The Lewinsky probe and the Jones civil lawsuit both became forums for airing numerous charges of infidelity and sexual misconduct, many of which were based on information that likely would not have met the standards of most news organizations without a legal hook. New technology, intense competition, alternative media sources, and cutthroat campaign tactics propelled journalists in a painful quest for information on long-secret affairs, unproven rumors and minor indiscretions. These general considerations are of limited value. Like economists, journalists rarely operate in a perfect theoretical vacuum that allows editors to offer precise equations that explain their decisions. Facts are murky and often disputed.
Sources have motives, and news consumers are fickle.
These considerations make news decisions seem erratic and confusing to those outside media circles. And those decisions are rarely explained by those who make them, mostly because an explanation would reveal subjective choices made by people who prefer to think of themselves as passive observers rather than active participants in the stories they present. This volume examines the editorial decisions behind news stories involving the private lives of more than two dozen political figures, mostly in the 1996 and 1998 election cycles and the early stages of the 2000 campaign for president. Chapter 1 details our proposed guidelines for investigating the private lives of politicians and the standards by which we evaluate our case studies. Chapter 4 describes some of the worst journalistic practices our case studies reveal, while chapter 5 explains some of the consequences.