In the sex scandal story that has cast a cloud over the president, Bill Clinton does not stand to be the only loser. No matter how it turns out, another will be the American news media, whose reputation as truth-teller to the country has been besmirched by perceptions, in and out of the news business, about how the story has been reported.

The indictment is too sweeping. Many news outlets have acted with considerable responsibility, especially after the first few frantic days, considering the initial public pressure for information, the burden of obtaining much of it from sealed documents in legal proceedings and criminal investigations, and the stonewalling of President Clinton and his White House aides.

But the explosive nature of the story, and the speed with which it burst on the the consciousness of the nation, triggered in the early stages a piranha-like frenzy in pursuit of the relatively few tidbits tossed into the journalistic waters by -- whom? That there were wholesale leaks from lawyers and investigators was evident, but either legal restraints or reportorial pledges of anonymity kept the public from knowing with any certainty the sources of key elements in the saga.

Into the vacuum created by a scarcity of clear and credible attribution raced all manner of rumor, gossip, and, especially, hollow sourcing, making the reports of some mainstream outlets scarcely distinguishable from supermarket tabloids. The rush to be first or to be more sensational created a picture of irresponsibility seldom seen in the reporting of presidential affairs. Not until the story settled in a bit did much of the reporting again begin to resemble what has been expected of mainstream news organizations.

The Clinton White House, in full damage-control mode, seized on the leaks and weakly attributed stories to cast the news media as either a willing or unwitting collaborator of sorts with independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of alleged wrongdoing by the president. Attacking the independent counsel and his office was a clear diversionary tactic, made more credible to many viewers and readers by suggesting that the overzealous news business, so suspect already in many quarters, was being used by Starr.

Unlike the Watergate scandal of twenty-five years ago, which trickled out over twenty-six months, this scandal broke like a thunderclap, with the direst predictions from the start. Whereas in the Watergate case the word impeachment was unthinkable and not uttered until much later in the game, the prospect of a premature end to the Clinton presidency was heard almost at once. ÒIs He Finished?Ó asked the cover line on U.S. News & World Report. Not to be outdone, The Economist of London commanded, ÒIf It's True, Go.Ó

ABC News's White House correspondent Sam Donaldson speculated on This Week with Sam and Cokie on January 25 that Clinton could resign before the next week was out. "If he's not telling the truth," Donaldson said, "I think his presidency is numbered in days. This isn't going to drag out . . . . Mr. Clinton, if he's not telling the truth and the evidence shows that, will resign, perhaps this week."

After Watergate, it was said that the president had been brought down by two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and their newspaper, The Washington Post, and they were widely commended for it. This time, after initial reporting by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, there was a major piling-on by much of American print and electronic journalism, for which they have been widely castigated. A Washington Post poll taken ten days after the story broke found 56 percent of those surveyed believed the news media were treating Clinton unfairly, and 74 percent said they were giving the story "too much attention."

The advent of twenty-four-hour, all-news cable channels and the Internet assured the story of non-stop reportage and rumor, augmented by repeated break-ins of normal network programming and late-night rehashes. Viewing and listening audiences swelled, as did newspaper and magazine circulation, accommodated by special press runs.

Not just the volume but the method-ology of the reporting came in for sharp criticism -- often more rumor-mongering than fact-getting and fact-checking, and unattributed appropriation of the work and speculation of others. The old yardstick said to have been applied by the Post in the Watergate story -- that every revelation had to be confirmed by two sources before publication -- was summarily abandoned by many news outlets.

As often as not, reports were published or broadcast without a single source named, or mentioned in an attribution so vague as to be worthless. Readers and listeners were told repeatedly that this or that information came from "sources," a word that at best conveyed only the notion that the information was not pure fiction or fantasy. As leaks flew wildly from these unspecified sources, the American public was left as seldom before in a major news event to guess where stories came from and why.

Readers and listeners were told what was reported to be included in affidavits and depositions in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case -- information that supposedly was protected by a federal judge's gag order -- or presented to independent counsel Starr. Leakers were violating the rules while the public was left to guess about their identity, and about the truth of what was passed on to them through the news media, often without the customary tests of validity.

In retrospect, it was sadly appropriate that the first hint of the story really broke into public view not in Newsweek, whose investigative reporter, Isikoff, had been doggedly pursuing for more than a year Paula Jones's allegations that Clinton had made inappropriate sexual advances to her when he was governor of Arkansas. Rather, it surfaced in the wildly irresponsible Internet site of Matt Drudge, a reckless trader in rumor and gossip who makes no pretense of checking on the accuracy of what he reports. ("Matt Drudge," says Jodie Allen, Washington editor for Bill Gates's online magazine Slate, "is the troll under the bridge of Internet journalism.")

 Drudge learned that Newsweek on Saturday, January 17, with its deadline crowding in, had elected not to publish. According to a February 2 Newsweek report, prosecutors working for Starr had told the newsmagazine they needed a little more time to persuade former White House intern Monica Lewinsky to tell them about an alleged relationship she had with the president that had implications of criminal conduct.

Early Saturday morning, according to the same Newsweek report, the magazine "was given access to" a tape bearing conversations between Lewinsky and her friend Linda Tripp. But the Newsweek editors held off. Opting for caution of the sort that in earlier days was applauded, they waited.

 The magazine also reported that publication was withheld because the tapes in themselves "neither confirmed nor disproved" obstruction of justice, because the magazine had "no independent confirmation of the basis for Starr's inquiry," and because its reporters had never seen or talked with Lewinsky "or done enough independent reporting to assess the young woman's credibility." If anything, such behavior if accurately described resonated with responsibility, although holding back also left Newsweek open to speculation by journalists that its action might have been a quid pro quo for information received.

 Drudge, meanwhile, characteristically feeling no restraints, on Monday morning, January 19, jumped in and scooped Newsweek on its own story with a report that the newsmagazine had "spiked" it after a "screaming fight in the editors' offices" on the previous Saturday night. Isikoff later said "there was a vigorous discussion about what was the journalistically proper thing to do. There were no screaming matches."

 Drudge was not without his defenders. Michael Kinsley, the editor of Slate, argued later that "the Internet beat TV and print to this story, and ultimately forced it on them, for one simple reason: lower standards . . . There is a case to be made, however, for lower standards. In this case, the lower standards were vindicated. Almost no one now denies there is a legitimate story here." Kinsley seemed to harbor the crazy belief that had Drudge not reported that Newsweek had the story, the newsmagazine never would have printed it the next week, and therefore the Internet could take credit for "forcing" the story on the mainstream news media.

Newsweek, not going to press again until the next Saturday, finally put the story on its America Online site on Wednesday, January 21, after The Washington Post had broken it on newsstands in its early Wednesday edition out Tuesday night, under the four-column banner atop page one clinton accused of urging aide to lie. The story was attributed to "sources close to the investigation." ABC News broadcast the gist of it on radio shortly after midnight Wednesday.

 The Los Angeles Times also had the story in its Wednesday editions, but The New York Times, beaten badly by the Post on the Watergate story a quarter of a century earlier, was left at the gate again. The lead on its first story on Thursday, January 22, however, was a model of fact: "As an independent counsel issued a fresh wave of White House subpoenas, President Clinton today denied accusations of having had a sexual affair with a twenty-one-year-old White House intern and promised to cooperate with prosecutors investigating whether the president obstructed justice and sought to have the reported liaison covered up."

The story spread like an arsonist's handiwork. The WashingtonPost of Thursday reported from "sources familiar with the investigation" that the FBI had secretly taped Lewinsky by placing a "body wire" on Tripp and had got information that "helped persuade" Attorney General Janet Reno to ask for and receive from the three-judge panel overseeing the independent counsel authorization to expand the investigation.

 On that same Thursday, the Times identified Lucianne Goldberg, the literary agent who later said she had advised Tripp to tape her conversations with Lewinsky. But The Washington Post continued to lead the way with more information apparently leaked by, but not attributed specifically to, lawyers in the case, and in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit that had caught Lewinsky in its web.

On network television on Friday, taste went out the window. ABC News correspondent Jackie Judd reported that "a source with direct knowledge of" Lewinsky's allegations said she "would visit the White House for sex with Clinton in the early evening or early mornings on the weekends, when certain aides who would find her presence disturbing were not at the office." Judd went on: "According to the source, Lewinsky says she saved, apparently as a kind of souvenir, a navy blue dress with the president's semen stain on it. If true, this could provide physical evidence of what really happened."

 That phrase "if true" became a gate-opener for any rumor to make its way into the mainstream. Judd's report ignited a round of stories about a search for such a dress. Despite disavowals of its existence by Lewinsky's lawyer, William Ginsburg , stories soon appeared about a rumored test for tell-tale DNA by the FBI.

 The New York Post, under the headline monica kept sex dress as a souvenir, quoted "sources" as saying the dress really was "a black cocktail dress that Lewinsky never sent to the cleaners," adding that "a dress with semen on it could provide DNA evidence virtually proving the man's identity -- evidence that could be admissible at trial." The newspaper also reported that "Ken Starr's investigators searched Lewinsky's Watergate apartment, reportedly with her consent, and carried off a number of items, including some clothing," which Ginsburg subsequently confirmed. He later said that the president had given Lewinsky a long T-shirt, not a dress.

 The Village Voice, in a scathing retracing of the path taken by the ABC News report of a semen-stained dress, labeled Judd's account hearsay and noted it had nevertheless been picked up by other news organizations as if such a dress existed. Six days after the original ABC story, CBS News reported that "no DNA evidence or stains have been found on a dress that belongs to Lewinsky" that was "seized by the FBI from Lewinsky's apartment" and tested by "the FBI lab."

 ABC, the next day reported that "according to law enforcement sources, Starr so far has come up empty in a search for forensic evidence of a relationship between Mr. Clinton and Lewinsky. Sources say a dress and other pieces of clothing were tested, but they all had been dry cleaned before the FBI picked them up from Lewinsky's apartment." In this comment, ABC implied that there had been stains, and it quoted a ABC spokesperson as saying, "We stand by that initial report" of a semen-stained dress.

A close competitor for the sleaziest report award was the one regarding the president's alleged sexual preference. On Wednesday, January 21, the Scripps Howard News Service reported that one person who has listened to the Lewinsky-Tripp tapes said Lewinsky "described how Clinton allegedly first urged her to have oral sex, telling her that such acts were not technically adultery."

 That night, on ABC News's Nightline, Ted Koppel advised viewers gravely that "the crisis in the White House" ultimately "may come down to the question of whether oral sex does or does not constitute adultery." The question, he insisted, was neither "inappropriate" nor "frivolous" because "it may bear directly on the precise language of the president's denials. What sounds, in other words, like a categorical denial may prove to be something altogether different."

Nightline correspondent Chris Bury noted Clinton's "careful use of words in the matter of sex" in the past. He recalled that in 1992, in one of Gennifer Flowers's taped conversations offered by Flowers in her allegations of a long affair with the then governor of Arkansas, she "is heard discussing oral sex with Clinton. Bury went on, "during this same time period, several Arkansas state troopers assigned to the governor's detail had said on the record that Clinton would tell them that oral sex is not adultery."

The distinction came amid much speculation about whether Clinton, in his flat denial of having had "sexual relations with that woman," might be engaging in the sort of semantic circumlocution for which he became notorious in his 1992 presidential campaign when asked about his alleged affair with Flowers, his draft status, smoking marijuana, and other matters.

 The Washington Post on Sunday, January 25, reported on the basis of the Tripp tapes that "in more than 20 hours of conversations" with Tripp, "Lewinsky described an eighteen-month involvement that included late-night trysts at the White House featuring oral sex." The story noted in its second paragraph: "Few journalists have heard even a portion of these audio tapes, which include one made under the auspices of the FBI. Lewinsky herself has not commented on the tapes publicly. And yet they have been the subject of numerous news accounts and the fodder for widespread speculation." Nevertheless, it then added: "Following are descriptions of key discussions recorded on the tapes, information that The Washington Post has obtained from sources who have listened to portions of them."

 The story went on to talk of "bouts of 'phone sex' over the lines between the White House and her apartment" and one comment to Tripp in which Lewinsky is alleged to have said she wanted to go back to the White House -- as the newspaper rendered it -- as "special assistant to the president for [oral sex]." The same story also reported that "Lewinsky tells Tripp that she has an article of clothing with Clinton's semen on it."

 On television, these details led some anchors, such as Judy Woodruff of CNN, to preface some reports with the kind of unsuitable-for-children warning usually reserved for sex-and-violence shows like NYPD Blue. But comments on oral sex and semen may have been more jarring to older audiences, to whom such subjects have been taboo, than to viewers and readers from the baby boom and younger.

 The tabloids were hard-pressed to outdo the mainstream, but they were up to the challenge. Borrowing from The Sun of London, the New YorkPost quoted Flowers in an interview saying "she reveals that Clinton once gave her his 'biblical' definition of oral sex: 'It isn't 'real' sex." The headline on the story helped preserve the Post's reputation: gospel according to bubba says oral sex isn't cheating.

 Meanwhile, the search for an eyewitness to any sexual activity between Clinton and Lewinsky went on. On Sunday, January 25, Judd on ABC reported "several sources" as saying Starr was investigating claims that in the spring of 1996, the president and Lewinsky "were caught in an intimate encounter" by either Secret Service agents or White House staffers. The next morning, the front-page tabloid headlines of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News shouted, caught in the act, with the accompanying stories attributed to "sources."

 Other newspapers' versions of basically the same story had various attributions: the Los Angeles Times: "people familiar with the investigation"; The Washington Post: "sources familiar with the probe"; The Wall Street Journal: "a law enforcement official" and "unsubstantiated reports." The Chicago Tribune attributed ABC News, using the lame disclaimer "if true" and adding that "attempts to confirm the report independently were unsuccessful." The New York Times, after considering publication, prudently decided against it.

 THEN On Monday night, January 26,The Dallas Morning News reported in the first edition of its Tuesday paper and on its Web site: "Independent counsel Kenneth Starr's staff has spoken with a Secret Service agent who is prepared to testify that he saw President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in a compromising situation in the White House, sources said Monday." The story, taken off the Internet by The Associated Press and put on its wire and used that night on Nightline, was retracted within hours on the ground that its source had told the paper that the source had been mistaken (see box, page 21).

Then there was the case of the television talk show host, Larry King, referring to a New York Times story about a message from Clinton on Lewinsky's answering machine -- when there was, in fact, no such story. Interviewing lawyer Ginsburg the night of January 28, King told his guest that the story would appear in the next day's paper, only to report later in the show: "We have a clarification, I am told from our production staff. We may have jumped the gun on the fact that The New York Times will have a new report on the phone call from the president to Monica Lewinsky, the supposed phone call. We have no information on what The New York Times will be reporting tomorrow."

 Beyond the breakdown in traditional sourcing of stories in this case, not to mention traditional good taste, was the manner in which a questionably sourced or totally unsourced account was assumed to be accurate when printed or aired, and was picked up as fact by other reporters without attempting to verify it.

 For days, a report in The Washington Post of what was said to be in Clinton's secret deposition in the Paula Jones case was taken by the press as fact and used as the basis for concluding that Clinton had lied in 1992 in an interview on 60 Minutes. Noting that Clinton had denied any sexual affair with Gennifer Flowers, the Post reported that in the deposition Clinton acknowledged the affair, "according to sources familiar with his testimony."

 Loose attribution of sources abounded. One of the worst offenders was conservative columnist Arianna Huffington. She offered her view on the CNBC talk show Equal Time that Clinton had had an affair with Shelia Lawrence, the widow of the late ambassador whose body was exhumed from Arlington National Cemetery after it was revealed he had lied about his military record. Huffington, in reporting on the alleged affair, confessed that "we're not there yet in terms of proving it." So much for the application of journalistic ethics by journalistic amateurs.

With CNN and other twenty-four-hour cable outlets capable of breaking stories at any moment and Internet heist artists like Drudge poised to pounce on someone else's stories, it wasn't long before the Internet became the venue of first resort even for a daily newspaper. The Wall Street Journal on February 4, ready with a report that a White House steward had told a grand jury summoned by Starr that he had seen Clinton and Lewinsky alone in a study next to the Oval Office, posted the story on its World Wide Web site and its wire service rather than wait to break it the next morning in the Journal. In its haste, the newspaper did not wait for comment from the White House, leading deputy press secretary Joe Lockhart to complain that "the normal rules of checking or getting a response to a story seem to have given way to the technology of the Internet and the competitive pressure of getting it first."

The Web posting bore the attribution "two individuals familiar with" the steward's testimony. But his lawyer soon called the report "absolutely false and irresponsible." The Journal that night changed the posting to say the steward had made the assertion not to the grand jury but to "Secret Service personnel." The story ran in the paper the next day, also saying "one individual familiar with" the steward's story "said that he had told Secret Service personnel that he found and disposed of tissues with lipstick and other stains on them" after the Clinton-Lewinsky meeting. Once again, a juicy morsel was thrown out and pounced on by other news outlets without verification, and in spite of the firm denial of the Journal report from the steward's lawyer.

 One of the authors of the story, Brian Duffy, later told The Washington Post the reason the paper didn't wait and print an exclusive the next morning was because "we heard footsteps from at least one other news organization and just didn't think it was going to hold in this crazy cycle we're in." In such manner did the race to be first take precedence over having a carefully checked story in the newspaper itself the next day.

White House press secretary Michael McCurry called the Journal's performance "one of the sorriest episodes of journalism" he had ever witnessed, with "a daily newspaper reporting hour-by-hour" without giving the White House a chance to respond. Journal managing editor Paul Steiger replied in print that "we went with our original story when we felt it was ready" and "did not wait for a response from the White House" because "it had made it clear repeatedly" it wasn't going to respond to any questions about any aspect of the case.

Steiger said at that point that "we stand by our account" of what the steward had told the Secret Service. Three days later, however, the Journal reported that, contrary to its earlier story, the steward had not told the grand jury he had seen Clinton and Lewinsky alone.Steiger said "we deeply regret our erroneous report of the steward's testimony."

On a less salacious track, the more prominent mainstream dailies continued to compete for new breaks, relying on veiled sources. The New York Times contributed a report on February 6 that Clinton had called his personal secretary, Betty Currie, into his office and asked her "a series of leading questions such as: 'We were never alone, right?'" The source given was "lawyers familiar with her account."

The Post, "scrambling to catch up," as its media critic Howard Kurtz put it, shortly afterward confirmed the meeting "according to a person familiar with" Currie's account. Saying his own paper used "milder language" than the Times in hinting at a motivation of self-protection by the president, Kurtz quoted the Post story that said "Clinton probed her memories of his contacts with Lewinsky to see whether they matched his own." In any event, Currie's lawyer later said it was "absolutely false" that she believed Clinton "tried to influence her recollection."

The technology of delivery is not all that has changed in the reporting of the private lives of presidents and other high-ranking officeholders. The news media have traveled light years from World War II days and earlier, when the yardstick for such reporting was whether misconduct alleged or proved affected the carrying out of official duties.

 In 1984, when talk circulated about alleged marital infidelity by presidential candidate Gary Hart, nothing was written or broadcast because there was no proof and no one willing talk. In 1987, however, a Newsweek profile reported that his marriage had been rocky and he had been haunted by rumors of womanizing. A tip to The Miami Herald triggered the stakeout of his Washington townhouse from which he was seen leaving with Donna Rice. Only after that were photographs of the two on the island of Bimini displayed in the tabloid National Enquirer and Hart was forced from the race. Clearly, the old rule -- that questions about a public figure's private life were taboo -- no longer applied.

But the next time a presidential candidate ran into trouble on allegations of sexual misconduct -- Bill Clinton in 1992 -- the mainstream press was dragged into hot pursuit of the gossip tabloids that not too many years earlier had been treated like a pack of junkyard dogs by their supposedly ethical betters. The weekly supermarket tabloid, Star, printed a long, explicit first-person account of Flowers's alleged twelve-year affair with Clinton. Confronted with the story on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Clinton denied it but went into extensive damage control, culminating in his celebrated 60 Minutes interview. With the allegations quickly becoming the centerpiece of his campaign, the mainstream press had no recourse but to report how he was dealing with it. Thus did the tail of responsible journalism come to wag the dog.

From then on, throughout Clinton's 1992 campaign and ever since, the once-firm line between rumor and truth, between gossip and verification, has been crumbling. The assault has been led by the trashy tabloids but increasingly accompanied by major newspapers and television, with copy-cat tabloid radio and TV talk shows piling on. The proliferation of such shows, their sensationalism, bias and lack of responsibility and taste have vastly increased the hit-and-run practice of what now goes under the name of journalism.

 The practitioners with little pretense to truth-telling or ethics, and few if any credentials suggesting journalistic training in either area, now clutter the airwaves, on their own shows (Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy, conspiracy-spinner Rush Limbaugh, Iran-Contra figure Oliver North) or as loudmouth hosts and guests on weekend talkfests (John McLaughlin, Matt Drudge).

 In the print press and on the Internet as well, journalism pretenders and poseurs feed misinformation, speculation, and unverified accusations to the reading public. The measure of their success in polluting the journalism mainstream in the most recent Clinton scandal was the inclusion of Drudge, as a guest analyst on NBC News' Meet the Press. The program also included Isikoff, the veteran Newsweek investigative reporter.

Playing straight man to Drudge, moderator Tim Russert asked him about "reports" that there were "discussions" on the Lewinsky tapes "of other women, including other White House staffers, involved with the president." The professional gossip replied, dead-pan: "There is talk all over this town another White House staffer is going to come out from behind the curtains this week. If this is the case -- and you couple this with the headline that the New York Post has, [that] there are hundreds, hundreds [of other women] according to Miss Lewinsky, quoting Clinton -- we're in for a huge shock that goes beyond the specific episode. It's a whole psychosis taking place in the White House."

Drudge officiously took the opportunity to lecture the White House reporters for not doing their job. He expressed "shock and very much concern that there's been deception for years coming out of this White House. I mean, this intern relationship didn't happen last week. It happened over a course of year and a half, and I'm concerned. Also, there's a press corps that wasn't monitoring the situation close enough." Thus spoke the celebrated trash-peddler while Isikoff sat silently by.

 Such mixing of journalistic pretenders side-by-side with established, proven professional practitioners gives the audience a deplorably disturbing picture of a news business that already struggles under public skepticism, cynicism, and disaffection based on valid criticism of mistakes, lapses, poor judgment, and bad taste. The press and television, like the Republic itself, will survive its shortcomings in the Lewinsky affair, whether or not President Clinton survives the debacle himself. The question is, has the performance been a mere lapse of standards in the heat of a fast-breaking, incredibly competitive story of major significance? A tapering off of the mad frenzy of the first week or so of the scandal gives hope that this is the case.

 Or does it signal abandonment of the old in favor of a looser regard for the responsibility to tell readers and listeners where stories come from, and for standing behind the veracity of them? It is a question that goes to the heart of the practice of a trade that, for all its failings, should be a bulwark of a democracy that depends on an accurately informed public. Journalism in the late 1990s still should be guided by adherence to the same elemental rules that have always existed -- report what you know as soon as you know it, not before. And if you're not sure, wait and check it out yourself.

 Those news organizations that abide by this simple edict, like a disappointed Newsweek in this instance, may find themselves run over by less scrupulous or less conscientious competitors from time to time. But in the long run they will maintain their own reputations, and uphold the reputation of a craft that is under mounting attack. To do otherwise is to surrender to the sensational, the trivial and the vulgar that is increasingly infecting the serious business of informing the nation.

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