Twenty-Four-Hour News¡ªthe Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal
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by: Amandda
Coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal pro-vides an example of the 24-hour phenomenon at work. The sexual harassment lawsuit filed against President Bill Clinton in 1997 by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state aide, prompted Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff to search for other alleged instances of sexual misconduct by the president. Isikoff received a tip on January 13, 1998, that Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, had begun investigating Breitling Replica perjury and obstruction of justice charges in connection with the Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. Isikoff found that Starr had established a sting operation on a former White House intern who had indicated on tape to her friend and coworker, Linda Tripp, that she had had a sexual relationship with the president. When Isikoff informed his editors of this story, they decided to delay publishing the piece because they felt there was insufficient information on Monica Lewinsky and on the specifics of this new Starr investigation.
Matt Drudge, author of an online gossip column, The Drudge Report, found out about Newsweek's decision and released the story himself on Sunday, January 18, on his Web site under the title "A White House Intern Carried on a Sexual Affair with the President of the United States!" Drudge, in effect, scooped Newsweek. The magazine responded by dispatching reporters to the 24-hour cable stations. The information flow after Drudge's report was a deluge. According to a journalist who wrote an analysis of coverage during the first weeks of the Clinton-Lewinsky crisis, "Americans found themselves besieged by an unprecedented rush of information. If the Guinness Book of Records recorded media stampedes, the Clinton crisis would be in first place, knocking out O. J. Simpson and the death of Princess Diana for massive, round-the-clock, soap-opera coverage."
In the weeks that followed, several news venues ran stories with little corroboration, leading to corrections and retractions. On January 26, the Dallas Morning News reported that someone in the White House had witnessed the president and Lewinsky in a "compromising situation." b The story ran both on the newspaper's Web site and in the early edition of the paper. The Dallas report was re-reported in several media outlets around the country. The report was factually false. The anonymous source that originally provided the information retracted the statement. Two days after the story ran, the News explained that it now had another source who Omega Replica Watches confirmed the story but that the original source "felt compelled to withdraw his confirmation of the initial story because of the time pressure and because those elements of the story he had initially outlined were incorrect." c The newspaper had failed to follow the standard rule of requiring two independent sources to corroborate the story. Even after gaining a second source, the News still reported information that never proved true.
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