How to Report the Lewd and Unproven?

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

To conservatives who have been chortling in anticipation since hearing about Paula Corbin Jones' accusations in February, the question for the mainstream media is, What took you so long? To liberals who label the charges unsubstantiated and irrelevant, the question is, Why are you raking up this muck? Both sides are right in perceiving widespread journalistic aversion to the story. That reluctance involves ethical and gender issues that go far beyond partisanship.

Jones' charges reached the front page of the Washington Post 82 days after she made them, and fully 10 weeks after reporter Michael Isikoff researched a somewhat confirmatory analysis that his editors declined to publish until last week. At the New York Times, Jones until last Saturday rated a few paragraphs in stories deep inside the paper; it also printed a column by William Safire chiding other journalists for taking her seriously. The Los Angeles Times, by contrast, unhesitatingly reported Jones' charges in February. Of the TV networks, ABC ran a brief and oblique mention on an evening newscast in February, but NBC, CNN and CBS held off until last week, and even then mostly gave the story short shrift. TIME briefly mentioned the case in a two-page story on Clinton haters in the April 11 issue, while last week Newsweek used the gist of Jones' charges as a metaphor for the President's governing style in a five-page critique titled "The Politics of Promiscuity."

Which editorial judgments were right? And how can organizations that generally play by the same rules in assessing what is news and what isn't be so far apart in this instance? In the conservative view, the press is monolithically liberal and intensely partisan. Granted, there is distaste among some reporters for any story that might humiliate a Democratic President -- and journalists know that a sex scandal might be more efficient at doing that than a complicated financial puzzle like Whitewater. But for most journalists, the bigger questions have to do with fear of a public backlash, anxiety about being manipulated and uncertainty about what standard of proof is sufficient.

For the better part of two decades, American journalism has been in the post-Watergate era, a gunslinger time when reporters chased scandals as though they were trophies and often prided themselves on the careers they brought down. Now the news business wonders if it has gone too far. Says Stephen Isaacs, acting dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism: "The reporting on the Jones story is typical of sensationalist reporting I've seen lately about the presidency -- it's inappropriate; it's wrong. You don't print it just because someone says it. That doesn't make it so. It's like the press doesn't even consider the rules of the game anymore."

The Jones story makes editors particularly queasy because they fear she may be seeking money or publicity and because she seems linked to people hoping for political gain. Moreover, her account is ultimately uncheckable: only two people were in the room. But even if true, some editors question its relevance. It took place before Clinton was President, and one essential element -- that he was an imperfect husband -- is not exactly news. There has been a tacit standard that his pre-presidential peccadillos were absolved when he and his wife discussed them on 60 Minutes during the campaign.

But the alleged Jones encounter involves more than simply an affair: unacceptably aggressive sexual advances. Even those inclined to treat sexuality as private perceive a point where it becomes public. Says Thomas Plate, editorial-page editor of the Los Angeles Times: "What the American press is asking is whether Clinton is a serial bonker and, if he is, whether that is related to some basic element of character." News executives are also leery of seeming insensitive to women. Says Boston Globe editor Matthew Storin: "The two most important words in the news judgment on this story are: Anita Hill. Though there are some differences, you have the public-policy aspect of sexual-harassment charges."

Perhaps the story's most conflict-laden aspect is its impact on the body politic, given the coarse nature of Jones' claims. In a time of tabloid TV, transvestites on Geraldo and Buttafuoco docudramas galore, even consumers who deplore such stories are sure to read them. The haunting question that many editors voiced last week: Yes, but at what cost?

With reporting by Nina Burleigh/Little Rock and Ratu Kamlani/New York