Clinton Spokesman Accuses Press of Bias

Mike McCurry, President Clinton’s beleaguered press secretary, Monday accused journalists of bias in their coverage of Clinton administration controversies and said the American people are more fair-minded and “more likely to believe in the presumption of innocence.”

McCurry, who has undergone what he termed four months of uninterrupted negative press coverage since controversy erupted over the president’s relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, said that Americans appreciate the work Clinton has done on issues important to them and would just as soon have journalists stop writing about scandals.

Appearing weary at times during a spirited breakfast with reporters and editors at The Times’ bureau here, McCurry conceded that the administration has refused to answer many questions about alleged Democratic fund-raising improprieties and other investigations. But, he said, legal considerations restrict the flow of information.

The White House, which once provided information on Democratic fund-raising, has adopted “a different posture” and no longer provides its spokesmen with information to reply to reporters’ questions, McCurry said.

Expressing his own frustration with the policy, he said: “If you’re not going to get the information that you can use to answer questions, there’s not much you can . . . do to affect those circumstances. You basically have to tough it out.”

McCurry suggested that the Washington press corps does not believe Clinton’s denial of a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Looking around the room at 30 Times journalists, he said: “Everybody here--be honest about it--there is not a person in this room who still has any presumption of innocence with respect to the president. . . . I think it affects the way you cover the story.”

Clinton and Lewinsky both have denied having a sexual relationship, but independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr has been investigating the matter since January, when Linda Tripp, then a friend of Lewinsky’s, provided him with tapes of secretly recorded phone conversations in which Lewinsky indicated that she had an affair with the president.

As for polls showing that most Americans believe Clinton has lied about the matter, McCurry said their perception has been affected by “an overwhelming amount of discussion, coverage, analysis, speculation that starts with the premise that the president lied.”

One thing that worries him, he said, is--if “it turns out that Bill Clinton told the truth--then people are going to look back and say: ‘What kind of sorry episode was this that we just went through?’ ”

Reporters and some of Clinton’s Democratic colleagues have pressed the president continually to fulfill his promise to offer a fuller explanation of the Lewinsky matter. But Clinton refuses to do so, citing his lawyers’ concerns about Starr’s investigation.

McCurry said that Clinton will say more when “he and his lawyers don’t presume that there is some legal jeopardy he faces from a prosecutor that seems determined to make a case.”

The president has “decided that’s the way he should proceed and that most of us in the White House have to accept that and figure out how to do business and move on. That’s the reality,” he said at another point.

Asked if he is comfortable with Clinton’s position that he is relying on legal advice in refusing to answer questions, he said: “I’m declining to express a personal opinion. I support the president because I work for him.”

When a reporter pressed McCurry about Lewinsky’s visits to the White House after she had gone to work at the Pentagon and about reports that she and the president had exchanged gifts, he retorted: “I just don’t think that the American people are dying to know the answers to the questions that you just posed. I think you are.”

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Meanwhile, opinion polls continue to show Clinton with an approval rating in the mid-60% range. McCurry said that the public likes the job the president is doing and has “given him a pass” on the other matters.

He cited Clinton’s work on education, health care and economic security issues and said the president’s work on such issues as banning guns in school and putting more police on neighborhood beats is important to many American families.

McCurry, who has struggled to maintain his own credibility with reporters, was clearly uncomfortable when pressed to say whether important questions about the allegations need to be answered or whether that is an issue driven by a media out of touch with the public.

“I’m going to decline to express any personal view of that,” he said.