It also prompted another round of soul searching by the mainstream media. Once again the nation's major networks and newspapers were forced to follow the tabloids' lead, pursuing a story they felt uneasy with, unearthed by a publication many regard with disdain. They were wary, not just of the story's source and tawdry sexual details but of its timing. The Star's scoop was first made public on the very day of President Clinton's acceptance speech, in a front-page story in the New York Post, a newspaper owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The story highlighted an ongoing journalistic culture clash.
Supermarket tabloids operate by different rules from most of the mainstream media.
Yet they insist that the transaction did not make them any less confident of the truth of her allegations. After several more conversations in which she divulged more details and showed him her diaries, Gooding and his editors grew considerably more interested. But we saw nobody else's fingerprints on this story but hers. One thing that made him doubt any political motives was her naivete. Rowlands didn't know what jobs Clinton aides like Leon Panetta and George Stephanopoulos held, and had misspelled their names in her diaries.