Q & A: CLARENCE PAGE ON JESSE JACKSON

On January 18, The National Enquirer broke the story that Jesse Jackson had fathered a child out of wedlock, scooping the mainstream press. Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune is part of that mainstream press. Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who started at the Tribune in 1969, is now a columnist based in the paper's Washington bureau, and an occasional guest on The McLaughlin Group, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC's Nightline, and elsewhere. Page has covered Jackson for more than thirty years. He spoke with Lauren Janis, CJR's assistant editor, about his feelings on missing the "love child" story and about reporting on the private lives of public figures.

Q: When did you first hear about the Jesse Jackson story and how aggressively did you pursue it?

A: Shortly after I first heard about it sometime last summer, Jim Warren, our bureau chief, also got a tip. He came to me and said, "Did you hear anything about Jesse Jackson having a baby out of wedlock?" I said, "Yeah, I heard that, too." At that time, we pursued it, but we went up against dead ends, the same dead ends that The National Enquirer ran into. They got past them, and we didn't. Suffice it to say that the Enquirer devoted more resources to it than the mainstream media, but it's their kind of story more than it's our kind of story.

Q: Had the Tribune put more reporters on this story, could they have broken it?

A: After you don't get the scoop it sounds like sour grapes to say, "Well, we didn't want that story anyway." I wanted that story. If I could've gotten that story I would have reported it. I did not pursue it as aggressively as I did earlier questions about Jackson's finances and spending of public money. But I did pursue it.

Q: Did you weigh the newsworthiness of the story -- was Jesse Jackson a moral leader, was he Clinton's moral adviser, what money did he give his mistress -- in order to gauge how aggressively to pursue it?

A: Of course. We make judgment calls every day as to how important a story is, what news is, and what has news value. The fact that this was allegedly going on during the Lewinsky affair made it worth pursuing. But the key question is, is it true that Jackson had a child out of wedlock with a woman who was a Washington official of the PUSH Coalition? Only after you've established that do the other questions become relevant. Was the severance pay really hush money? Whose money was used to pay for child support or the house? Those questions become relevant after you first establish that this is Jackson's out-of-wedlock child. And we just could not nail that down.

Q: Was there a feeling at the Tribune that this isn't "our kind of story," so we don't need to push it that far?

A: We will always be aggressive in looking for accountability of public figures. I was one of the first reporters to report on the questions surrounding Jackson's operation Push for Excellence and their expenditures of federal funds back in 1980. Jackson doesn't like accountability. But that hasn't stopped us. When it gets into private life, I know I am less aggressive in pursuing those stories.

Q: So did you approach this story with some ambivalence?

A: When it comes to the private life of any official, you approach it with ambivalence. But my philosophy is, when in doubt, let it out. Our impulse should be in favor of releasing information to the public, not suppressing it. After we've weighed everything and still we're ambivalent about it, my impulse is to go ahead and report it. Otherwise we're just becoming self-censors.  

Q: Jesse Jackson is someone you have covered for decades. He's a leader of the black community. Did that affect your feelings of ambivalence toward this story?

A: As an African-American who has been covering the Reverend Jackson and other civil rights figures for over thirty years, I particularly feel that it is my responsibility to be as aggressive as possible. I am obliged to give Jackson more scrutiny because I know him so well. Why should I kick the story to someone new on the beat? I am very concerned about leadership in general and about the quality of black leadership. And he is the most widely known and respected black leader. I feel obliged to be more aggressive because I feel a special responsibility to African-Americans and others in Jesse Jackson's constituency to hold him accountable. Like a sort of consumer advocate.

Q: Yet while this recent story holds Jackson accountable, is this the kind of story you get excited about?

A: I got into this business and came to the Chicago Tribune and not The National Enquirer. Most of my colleagues and I didn't get into this business for that kind of reporting. Here in Washington it's even more true that the media are not the sort of folks who thought they'd be trying to out-race The National Enquirer or the Star. So the '90s have been a very interesting time for us. I remember one day I was sitting at home at the dinner table reading the Star in the early days of the Lewinsky scandal, and my wife came in and said, "What are you reading?" And I said, "Hey, they got some of the best Monica coverage around."

Q: Do you think the line has shifted to where there is more interest in salacious stories about public figures?

A: I'm not sure which came first in that regard -- the chicken or the egg. If the news has gotten more salacious because people are more interested in it, or because it has become more reportable.

Q: Is the decision to cover these kinds of stories something that you wrestle with, morally, ethically?

A: Oh I'm sure every journalist, when they hear a hot, juicy tip that is on the border between gossip and legitimate page-one news goes through a questioning process. Is this news? Or is it something that should be in somebody's gossip column with blind sourcing -- "What well-known civil rights figure is playing back-door man to an outside woman?" That's a far cry from what you would call legitimate investigative reporting. We all wrestle with it, and I wrestled with it when I first heard this rumor about Jesse Jackson. But in this case, I think the media are perfectly justified in pursuing it.

I'm asking questions about it. Other journalists are asking questions about it. We agonize about it in journalism reviews, we agonize about it at seminars and conventions. But we are a daily business and we make these judgment calls every day. It's very difficult to lay down hard and fast rules that will apply to every situation, because every situation is different. That's why we call it news.