Scandalmania: The press just can't help itself
Ombudsman
By Paul McMasters
First Amendment Ombudsman
First Amendment Center
03.01.99
How did Juanita Broaddrick's accusation that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her in a Little Rock hotel in the spring of 1978 wind up on the front pages of mainstream newspapers 21 years later?
Without taking sides on the truth of the story, it is worth noting how this sensational and damaging allegation made its way from whispers, winks and nods in an Arkansas gubernatorial race two decades ago to Topic No. 1 on the nation's talk shows last week.
What is true is that Mrs. Broaddrick never filed charges against Clinton, nor did she ever go public with her story until recently, although Clinton's political opponents had tried to get her to for years.
She did swear out an affidavit and testify in a deposition taken by lawyers in the Paula Jones lawsuit that the assault never happened, then retracted that denial after the Office of Independent Counsel contacted her.
The FBI investigated and found the account "inconclusive," and Kenneth Starr apparently found it neither reliable enough nor relevant enough to include as part of the open record in the report he sent to Congress.
Even though Rep. Tom Delay and other Clinton prosecutors in the House pushed and pleaded, members of the Senate were not persuaded to go in droves to examine the sealed account during the impeachment proceedings.
And a number of mainstream media organizations had been working the story for months, if not years, but none had published or broadcast the story.
But there it was on the front page of The Washington Post on Feb. 20. The headline read: "'Jane Doe No. 5' Goes Public With Allegation, Clinton Controversy Lingers Over Nursing Home Owner's Disputed 1978 Story." In the third paragraph of the story, the Post described Mrs. Broaddrick's account as an "ancient and unproven allegation," then went on to devote 118 column inches to the story, including photo and sidebar.
There had been a trickle of reporting on the existence of the story, mainly by Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge, the Fox News Channel and The Washington Times before this, but publication of the story by The Washington Post lifted the flood gates. Most mainstream papers soon followed with similar accounts, and the talk-show frenzy was on.
What moved Post editors to publish an "ancient and unproven" story that its own reporters working on it for months had not yet nailed down? Why go into detail on an inconclusive account with potential damage for all parties, including the newspaper? Why resurrect a story that had been published in outline a full year before after Paula Jones's lawyers had inserted it in a court filing?
The proximate cause, Post media writer Howard Kurtz reported in an accompanying story, was the fact that Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz had written about the accusation on the Journal's editorial pages the day before. (Interestingly, the Journal's news department did not choose to write a news story until six days later.)
The Rabinowitz column was only the immediate stimulus for the Post story. Another reason, no doubt, was that the Post didn't want to be caught sitting on a hot story the way its sister publication, Newsweek, was when Drudge reported more than a year ago that the news weekly had "spiked" the story of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Nor would the Post have wanted to suffer the indignities heaped upon NBC News for holding onto an exclusive interview with Juanita Broaddrick for several weeks. NBC correspondent Lisa Myers went to Van Buren, Ark., early this year and interviewed Mrs. Broaddrick. The interview was scheduled to air on Jan. 29, but Myers' bosses decided that further reporting was needed before such a volatile story aired.
Someone tipped Drudge, who "exposed" the hold-up and speculated that NBC News President Andrew Lack's job was on the line for delaying the story. Similar reporting about the reporting appeared in The Washington Times and on the Fox News Channel. Brit Hume, Washington managing editor for Fox, even wore a "Free Lisa Myers" button on air. Various groups charged that the White House was pressuring NBC News executives to kill the story; both NBC and the White House said that never happened, but Jerry Falwell did exhort his followers to "inundate" the network with complaint calls.
It's certainly understandable that Post editors would not want to endure that sort of assault on their news judgment. So, they launched what some would contend was a preemptive strike against that judgment themselves. That contention would not be entirely fair, however. The Post and every other mainstream news organization is operating in a very different journalistic environment these days. In this Matt-Drudge-Made-Me-Do-It environment, it was inevitable that the Broaddrick story would reach mainstream media eventually.
Here are just a few of the explanations that news executives routinely invoke these days to justify giving assertions, allegations and accusations roughly equal status to facts in their reporting:
What the news executives don't mention is that an embarrassingly significant number of these stories make their way into their newspapers or newscasts by way of whispering campaigns, leaks from anonymous people and groups with an agenda, from tabloid fare, or from Internet gossip mongers.
What they don't say is that deep down some of them fear being second or last more than they fear being wrong.
What they won't admit is that instead of sorting out the facts from the fictions themselves, they are depending more on the good sense and the good will of their readers and viewers, who in turn depend on the press to sort those things out.
In the end we are treated to the sad spectacle of mainstream news organizations squandering a precious commodity, their credibility. As people look on in disgust and dismay, the mainstream press dispenses ever-larger doses of sleaze and rumors in a desperate and ultimately futile bid to win back the audience it lost by doling out too much of that stuff in the first place.
Paul McMasters may be contacted at pmcmasters@freedomforum.org.