Clinton Allegation Raises Questions on Media’s Role : Politics: Many journalists dislike the story of his purported affair but believe that they had to follow it.

The executive producer of the “CBS Evening News,” Erik Sorenson, took a quick look at the story in the supermarket tabloid Star last Thursday and threw it in the trash.

“This is what I think of this story,” Sorenson told political editor Brian Healy after reading Gennifer Flowers’ paid account of her alleged 12-year affair with Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

Sometime later, Sorenson had to fish the story out of the garbage.

And over the last six days, journalists at most of the nation’s major media organizations say they figuratively did the same.

The unsubstantiated story--which has placed Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign in some peril--has raised unsettling questions about the influential, but often passive, echoing effect of the media.

Editors and producers at many of the nation’s major news organizations express distaste for what they have aired. But they believe that they had little choice but to follow the story, once it had been broken by the Star and Clinton had responded by going on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”

Many journalists say the episode is evidence of how an element of tabloid sensationalism now influences the agenda of American news gathering.

“We had an awful choice between censorship and sensationalism, and we don’t have the ability to find another way collectively,” said Tom Hannon, political director of Cable News Network.

How this occurred is a lesson in how the press operates.

The Star, a tabloid owned by the same company that publishes the National Enquirer, began faxing copies of its story to major news organizations Thursday afternoon to generate publicity for its Monday editions.

By midafternoon, Clinton and ABC News correspondent Jim Wooten had copies in New Hampshire. Wooten, surrounded by other reporters, asked Clinton about it on camera during a stop at a brush factory in Claremont. Clinton responded by denying the Star’s charges.

While driving back to Manchester, Wooten began writing a script but quickly decided that he did not have enough substantiated facts to make a story. “World News Tonight” executive producer Paul Friedman in New York agreed.

Similar decisions were made Thursday at CBS and CNN. NBC, which was already planning a profile of Clinton that night, thought that it had to mention the issue. Anchor Tom Brokaw did so in a 20-second introduction to the profile.

But at many newspapers, such as the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, editors decided it was a story. A key reason: Clinton had answered questions on the subject raised by reporters.

Editors concede that there is a certain circularity to this. Reporters raise the issue by asking questions, and then say it is news because the candidate answered.

“My sense is that the key event was his ready willingness to discuss it himself last Thursday, which is sort of a cop-out answer,” conceded Robert Kaiser, managing editor of the Washington Post. “I am not sure that, had he refused to talk about it, that we would have refused to write about it. But his willingness to talk about it made it easy.”

Another factor that played into editors’ decision-making was that Clinton and his wife, Hillary, were considering appearing on ABC’s “Prime Time Live” that night. That made journalists believe that Clinton would elevate the story.

As it turned out, Clinton did not appear on that program. Nor did he appear, as subsequently planned, on ABC’s “Nightline” that evening, in part because of bad weather. But “Nightline” went ahead and devoted the program anyway to the media’s role in the story.

Another factor, some journalists said, is that media with different standards are gaining greater influence on American audiences.

For example, “local TV went crazy,” said Healy of CBS. “They have a different standard on what they put on the air.” WNBC in New York, which is owned by the same network that had downplayed the story on its national news, had led with the story.

“The mainstream media don’t operate in a vacuum in America,” said NBC political director Bill Wheatley. “Tens of millions of people are exposed to these stories and want to know what the truth is.”

With more programs like “A Current Affair,” “Oprah Winfrey” and “Geraldo,” some journalists believe there has been a “tabloidization” effect on the press in general. The sheer presence of these programs and the speed with which information now travels makes it difficult not to feel their influence.

“One of our functions in life is to keep our readers abreast of political news, and the Star is one of many megaphones in the world that do appear to have the power to make something happen in politics,” Kaiser of the Post said. “It would be foolish to deny that there are lots of forces in society, some of which are more reputable than others, that have that power.”

Finally, there was the matter of the context into which the Star story emerged, editors said. Rumors of infidelity had swirled around Clinton for years. Clinton and his wife, Hillary, had gone out of their way to address them. Many Americans, editors said, think adultery is an important issue.

And Clinton had seemed equivocal in his answers, some editors said, implying that he had committed adultery but not directly stating it.

“If there had not been the prior indications of Clinton’s possible extramarital affairs and his equivocal answer, and the fact this woman was known to have been an alleged partner of his, our response might have been different,” said Norman C. Miller, national editor of the Los Angeles Times. “So I don’t think it is a function of everyone following the sleaze publications. All of these things have a particular set of facts of their own. If another candidate had been so named, I am not sure the response would have been the same.”

Most major news organizations sent reporters to Little Rock, Ark., to try to verify or disprove the charges, as well as those of other women who have been rumored in the past to have possible links to Clinton. So far, none has been able to definitely prove anything either way.

By Friday, CNN had changed its mind about not reporting the allegations, in part, CNN political director Hannon said, because Clinton was then planning to appear on CNN’s “Newsmaker Saturday” to answer the allegations.

“With the governor preparing to make a nationwide denial with Hillary, we felt we were in a position where we could no longer fail to tell our viewers about this,” Hannon said.

The Post and the Los Angeles Times both did second-day stories about the allegations plaguing his campaign. So did many other papers. CBS anchor Dan Rather mentioned it in a “tell story” without pictures. NBC continued to avoid the story. ABC added two lines into a story about Clinton’s campaign Friday.

The Chicago Tribune picked up the story over the weekend about how reporters were asking Clinton about the allegations at all of his campaign stops.

Everything changed in most journalists’ minds after Clinton’s appearance on “60 Minutes,” which ratings estimate was viewed by an extraordinary 40 million to 50 million Americans.

The Post and the Los Angeles Times, among others, ran the story on Page One. The morning network news programs led with the “60 Minutes” broadcasts and an analysis, often disagreeing over what precisely the Clintons had admitted.

All three networks led with the story Monday night, adding to the “60 Minutes” account excerpts from a press conference that the Star had staged for Flowers to do Monday in New York. CNN carried the press conference live, over the protest of Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown.

In retrospect, Hannon said the network had thought it would be able to question Flowers freely, but when it was not, it was too late. Had he known in advance, Hannon said, “I think we would have had to take a much different look at it.”

The most circumspect was the New York Times. With the exception of the story detailing Clinton’s appearance on “60 Minutes,” it has played the Clinton story briefly at the bottom of its political page each day. It covered Gennifer Flowers’ press conference in two or three discreet paragraphs in the middle of a story about Clinton’s campaign day.

“We don’t stick our heads in the sand about anything, reliable or unverifiable,” said executive editor Max Frankel. But “in the only language we have, where we play a story, how big we play it, we are telling the reader what we think of this stuff and whether we can vouch for it or not.”