Last Updated: September 23, 1999
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Book review
A third of “Warp Speed” is given to 10 appendices, which provide findings
of studies designed or conducted by the Committee of Concerned Journalists
(http://www.journalism.org/concern.htm) in 1998.
Appendix 1 tells us that a great deal of reporting in the first six
days of the Clinton-Lewinsky story was not attributed to any source. About
40 percent of the reportage was “analysis, opinion, speculation or judgment.”
The common judgment (to which the public objected as too hasty) was that
the president was in deep trouble. The study concludes that there was much
more news dissemination going on than news gathering. Bar charts show the
sourcing breakdown for newspapers, newsweeklies, TV news and TV commentary
shows.
Appendix 2 reports the findings of a study of four days’ worth of stories
that ran in January and March in print or on TV, the focus again being
on sources, especially how those sources were described or identified.
Almost 60 percent of anonymous sources were described as essentially no
more than “sources,” with no attempt to characterize the expertise, reliability
or biases of the source. In some cases such stories held up very well.
Bureau chiefs from three dailies described decisions not to publish when
they were not entirely confident of their sources.
Seven of the appendices track major threads of the Clinton-Lewinsky
story, such as “The Blue Dress Story” and “The Cigar Story.” Each ends
with a reference to The Starr Report, either quoting pertinent paragraphs
or stating that the report makes no reference to the allegations.
The perspective provided encapsulates the frantic swirl of rumors that
no doubt we all remember. What we may forget in time is that these rumors
were propelled by The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street
Journal and the Los Angeles Times, as well as by various TV and Internet
sources. Only reference to the dress’s DNA evidence and the cigar innuendo
originated on Matt Drudge’s Web site, according to the chronologies.
