first day of the coverage of

Monicagate. Every news organization commit-

ted one sin or another—running with stories

that had no independent sourcing, or broad-

casting information that was second- or third-

hand. Only the NewsHour on PBS used no

anonymous sources during the early period of

the scandal—the first two weeks researched

and analyzed by the Committee of Concerned

Journalists.

• There were rumors, in the early weeks of

Monicagate, that the former White House

intern had had an affair with her high school

drama teacher. Since the high school was

located in Los Angeles, obviously the Los

Angeles Times tried to convert the rumor into

a confirmed story. “The allegation required a

high level of confirmation,” said Doyle

McManus, Washington bureau chief. His

reporters could not get confirmation from

Monica or the teacher; nor was McManus per-

suaded that the story, even if confirmed, was

relevant to the White House scandal. The

story was not published. Later, the high school

teacher decided to tell his story; and only then

did the Los Angeles Times publish it. Accord-

ing to a report by the Committee of Con-

cerned Journalists: “The story eventually

broke when the teacher went public.”

• Sometimes, the same journalist was guilty of

hasty judgments on some days and very sound

ones on others. On the Sunday before the

Lewinsky story broke on January 21, 1998,

Sam Donaldson told his This Week audience:

“I’m not an apologist for Newsweek, but if

their editors decided they didn’t have it cold

enough to go with, I don’t think we can here.”

Later, he explained: “I hadn’t heard anything

about Drudge or anything else about this story.

I just decided we shouldn’t go on our air with a

story that Newsweek had decided it couldn’t

go with.”

The Dewey-Lippmann Debate

What then is the essential obligation of

journalism? Obviously, it is to provide the

truth—or as much of the truth as can be

obtained; and if truth were an easily definable

commodity, it would be quickly accessible. But

it isn’t. For much of the twentieth-century, an

old argument between the philosopher, John

Dewey, and the journalist, Walter Lippmann,

has echoed through the corridors of journalism.

Complexities reduced to generalities, the argu-

ment could be framed as follows: should the

press educate the public, or should it cater to

the public’s taste? Should it, it might be asked,

go high-brow, or low-brow? Lippmann envisaged

journalists as belonging to an elite corps of spe-

cially trained reporters and commentators—for

example, political or diplomatic experts who not

only reported on public policy but also provided

editorial guidelines for elevating the entire

process, for making policy better. Dewey

objected to any form of journalistic elitism,

believing that the best newspapers had only

to reflect popular interest and curiosity to be

fulfilling their fundamental responsibility to

society. Journalistic legitimacy, in his view,

was the natural consequence of tapping into the

32 The Rise of the “New News”

people—it was a bottom-up process. Lippmann

saw journalistic legitimacy as a top-down

process—editorial copy that mirrored the edu-

cated vision of an elite group of reporters, who

knew how to organize and explain information

of the sort they felt the public needed.

Dewey’s vision opened the door to tabloid

journalism, though the respected philosopher

could never have imagined such an outcome;

Lippmann’s vision led, in a way, to the best of

the New York Times, PBS and NPR. Both visions

imply, however, that the journalist is sovereign

in his/her capacity either to broadcast street-

corner gossip or to publish sophisticated analy-

ses of foreign wars, but even the best of the

journalists find that they now have to bend to

the demands of the new technology and the new

economics. Neither vision is an accurate reflec-

tion of the complicated reality of the business—

at least, not at this time. “There’s always been a

balance,” said Norman Pearlstine, editor-in-

chief of Time magazine, “between educating

your reader and serving your reader.” True, but

the balance in recent years (certainly since the

O. J. Simpson trials, the paparazzi assault on

Princess Diana, and Monicagate) has tipped dra-

matically in the direction of “serving” the

reader or viewer; and in the process journalistic

standards have fallen steadily.

The American Journalist

The profile of the American journalist has

become decidedly Lippmannesque, perhaps not

yet in salary terms but surely in educational

achievement. In 1935, Leo Rosten, a graduate

student at the University of Chicago, deter-

mined that roughly 50 percent of the Washing-

ton press corps had college degrees, but less than

50 percent of the national press corps had fin-

ished college, or even attended college. These

numbers immediately suggested that journalism

was a profession or a craft that required a high

degree of educational training. By 1971, almost

60 percent of all journalists had college degrees.

By 1982, almost 100 percent of the Washington

press corps had college degrees, 75 percent of the

national press corps had college degrees, and a

third of them had even obtained advanced

degrees. By 1992, more than 82 percent had col-

lege degrees, and a significant number of them

had advanced degrees.

The White House press corps has a very

special pedigree. While 80 percent of Americans

with college degrees attended public colleges, 53

percent of reporters covering the President

attended private schools.

It is a good thing that

many journalists still profess an allegiance to

the old adage, “We’re not in it for the money,”

because a higher education has not necessarily

produced a very high salary—at least for those

reporters who work for small or modest-sized

newspapers with a circulation between roughly

30,000 and 70,000 readers. They are earning, on

average, $23,000 a year.

US News & World

Report warned graduating college seniors in

1997 that journalism majors were starting their

careers with salaries as low as $22,000 a year.

Between a local newspaper and a local TV

station, salaries were about the same—the aver-

age salary for a local TV reporter in 1995 was

$21,915 a year.

Major newspapers and net-

works pay a lot more. For example, in April,

1997, if you were a reporter with two years of

experience, the New York Times would start you

at $67,000 a year. With five years of experience,

the Boston Globe and the Chicago Sun-Times

would start you at $61,000 and $57,000 respec-

tively.

And if you were an experienced reporter

in Washington, DC, where many star journalists

work, you’d be doing quite well indeed—espe-

cially if you were working for a network, where

salaries for a beat reporter could range from

$100,000 to $350,000 a year, depending on the

beat. But even if you worked for a newspaper or

a magazine but somehow managed to break into

the television talk show circuit, you would also

be in six-figure terrain, because you’d be open to

such additional benefits as television contracts

and lecture fees—in other words, you’d earn

very handsome salaries indeed, comparable to

those of US Cabinet secretaries. Howard Fine-

man earns a reported $160,000 a year from

Newsweek, where he is a senior political

reporter, but he has also signed a new $65,000

contract with MSNBC.

In the old days, such moonlighting was dis-

couraged; now it is encouraged by Newsweek,

because it believes that it benefits from the free

publicity generated by Fineman’s appearances on

television.

A quick survey suggests, therefore, that

journalists these days tend to reflect Lippmann’s

elitism much more than Dewey’s populism.

They are among the best educated and best paid

in the land, more powerful as an institution

than at any other time in American history.

And yet, in their daily and hourly product, they

produce, for the most part, not an elitist formula

for better government, not a detailed analysis of

social security or Kremlin intrigue, but rather an

increasingly fluffy, sexy and sensationalist

vision of society, in which vice among our

Marvin Kalb 33

leaders can be (and has been) converted into

profitable enterprises. The cream of the crop has

produced a harvest of shame.

The Hollywoodization of the News

Journalism is among the most analyzed and

self-analyzed professions in America. From the

Annenberg School of Communications at the

University of Pennsylvania to the Shorenstein

Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at

Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, one

academic institution after another has been cre-

ated in the past decade or so to critique the

media’s impact on society and public policy. This

reflects, in part, the media’s enormous power and

importance. In addition, by 1998, as many as 20

foundations were providing support for media

studies; nineteen industry groups and 46 profes-

sional organizations were engaging in forms of

journalistic self-policing; and, in addition to the

Columbia Journalism Review and the American

Journalism Review, which publish excellent

reports on the pros and cons of journalistic prac-

tice, there are the Media Studies Journal, Brill’s

Content and the Harvard International Journal

of Press/Politics, among others, which publish

scholarly studies of the media and its impact on

society. Dozens of media critics direct their fire

at any infraction of journalistic ethics or practice

as soon as one is spotted on the near horizon.

CNN’s Reliable Sources is a weekend salon for

intelligent criticism of the media; and at other

networks and in newspapers and magazines,

such criticism has become routine.

Yet something is profoundly wrong. For,

while there has been more self-flagellation and

anguished navel-gazing, more scholarship and

analysis, more foundation support, more

unabashed care and criticism of the media than

at any other time in American history—in other

words, more pressure and encouragement to

clean up its act—the effect on the practice of

journalism has been very problematic. Indeed,

though some journalists have argued that the

relentless criticism of the press is a sign of

strength and self-confidence, the evidence is

overwhelming that standards have continued to

fall. All of this well-intended criticism has

apparently fallen on deaf ears—or journalists

have heard the criticism but can do little to

nothing to improve their ways.

In September, 1993, Dan Rather delivered a

remarkably candid and forceful keynote address

to the annual meeting of the Radio and Televi-

sion News Directors of America. He based his

address on Edward R. Murrow’s 1958 speech to

the same organization. At that time, the leg-

endary newsman had chastised the industry for

failing to utilize “this weapon of television” in

the battle against “ignorance, intolerance and

indifference.” Of television then, Murrow used

words now familiar to many: “This instrument

can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even

inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that

humans are determined to use it to those ends.

Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a

box.”

Rather looked the 1993 news directors in

the eye. “We’ve all gone Hollywood—we’ve all

succumbed to the Hollywoodization of the

news,” he charged, “because we were afraid not

to.” Fear was one of Rather’s central themes and

explanations. “Just to cover our rear, we give the

best slots to gossip and prurience.” Corporate

executives and sponsors “got us putting more

and more fuzz and wuzz on the air, cop-shop

stuff, so as to compete, not with other news pro-

grams, but with entertainment programs

(including those posing as news programs) for

dead bodies, mayhem and lurid tales.” The

“post-Murrow generation of owners and man-

agers,” Rather continued, “aren’t venal—they’re

afraid. They’ve got education and taste and good

sense, they care about their country, but you’d

never know it from the things that fear makes

them do—from the things that fear makes them

make us do.”

Rather is the $7-million anchor, the heart

and soul of CBS News, and yet he acknowledged

then and since that “fear” of ratings and bot-

tom-line “slippage” has forced him and his col-

leagues to “freeze” in the face of corporate

pressures to do infotainment rather than hard

news. He quoted one news director as ordering

his staff to do more stories on Madonna and her

sex life than on a papal visit to America. Rather

all but begged them to put together “a few good

men and women with the courage of their con-

victions to turn [the news industry] around.”

Rather spoke these words in 1993. The

Oregonian editor Rowe spoke her words in

1998. “We can and must stop,” she said. But

nothing positive happened between 1993 and

1998; indeed, the situation only worsened. Is the

battle irreversible? Are the news directors, the

corporate managers, the journalists in fact pow-

erless to change their course for the better? Are

they simply corks on an ocean of technological

and economic turmoil? Both Murrow and

Rather, straining to see a silver lining, quoted

Cassius: “Men at some time are masters of their

fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

34 The Rise of the “New News”

but in ourselves.” If Cassius meant, to update

the analogy, that journalists can transform their

craft into an agent of positive change for the

whole society, then the evidence strongly indi-

cates that he was wrong. If he meant, on the

other hand, that journalists can do no more than

reflect society, then he was right.

In 1962, columnist George F. Will wrote

that we live in “an echo chamber lined with

mirrors.” Today, it is only worse. We live in a

national version of The Truman Show. The

White House has become a virtual photo-op—

populated by teams of lawyers and media advis-

ers. Monica Lewinsky has lawyers, consultants

and a spokeswoman. Linda Tripp has advisers on

her clothes, make-up and hair—and the press.

Andy Bleiler, Lewinsky’s high school drama

teacher, enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame at a

press conference on his front lawn, orchestrated

by a California PR guru, Michael Nason, who

happens to be the uncle of Bleiler’s wife. Ken-

neth Starr has learned to smile in the presence

of any camera, and he too has hired a press

spokesman, who appears regularly on Sunday

talk shows. And Bill Clinton confesses to infi-

delity in a nationally televised speech.

Monicagate is not the fault of the press,

which only reflects society. Monicagate is a symp-

tom of a society that gets the press it deserves.

Marvin Kalb 35

1. On September 11, 1998, the Starr Report and a

White House rebuttal were released to the public,

ushering in a period of extreme political uncertainty.

That, too, is not the focus of this study.

2. In January, 1992, at the beginning of the presiden-

tial campaign season, Gennifer Flowers sold a story to

a tabloid called The Star saying that she had had a 12-

year affair with Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas,

then a candidate for the Democratic presidential

nomination. Clinton denied the story, but it kicked

off a series of allegations about womanizing that fol-

lowed him into the White House. Later, Clinton con-

firmed that he had had only one sexual encounter

with Flowers.

3. “Anatomy of an Investigative Story”—a Brown bag

lunch with Michael Isikoff, Joan Shorenstein Center

on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F.

Kennedy School of Government, April 21, 1998.

4. Brown bag lunch, April 21, 1998.

5. From an interview at the Joan Shorenstein Center

on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Kennedy

School of Government, April 21, 1998. Interestingly,

in the September, 1998 issue of Brill’s Content (p. 18),

Isikoff denies having any conversation with members

of Starr’s team concerning the possibility of a sting

operation.

6. Stephen Brill, “Pressgate,” Brill’s Content, August,

1998, p. 129.

7. From CNN Web site (www.cnn.com), July 7, 1998.

8. Ken Auletta, “The Invisible Manager,” The New

Yorker, July 27, 1998, p. 42.

9. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the Presi-

dent’s Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974), p.

146.

10. Walter Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life (New York:

Ballantine, 1996), p. 235.

11. Stephen Hess, The Washington Reporters

Redux,1978–1998 (Washington, DC: The Brookings

Institution, 1998).

12. A speech reprinted in Media Power, Professionals

and Policies, 1998.

13. Ben Bradlee, A Good Life (New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1996), p. 207.

14. The Starr Report was released to the public by

way of the Internet. Journalists that day had only one

source—the Internet.

15. Brill, p. 135.

16. Ibid., p. 136.

17. Ibid., p. 141.

18. Ibid., p. 141.

19. Ibid., p. 142.

20. Ibid., p. 143.

21. Ibid., p. 143.

22. Ibid., p. 146.

23. Ibid., p. 146.

24. Neil Hickey, “Money Lust: How Pressure for

Profit is Perverting Journalism,” Columbia Journal-

ism Review, July/August 1998, p. 31.

25. Ibid., p. 30.

26. Scholars such as Lance Bennett of the University

of Washington argue that the Internet may open the

door to direct democracy. It may simplify the process

of campaigning by providing the voter with easy

access to the candidate and his/her policy positions.

27. Ibid., p. 31.

28. Ibid., p. 31.

29. Brill, p. 134.

30. Brill, p. 133.

31. Brown bag lunch, April 21, 1998.

32. Brill, p. 144.

33. “The Present and Future of Investigative Journal-

ism”—the Goldsmith Awards Seminar with Dan

Rather, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics

and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Govern-

ment, March 13, 1998.

34. Ibid.

35. From the Committee of Concerned Journalists’

report, “The Clinton Crisis and the Press,” February,

1998.

36. Ibid.

37. Freedom Forum and Newseum News, vol. 5, no.

5, June, 1998, p. 3.

ENDNOTES

36 The Rise of the “New News”

38. Goldsmith Awards Seminar, March 13, 1998.

39. Jon LaFayette, “Indomitable Don—60 Minutes

and 50 years at CBS,” Electronic Media, March 23,

1998, p. 1.

40. Brill, pp. 141–142.

41. Ibid., p. 135.

42. “The Clinton Crisis and the Press.”

43. Bradlee, p. 406.

44. Thomas Patterson, Out of Order (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 9.

45. The Harvard International Journal of Press/Poli-

tics, vol. 3, number 3, Summer 1998, p. 10.

46. Brown bag lunch, April 21, 1998.

47. Howard Kurtz, “Thinking Out Loud: Journalism’s

Talking Heads Find it Pays to Have an Opinion,”

Washington Post, October 4, 1994. p. C1.

48. David Broder, “Beware the ‘Insider’ Syndrome,”

Washington Post, December 4, 1988, p. L2.

49. Howell Raines, “The Fallows Fallacy,” The New

York Times, February 25, 1996, p. D14.

50. Ibid.

51. There are rare exceptions. Bernard Trainor left the

Marine Corps to become an accomplished reporter

and analyst for the New York Times. A number of

other generals signed contracts with networks during

the Persian Gulf war, but they were primarily com-

mentators on military strategy, rather than reporters.

The main point remains valid.

52. Howard Kurtz, “Clinton Critic’s Brief Starr

Turn,” Washington Post, April 4, 1998, p. C1.

53. David Brock, “The Fire This Time,” Esquire,

March, 1998, p. 144.

54. Howard Kurtz, “DiGenova & Toensig, Partners

At Jaw,” Washington Post, April 30, 1998, p. E1.

55. Hickey, p. 34.

56. Ibid., p. 31.

57. Jonathan Yardley, “Time to Change the Chan-

nel,” Washington Post, March 29, 1998, p. X3.

58. Brill, p. 141.

59. Brill, p. 146.

60. “The Clinton Crisis and the Press.”

61. Brill, p. 129.

62. David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The

American Journalist in the 1990s (Mahwah,NJ: L. Erl-

baum, 1996), p. 29.

63. Stephen Hess, News & Newsmaking, (Washing-

ton, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1996).

64. Hickey, p. 33.

65. US News & World Report Web site (www.-

usnews.com/usnews/edu/beyond.grad/gbgrid18.htm),

September 10, 1998.

66. Vernon Stone, “Paychecks and Market Baskets:

Broadcast News Salaries and Inflation in the 1990s,”

Missouri School of Journalism Web site (www.

missouri.edu/~jrivs/sals90s.html), September 10,

1998.

67. Lori Leibovich, “The Scoop on Newsroom

Salaries,” Salon Magazine (www.salonmagazine.com/

media/1997/10/28money.html).

68. Brill, p. 134.