American press: just what facts?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 30, 1998 | by Michael Rust

The White House has found itself in the eye of the storm. The media ape throwing around allegations from unnamed sources and reporting stories often spurred mope by fervor than fact.

Press reports indicate journalism is in trouble, say informed anonymous sources. Well, sort of Anything seems possible in the confusion that is Washington P.M. (post-Monica). Dire warnings of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" come from the White House, while the independent counsel's prosecutorial zeal spurs concern about the First Amendment from surprising quarters. And the journalists wonder if they have descended too much into the muck of scandal or if they rather haven't dirtied themselves enough.

Confusion, thy name is Clinton. Media observers disagree about whether White House coverage has been run-of-the-mill, exceptional, deficient or just a bit overstimulated. Coverage of this scandal differs from coverage of earlier imbroglios "only in the sense of sheer intensity and velocity of the story," Howard Kurtz, the longtime media reporter for the Washington Post, tells Insight. But during the frenzy of the first days following revelations of a relationship between the president and former intern Monica Lewinsky, the imminent implosion of the administration seemed a possibility and the moral implications of allowing children to watch network news were debated. This left a mark on coverage of the continuing legal struggles.

The initial press firestorm gave way to a backlash of recriminations and second thoughts (see "Media Sharks Feed on Frenzy," Feb. 23). University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, author of Feeding Frenzy, describes the pattern of oversaturation followed by self-criticism as an "intermittent frenzy" unlikely to end soon. "We've just had a hurricane," he says. "And we had the tremendous winds and we've had a calm and then we had tremendous winds again. And now it's over -- or people think it is. But there's another hurricane on the way and one after that and another one after that." The media winds may appear to die down for days or even weeks at a time, but "it's clearly not over."

A study from the Committee of Concerned Journalists called "The Clinton Crisis and the Press: A New Standard of American Journalism" found that during the first five days of the Clinton-Lewinsky story, anonymous sourcing shot up very high, while analysis and opinion increasingly crept into news stories. The authors of the study claim that their report "raises basic questions about the standards of American journalism and whether the press is in the business of reporting facts or something else." However, as the National Journal's media critic William Powers points out, "the first five ultra-pressured days of an enormous presidential scandal" are hardly an appropriate petri dish in which to ascertain new behavior patterns of reporters.

In fact, Robert Giles, executive director of the New York-based Media Studies Center, says that press coverage of the scandal "has followed fairly traditional patterns." He says his own reading of the New York Times indicates that the self-proclaimed newspaper of record "has been very careful in sourcing, even though unidentified sources have been used in this story. But we all know unidentified sources is a very standard part of reporting important stories and this, I think, follows clearly in the tradition of that."

And poll findings by Giles' organization for the Freedom Forum's Free Press/Fair Press project indicate that news consumers actually are satisfied with scandal coverage. Two-thirds, or 64 percent, of respondents in February said the quality of coverage provided by the news organization upon which they depend the most for this story had been excellent or good. (When asked how the news media as a whole are covering the story, only 36 percent said excellent or good.) The survey also reveals that by a margin of 54 to 42, Americans believe the news media have been fair in their coverage of Clinton during the crisis; they also believe other players in the scandal have been treated fairly by the media. Television is relied on more heavily than usual for news about Clinton and Lewinsky, the survey shows. Two-thirds of respondents (68 percent) said they rely mostly on television news, while just 13 percent depend on newspapers. Past surveys have shown that under normal circumstances, 50 percent of Americans get their news from television, 24 percent from newspapers.

But public happiness is fleeting and not a guarantee of media effectiveness. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows 75 percent of the public believes the press has gone too far in its coverage. James Ledbetter, a perceptive media critic for the left-wing Village Voice, disagrees with those who say media coverage has been business as usual. "An argument can be made that in terms of a political story encompassing the president of the United States, I have seen reporting excesses on this story that I don't remember seeing on another political story," he says. But Ledbetter is quick to point out that this doesn't mean the Lewinsky story has provoked previously unknown media excesses. Rather, he argues that the media bandwagon during the early days of the scandal resembles press coverage of such other national media obsessions as the double-murder trial of O.J. Simpson.