These Affairs of State Give Editors Pause

Now that three members of Congress have confessed to adulterous affairs, prompted by media scrutiny, Washington is filled with paranoia, wondering who will be next.

But in the nation’s newsrooms, editors are wrestling with equally anxious questions: Should any of these stories have appeared in the first place? Have the media damaged the public dialogue by pushing too far into the private lives of elected officials? And what does any of this have to do with the political and sexual scandals plaguing President Clinton?

There is wide disagreement.

“You get the feeling that we’re just being dragged along by events, that we have no real standards on this issue,” said Des Moines Register metro editor Rick Tapscott. “We are all driven by such competitive pressures, and it would take a lot of courage to say no to printing these revelations.”

In recent weeks, three media organizations have said yes, exploring rumors of extramarital affairs by three GOP members of the House: Clinton critics Dan Burton of Indiana and Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, plus Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to proceed with an impeachment of Clinton.

The three sex inquiries triggered a rush to confess: Burton announced earlier this month that he had fathered a child in an extramarital affair, hoping to pre-empt a Vanity Fair story that has yet to appear. Chenoweth confirmed several days later that she had a long-term affair with a married man, in response to questions from the Idaho Statesman. This week, Hyde confirmed that he’d had a five-year affair with a married woman 30 years ago--but only after he was confronted by Salon magazine, an online publication.

Angry GOP leaders have mounted a furious counteroffensive, charging that the White House planted these stories in the media. To date, however, there is no hard evidence of this, and the news organizations deny any White House involvement.

“We are a new element in the media, we’re not part of mainstream press, and this is healthy change for diversity in news sources,” said David Talbot, editor and CEO of San Francisco-based Salon, which was founded in 1995. “The story about Henry Hyde was shopped around to 56 news organizations, but we were the only one with the determination to report this and get it out.”

Stung by attacks from others in the media, Talbot added that Salon observes traditional rules of journalistic fairness. Before running the Hyde story, he noted, the magazine checked and double-checked facts, and gave Hyde a chance to comment. The magazine had spoken to the former husband of the woman who had the affair with Hyde, her daughter and a family friend about the relationship before publication. It was the family friend who had brought the story to the attention of so many news organizations, and Talbot finally decided to run with it.

But does that make the coverage right? After all, the story involved an affair that took place long before Hyde was even elected to Congress. And unlike Burton and Chenoweth--who had attacked Clinton on moral grounds--Hyde has been praised by Democrats and Republicans alike as a fair, judicious man.

The Times, like many news organizations, did not publish a story about the Hyde affair, saying it was not an issue of public interest, but did report on the ruckus the Salon report caused in Congress.

“We would not have reported the story about Henry Hyde,” said Jim Willse, editor of the Newark Star-Ledger. “Once you start carrying investigative pieces about every historical indiscretion, you are going down a slippery slope indeed.”

The news reports about Burton and Chenoweth were a different matter, Willse added, because “there is hypocrisy involved, and these people have to expect they’ll be called on it.” (Burton had called Clinton “a scumbag,” and Chenoweth was running a TV ad criticizing Clinton for the “sordid spectacle” of an extramarital affair.)

Other news executives see little or no ambiguity. Phil Bronstein, editor of the San Francisco Examiner, called the Hyde story “totally legitimate,” since “this is a man who is going to be sitting in judgment on the president’s actions.” As a guiding rule, he added, “the more information out there, the better.”

Yet the prevalence of information--and the source of it--is a vexing media problem. Twenty years ago, there was a handful of TV networks and newspapers that dictated the news agenda for the rest of the nation. Today, the growth of cable TV news stations, talk radio and Internet news have greatly expanded the amount and type of information available.

As a result, the power to decide what will get covered is no longer in the hands of a select few. And as competition increases, “we tend to become a little more invasive in our coverage,” said Jack Loftis, editor of the Houston Chronicle. “We are competing against electronic outlets that are on the air 24 hours a day, and [given recent coverage of the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal], I’m not really proud of what the media has done.”

It doesn’t matter if a news organization decides against pursuing the Hyde story, Newark’s Willse added, because “nowadays we are hostage to other people’s standards. You can do what you think is right, but the next day someone else took the opposite view and suddenly the story you didn’t care for is in play.”

At the very least, the issue underscores the lack of a definable media standard for the line between public and private life.

Consider Paul Tash, executive editor of the St. Petersburg Times, who said he counseled his reporters that stories on sexual affairs “in the distant past of distant Republicans” should not be treated with the same urgency as impeachment.

Yet he conceded that “poor Mr. Hyde wound up on the bottom of our front page the other day,” a fact suggesting “the depths to which this whole public-private debate is sinking.”

Meanwhile, some predict that journalists may also pay a bitter price--joining the ranks of those who are publicly exposed.

Given the current climate of media voyeurism, that kind of scrutiny “is probably inevitable” said Ed Turner, former vice president of CNN. “It may be that some disappointed Democrats will turn on the press.”

Either way, the media has reason for concern. Prominent reporters are fair game and “everybody knows it,” said USC journalism professor Bryce Nelson. “If the press or television networks have no respect for privacy, why should anyone have respect for the privacy of the press?”

Staff writer Alan C. Miller in Washington contributed to this story.

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What Will Be Released

The following documents will be released Monday:

* Transcript and videotape of Clinton’s testimony to the grand jury.

* Transcript of Monica Sl. Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony.

* Charts, graphs, and timelines that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and his attorneys constructed.

* Memos, phone records.

* Secret service logs of White House visits.

Note: Testimony of other witnesses will not be made public.