Hard-Pressed

In an early morning meeting Tuesday, members of the Fox News Channel’s editorial team gathered around a long table to sketch out daily coverage. There were developments in the Salt Lake City Olympic bribery scandal and a variety of stories offered by news bureaus scattered across the nation.

But news director John Moody made it clear that the network’s agenda remained the same as it had for 13 months.

“Remember, let’s stay on the [impeachment] trial,” he told his deputies. “That’s the story which got us this far.”

Indeed, impeachment has been very good for Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and a variety of newer media outlets that have frantically covered the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal around the clock since it broke last year. Although their cable TV ratings have fluctuated--and their audience share remains small--the story has provided rich fodder for news specials, punditry and gossip to fill an insatiable 24-hour news cycle.

Yet many question whether this is a troubling portent of how the media will carry on in the future. In the hours following Moody’s marching orders, Fox had little impeachment news to cover as the Senate closed its doors for deliberations. What viewers saw instead was a crisply orchestrated tape loop of news snippets, flashbacks and commentary that was updated through the day.

“This has been the problem throughout the Lewinsky scandal, because the Clinton story has not had many new revelations as it developed,” said Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio and Television News Directors Assn. “As journalists went along, particularly in radio and TV, they had to find new ways to say things they’d said before. It created a bad precedent.”

Impeachment was a watershed for the American media, and the debate over their role in the scandal--as well as the lessons to be learned--is far from over. In the aftermath, two conclusions are inescapable: Americans should brace for a continuing diet of scandal and entertainment-tinged news filled with rumor and invasive reporting--in effect, a nonstop multimedia tabloid. And the public can take some heart in the rapid growth of newer media outlets, which make news coverage--and those who deliver it--more democratic and diverse than ever.

These new information sources had a major impact on the Monica S. Lewinsky story, starting with the online Drudge Report breaking news of the scandal. And the often strident coverage created a stampede; traditional news organizations such as newspapers plunged into the frenzy along with their newer brethren. Some broke important stories while others, especially at the beginning, had to retract items that were rushed and incorrect. There were moments of wretched excess, including rumors about President Clinton’s “love child” and a bizarre interlude when online reporter Matt Drudge and some broadcasters criticized NBC for filming but failing to air an interview with a woman who allegedly claimed she had been assaulted by Clinton years ago.

“You just can’t control the news like you used to,” Cochran said. “And that’s because you can’t define the media the way you used to; it’s a much bigger umbrella nowadays.”

On the plus side, all-news cable stations and Internet publications such as Salon and Slate introduced a host of new commentators and analysts, including a greatly expanded number of women and younger voices. Pundits such as Laura Ingraham, Cynthia Alksne, Angela McGlowan, Arianna Huffington and Julianne Malveaux gained visibility, and critics in the future will be hard-pressed to argue that media coverage is exclusively controlled by a handful of newspaper and TV officials in New York and Washington.

There were also veteran journalists whose performances stood out in the hubbub. Jeff Greenfield, CNN’s chief political analyst, was a model of restraint, refusing to engage in the glib predictions that turned so much punditry into a crass blood sport. Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post’s media critic, offered energetic, balanced coverage of a story that said as much about the press as the president.

Smaller Media Outlets Play a Big Part

Still, the Lewinsky scandal was shaped heavily by media outlets that would have been unthinkable a few years ago: Salon, a small San Francisco company, “outed” Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) over a 30-year-old adulterous affair. Pornographer Larry Flynt’s revelations of sexual hanky-panky threw Congress into turmoil and caused designated House Speaker Bob Livingston (R-La.) to resign before he even hoisted his gavel.

“We live in a new world of media coverage where it doesn’t matter if a newspaper tries to draw the line on coverage, because if it doesn’t carry a story, an Internet publication or Jay Leno’s nightly monologue will,” said cultural historian Neal Gabler, author of “Life, the Movie.”

The public has given the media mixed grades. Early polls revealed skepticism over the use of unattributed sources and a sense that journalists had a vested interest in “getting” Clinton. After the president’s August confession, however, public approval of the media rose. Throughout, a majority of Americans said the press paid far too much attention to the tawdry story.

“I understand why people feel this, but these kind of media eruptions are bound to continue,” said CNBC’s Chris Matthews, host of the show “Hardball.” “I mean, we’re not just going back to some quiet, dull place. We’re not going to say, ‘We interrupt this scandal and return you to our regular programming.’ ”

Some observers, such as critic George W. S. Trow, are decidedly gloomy about what will follow. “The news hits us with celebrity force nowadays, and the media is out of control; they bombard people with little bits of information that never add up to a clear story,” said Trow, author of “My Pilgrim’s Progress: Media Studies.” “The press has treated the Clinton scandal like ‘Baywatch’ schmoozing its way into the White House, and when I look down the road, I don’t see the media doing a better job.”

Gabler, however, said the scandal has shown that Americans are savvier than the media realize. Although coverage of the impeachment saga has been driven by tabloid values and treated by many as pure entertainment, he noted, most people can tell the difference between a national crisis and a soap opera.

“People said, ‘OK, we’ll buy the [independent counsel Kenneth W.] Starr report and watch the hearings, but we don’t think it’s anything other than entertainment,’ ” he said. “According to the laws of brainwashing, people should have thrown Clinton out long ago. But Americans said, ‘Oh, come on, the president’s not going to resign in 48 hours! That’s just a lot of talk on TV.’ ”

When journalists themselves look into the crystal ball, they see important lessons from the last year of sex and scandal.

“We’re not very good at calibrating the volume on a big story; we don’t know how to say, ‘Sorry, folks, nothing happened today,’ ” said Sandra Rowe, editor of the Portland Oregonian and past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The urge to chase a story is irresistible, she added, “but readers judge you at these moments. They see what kind of character you have as a news organization if you simply go with the flow and abdicate any leadership.”

“I know what an editor is supposed to do,” said Geneva Overholser, former ombudswoman for the Washington Post. “He or she is supposed to make tough calls. It’s just irresponsible to say that we’re caught up in the tide of coverage.”

Both Rowe and Overholser disparage much of the cable TV coverage. But defenders suggest that the still-evolving medium gets a bum rap. What may seem to be numbing repetition is actually a carefully produced series of news loops for viewers with limited time.

“We don’t live in a world where dads come home punctually at 6:30 p.m. to watch the news anymore,” said Fox News Channel’s Moody. “Everything is in flux, and we offer news around the clock.

“Our network will be covering different stories now, issues like health care,” added Moody, who directs a 2-year-old operation that is available in 38 million homes. “But I don’t think this [Lewinsky] story will go away. It’s impossible to imagine that the searing emotions triggered by this won’t seep into and affect the presidential race.”

Looking beyond the media’s performance in the Lewinsky affair, one crucial lesson might well apply to all--a reminder that the people they serve are neither gullible nor foolish.

It would be a huge mistake for journalists to take comfort in the fact that people continued to be fascinated by the scandal--even though they dismissed it--according to Jacquelyn Sharkey, professor of journalism at the University of Arizona.

“People have a pretty sophisticated view of what the press is supposed to do, and even though they may be intrigued by the human elements of a soap opera, that doesn’t mean they approve of the way it’s covered,” she said. “I fear we’re in for a period of growing public criticism of the press because people sense that we haven’t done enough hard thinking about real news values. They know we have a responsibility to uphold, but do we?”