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Bureau Chief Ousted Over Hyde Affair
Story
Disagreement Rankles Salon Editor
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 29, 1998; Page D01
Jonathan Broder, Washington bureau chief of Salon, has been forced to
resign after criticizing the online magazine's decision to disclose Rep. Henry
Hyde's 30-year-old affair.
Broder had argued in a memo that to publicize the 1960s extramarital affair
would make the magazine's staff look like "sex-obsessed hypocrites."
Salon Editor David Talbot, the story's author, demanded his resignation
after Broder responded to a call from The Washington Post by saying: "I
objected to it on journalistic grounds, on grounds of fairness and because
of the way Salon would be perceived."
Broder submitted a resignation letter yesterday. "I thought I was showing
there could be healthy dissent within Salon and I could help protect Salon's
credibility," he said in an interview. "My intention was not to embarrass
anybody. . . . I truly felt that what they did was over the top, and I had to
say that."
Said Talbot: "This was the hardest decision I ever had to make about an
employee. It was just a legitimate journalistic difference of opinion we had,
but it was so profound a difference that I thought it was best for us to part
company."
While he has "enormous respect" for Broder, Talbot said, "Jon took a
strong stand against running the piece. We argued it out. Once we made
the decision, we asked Jon not to go public with his differences."
Broder said he initially offered to resign after Talbot left what both men
describe as a "blistering" message on his answering machine. When Broder
later suggested that he fly to Salon's San Francisco office to see if the
relationship could be salvaged, Talbot told him not to bother because his
resignation had been accepted.
A Salon editorial contended that the sex life of the House Judiciary
Committee chairman is fair game because he would head an impeachment
inquiry that involves President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. The
Sept. 16 article in Salon, which has been a fierce critic of independent
counsel Kenneth Starr, infuriated House Republicans, who demanded an
FBI investigation of whether the White House helped plant the story. The
administration denies any involvement.
Salon's on-the-record source was Norm Sommer, a Florida retiree who is
friendly with the ex-husband of Hyde's former mistress. Ironically, Sommer
called Talbot several months after trying to peddle the story to Broder,
who brushed it off.
Broder says he was stunned by the editorial acknowledging that the
magazine was "descending to the gutter tactics of those we deplore. . . .
But ugly times call for ugly tactics."
" 'Ugly tactics' is not a phrase I associate with responsible journalism,"
Broder said. "It smacks of agendas and advocacy, and I don't want to be
part of that."
Some magazines have a history of fighting their battles in public. In 1994,
when the New Republic published a controversial article linking race and
intelligence, it also ran impassioned dissents by 19 staffers, with such
headlines as "Dumbskulls" and "Neo-Nazis."
Talbot says that Salon "has prided itself on having a contentious staff that
speaks its mind." But the Hyde story was different, he said, because it
triggered an unprecedented firestorm, including "fax attacks" meant to
disable its office equipment. He questioned how a Washington Post writer
who criticized the paper's Watergate coverage would have been treated
when the Post company was under assault by the Nixon White House.
Broder, a former foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, Chicago
Tribune and San Francisco Examiner, says he'll do some freelancing and
continue writing for the Jerusalem Report while he ponders his next move.
The three-year-old Internet magazine gained a loyal following for its
coverage of politics, culture and sex and for such eclectic columnists as
Camille Paglia and sex expert Susie Bright. But Salon has become
increasingly controversial in recent months for its tendentious coverage of
the Whitewater affair, publishing allegations by Broder and Murray Waas
that conservative money was funneled to a key Whitewater witness. This
led to charges that Salon was in cahoots with the Clintons, particularly after
Talbot and Broder chatted up the president and first lady at a White House
party.
In his memo to Talbot protesting the planned story on Hyde, Broder said
he was already having trouble getting conservatives to return his calls. He
said the Hyde story was out of bounds because no public issue was
involved -- the woman had not been on the Illinois Republican's payroll,
had not sued him and had made no public accusation.
"Deservedly or not," Broder wrote, "Salon already has a pro-Clinton
reputation. With the story you are now planning to run, which I do not
believe meets the journalistic threshold, Salon will be indelibly stained as a
vicious Clinton attack dog. . . . There is no way in the world that you and
Salon will escape broad censure as hypocritical thugs. . . . We will become
the left-wing equivalent of the American Spectator."
But Talbot maintained yesterday that Salon had "restored some sanity to
this debate" by demonstrating "how absurd it is to have sex become
politicized."
"There's a very strong pressure for a journalist to conform in Washington,
to be part of the club," he said. "Salon is not in that club. What we did was
in much more of a California-like spirit, in the tradition of Rolling Stone or
Ramparts. We don't live by the Beltway codes. . . . It was right for us to
pull Henry Hyde's pants down."
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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