The New York Times: All the facts that are fit to omit

Gene Lyons, an Arkansas reporter who has covered the alleged Clinton scandals for the past six years, takes a very critical look at how the New York Times has handled the stories.

By Gene Lyons

Jan 30, 1998 | Regardless of how the Clinton-Lewinsky saga ends, Jan. 29, 1998, should go down as one of the most extraordinary days in the history of American journalism.

It was the day the New York Times ran the following four-column headline: "Ex-intern said to describe Clinton advice on evasion." Raising as it did the specter of subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice by a sitting president of the United States, the Times surely must have had information in its possession that was as hard as it was explosive.

So what evidence had the Times amassed? According to the story by staff investigative reporters Stephen Labaton and Jeff Gerth, an anonymous source identified as "an associate of Miss Lewinsky" claimed that Monica Lewinsky said she'd had a private meeting with President Clinton in late December 1997. At that meeting, according to this anonymous associate, Lewinsky said that the president had urged her to lie to Paula Jones' lawyers about their sexual relationship. Supposedly, Clinton also suggested that Lewinsky could avoid testifying altogether by moving from Washington to New York City. Equally damning, Clinton might have concealed the surreptitious get-together with Lewinsky from his own lawyers, according to the newspaper.

In effect, the New York Times had accused the president of serious felonies on the basis of double hearsay from an anonymous source. Evidence that would not be admissible in any court, or indeed until quite recently even in upper-end tabloids such as the National Enquirer. If nothing else, fear of libel suits prevented it. But the president, of course, can hardly sue.

So who could this anonymous "associate" at the heart of the Times report be? Linda Tripp, Lewinsky's so-called friend who surreptitiously and possibly illegally taped her conversations with Lewinsky? Lucianne Goldberg, a one-time Nixon dirty trickster turned book agent and full-time Clinton-phobe? Lewinsky's mother, recently brought to the verge of a nervous breakdown in one of Kenneth Starr's grand jury-star chamber proceedings? Lewinsky's one-time high school teacher/lover in Portland, Ore.? The teacher's wife?

And what was the "associate's" motive, not to mention his or her credibility? In literary criticism, we'd call such a source an "unreliable narrator." Not so the ace investigators from the Newspaper of Record. Trust us, they imply, we're the New York Times.

Next Page: Reporting by omission

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