Clinton Coverage Spotlights Erosion of Reporting Standards, Experts Say

In the marathon coverage of the battle between independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and the Clinton White House, reporters and editors have relied more than ever on unnamed sources, fueling anxiety both inside and outside of newsrooms.

When members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors met recently, President Sandy Rowe asked: “What are our standards on the use of anonymous sources?”

“The salient standard” in the early coverage of an alleged sexual relationship between President Clinton and former intern Monica S. Lewinsky “appears to have been that someone said it, therefore we wrote it; the wire service sent it, therefore we printed it,” she said. “That is a sorry squandering of the credibility we have.”

How did this come to pass?

A major problem facing journalists investigating possible perjury and obstruction of justice involving the president is the limited number of credible sources. In the first days of the story, coverage centered on one set of taped conversations between Lewinsky and her erstwhile confidant, Linda Tripp. Now much of the action involves secret grand jury proceedings.

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Clinton’s lawyers also have claimed that executive privilege in the case extends to his wife and key White House staff members. Despite media protests, arguments in court over that issue have been closed as well.

The combination of those factors has resulted in only a small number of people having access to the information, and many of those sources have a stake in the story.

Scores of reporters have chased the few people with firsthand knowledge. The promise of anonymity often was the price of an interview. But in many cases, it made it hard for readers to judge the veracity of what was said.

A study commissioned by the Committee of Concerned Journalists found that in the early stages of the Clinton-Lewinsky controversy, 21% of the reporting was based on anonymous sources and almost half of those stories were based on one source only.

Traditionally, reporters try to gauge a source by how close he or she is to the information and whether the person has a bias and a track record for truthfulness.

Critics charge that those standards have been eroded.

The Washington Post was criticized by its own ombudsman for changing its policy of using at least two sources for confidential information. When the paper published a detailed account of Clinton’s sealed deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment case, the only attribution was that the story was based on “a detailed account of the sealed deposition.”

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Robert G. Kaiser, the Post’s managing editor, responded that the paper established “to our own absolute satisfaction that [the account of the deposition] was a complete and reliable report.” In this media-saturated age, he added, “many knowledgeable sources learn how to protect themselves and box us into a corner where we must choose between using their information with vague attribution or not sharing it with readers at all.”

Kaiser laid out the paper’s standards: Second sourcing is not necessary when a story is based on an “authentic, classified or confidential document” the reporter has seen. And in some cases, what seems to be a single-source story may have been confirmed by other sources that cannot be identified. Other times, trust is placed in a single source who was an eyewitness or a participant in an event.

“Since the beginning of the story, coverage has significantly improved,” said Marvin Kalb, director of the Shorenstein Center on Press and Politics at Harvard University. “Professional journalists don’t like the feeling that they were being used.”

But there have been some highly publicized errors.

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The Wall Street Journal ran a story on its World Wide Web site that a White House steward had told the grand jury that he had witnessed Clinton and Lewinsky alone in a study. Later, in print, the newspaper issued a corrected version--that the steward testified he hadn’t seen Clinton and Lewinsky alone.

The Dallas Morning News posted a story on its Web site that a Secret Service agent was about to testify he had seen Clinton in a compromising situation with a young woman. The paper later said the story was inaccurate and apologized.

Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, contends that control has shifted from journalists to sources because of the proliferation of media outlets. “It is very common for a source now to say to a reporter . . . ‘If you won’t take my deal, I will take it to NBC or CNN or USA Today or the Washington Times,’ ” he said.

The ability to resist that pressure is a bulwark for good journalism, Kovach and others say.

“I don’t think, regardless of the 24-hour news cycle, you do yourself, your paper, your TV program any good at all if you are wrong,” said Edwin O. Guthman, professor of journalism at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication. “It’s nice to be first, but it’s nicer to be right.”

Times correspondent Lisa Meyer and researcher Lynette Ferdinand contributed to this story.