And Now. . .The Unfiltered, Unedited News
By Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach
Sunday, February 28, 1999; Page B01
At long last, Jane Doe No. 5.
After months of buzz from online gossip Matt Drudge, fulmination from
cable television host Chris Matthews and insinuations from House Minority
Whip Tom DeLay (D-Tex.), Juanita Broaddrick's sexual assault allegation
against Bill Clinton has flared in the serious press.
Ten days ago, Wall Street Journal editorial writer Dorothy Rabinowitz's
interview with Broaddrick became the basis for a piece that ran on the
newspaper's commentary pages. The next morning, The Washington Post
published a long and pained news story on page one, explaining that it had
interviewed Broaddrick months earlier--off the record--and had only won
her consent to go public after the Journal piece appeared. Four days later,
NBC aired an interview with Broaddrick that had been taped before the
Journal story, and it was only then that millions of Americans tuned in.
What are we to make not only of Jane Doe No. 5, but also of how and
when she became a story? The circuitous tale is a template for what might
be called the New Mixed Media Culture, and it is a sign of things to
come--bad things for the nature of public discourse. We are moving
toward a journalism of assertion rather than a journalism of verification,
and the cost for society is high.
Some will doubtless jump to accuse us of being either Clinton defenders or
journalistic Luddites bent on preserving a dying order. On the contrary, we
are not judging the merits of Broaddrick's allegation. Moreover, we believe
strongly that more modes of communication, including cable TV and the
Internet, benefit everyone. Our point is to reaffirm the value and the limits
of journalism's function. Clinton's fitness for office is beyond the scope of
reporters to decide. Rather, a journalist's job is to sift out the facts from the
allegations, and to provide citizens with accurate reliable information upon
which they can self-govern. That process is at risk.
First, some background: Broaddrick is a nursing home operator in
Arkansas who now alleges that Bill Clinton forced her to have sex with him
in her hotel room in 1978. She told friends about the incident at the time.
She did not go to the police and avoided reporters. Years later, when
contacted by Paula Jones's attorneys, she signed an affidavit denying
Clinton had assaulted her. But when she was contacted by investigators
working with independent counsel Kenneth Starr and offered immunity
from prosecution, she retracted the affidavit.
Then, after Clinton's trial in the Senate had begun, she decided to make the
allegation public, though it did not surface in the mainstream press until 10
days ago.
Why did this become a big story only after the impeachment process was
over?
Actually, several leading news organizations had pursued this story since
1992 and had not been able to verify it. Broaddrick refused to go on the
record, and the news organizations properly resisted going with only
secondhand sources. Late last month, on the eve of the impeachment vote
in the Senate, NBC News finally persuaded Broaddrick to sit for an
on-the-record interview. In the ensuing weeks, NBC tried to confirm
various elements of her account and held off running it while they did so.
NBC News made the right choice.
To begin with, Broaddrick's account is problematic, especially by legal
standards. She told the story, denied the story, and then retracted the
denial. With that record, she put her credibility in doubt and neither Jones's
attorneys nor Starr were able to make a case with her testimony. Even the
House managers who interviewed her chose not to use the allegation
publicly in their efforts to convict Clinton.
There is also the question of Broaddrick's timing in going public. She did
not come forward for nearly two decades, and then did so only when her
allegations could have caused Clinton's removal while allowing her to
escape entanglement in most of the legal process.
That timing gave NBC appropriate pause. There is a long tradition of
fairness in the press of not dropping bombs at the last minute during
elections or other public debates. This informal rule prevents stories from
unduly influencing an outcome before the sorting-out process of journalism
has been given a chance to work. In addition to the timing, the gravity of
the charge itself should require a high degree of substantiation.
NBC News ended up taking a lot of heat for not running the interview
earlier. That only goes to show that restraint is often more difficult than
charging ahead. Making those calls--editing--is at the heart of journalism.
The importance of verification became all the more clear when viewers
saw NBC's interview. The time taken to corroborate specific details of her
story, to probe its weaknesses and to examine her failure to come forward
sooner, made NBC's account more credible and valuable.
During the time NBC and other news organizations were working to verify
Broaddrick's story, we saw the new, impatient culture of journalism at
work. It is not a culture dedicated to establishing whether a story is true. It
disregards verification and focuses on some secondary controversy in
order to talk about the story.
In December, for instance, CNBC talk-show host Matthews broached the
Broaddrick story without offering any indication that he had tried to verify
it. Instead, he discussed how members of Congress were silently using the
"rape accusation" to make up their minds on impeachment. "Why are
members of the Republican caucus willing to read material that accuses the
president of things like rape and make their decisions based on that
information, but are not willing to disclose it after they learned it?" he asked
Rep. Tillie Fowler (R-Fla.) during an appearance on his show. She was
forbidden by law from talking about such matters, Fowler answered.
The same pattern followed on talk radio, on Fox News, on Matt Drudge's
Web site, and in the Washington Times--reporting not on the substance of
the allegation but on NBC News's hesitation about airing it, or speculation
about pressure from the White House to kill the story.
Then, once the impeachment process had concluded, the story was ferried
into the press as a political statement by the editorial writers of the Wall
Street Journal. The Journal's editorial pages, it is worth noting, have been
aggressive about airing allegations against Clinton that had not yet passed
the paper's own test of news. The Journal essay forced reporters and
editors at other news organizations to decide how to react, and whether to
treat the allegations as a news story on their face or as a story about the
political debate. The day after the Journal's Feb. 19 story on the editorial
page, The Post ran its page one news story. The New York Times chose
to run an account on an inside news page of how the story came to be.
In effect, the old press was trying to react to a new kind of journalism, one
that is not concerned with fact finding but with influencing events--in this
case, trying to damage Clinton.
The pressure of the new journalism of assertion is to go with stories before
they have gone through the discipline of reporting--and that is what
reporting is, a discipline. The foundation of journalism's role in society is its
"ruthless respect for the fact," as Columbia Journalism School professor
Jim Carey has said.
In part because investing in reporting is too expensive, and in part because
shouting can generate an audience, much of the so-called "information
revolution" is about speculation and argument, not gathering information. In
addition, the continuous news cycle makes verification more difficult.
Journalism is becoming less a product than a process, witnessed in real
time and in public. First comes the allegation. Then the anchor vamps and
speculates until the counter-allegation is issued.
The demand to keep up with and air this to and fro leaves journalists with
less time to take stock and sort out what is true and genuinely significant.
The public gets the grist, the raw elements. There is more "news" on the
air, but it is delivered piecemeal with little context.
Why is it so important for journalists to verify rather than just dig up
allegations and pour them out for others to sift through on their own?
A journalism of unfiltered assertion makes separating fact from spin,
argument from innuendo, more difficult and leaves the society more
susceptible to manipulation. Journalism is a forum for debate, but that does
not generate truth unless it is built on a foundation of accurate information.
An argument between two prejudices educates no one. It only inflames.
"Where all news comes at secondhand, where all the testimony is
uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to
opinions," Walter Lippman wrote more than 80 years ago. "The
environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the
pseudo-environment of reports, rumors and guesses. The whole reference
of thought comes to be what somebody asserts, not what actually is."
More sources of news are better for everyone. But that is profoundly
dangerous if journalists allow that to mean that their responsibility to first
verify the facts is lessened. If anything, it is heightened. There is more
misinformation and disinformation out there. And it does not simply sort
itself out by argument.
How does the cycle end?
Quite possibly the current media--old and new--will come to disqualify
themselves with the public. Fewer and fewer people will trust them until,
eventually, they can no longer sustain themselves economically. The society
suffers, until some new form of information dissemination evolves. But it
will not be the talk show. Nor will it be the prime-time magazine
infotainment hour. These are diversions, which compete with video games
for people's time.
People are already drifting away from journalism as it has moved
increasingly toward being a forum for conflict, an extension of what
Georgetown University professor Deborah Tannen calls "The Argument
Culture." This kind of journalism appeals to extremes, but it is a less
reliable, less efficient way for citizens to learn and navigate their world.
In a society with growing choices, and one where the depth of information
is potentially infinite, the highest value will be given to the source whose
information is most dependable.
Every society throughout history has created its own journalism. In each,
history reveals, the form that has prevailed was the most reliable one. In
responding to the current wave of technological, economic and political
change, journalists must not succumb to the pressure to lower their guard
or abandon their standards of proof.
To maintain authority with the public, journalists would be wise to
remember one of the old adages: When in doubt, leave it out. Being first
and wrong is worse than useless. It damages both journalism and society.
Tom Rosenstiel is director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism,
funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Bill Kovach is curator of the Nieman
Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. They are co-authors of a
forthcoming book about the impact of the Clinton scandal on journalism
(Century Foundation).
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