Table of Contents

Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Scandal in the News, Then and Now * Whitewater, Where It All Began * A Player in the Scandal Circus: January 13-15, 1998 *"Something About Perjury": January 16, 1998 * An Incredible Seven-Hour Dialogue: January 17, 1998 * Enter Mr. Drudge: January 18, 1998 * The Gathering Storm: January 19, 1998 * The Ginsburg Quote: January 20, 1998 * One Sexy Scoop: January 21, 1998 * Stampede: January 22, 1998 * Greenroom Chatterboxes: January 23, 1998 *"Breaking News": January 24, 1998 * Peekaboo: January 25, 1998 * Gossip Masquerades As News * Needed -- A Few Good Men and Women Notes Index

About the Author

Marvin Kalb has enjoyed an illustrious forty-year career as a journalist and professor. His numerous awards and honors include two Peabody Prizes, six Overseas Press Club awards, and the Edward R. Murrow Award. He is currently the executive director of the Washington office of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. He lives with his wife in Chevy Chase, Maryland. This is his tenth book.

Reviews

Dan RatherCBS NewsA great book by a great reporter.

Donna E. ShalalaPresident of the University of MiamiOnly a world-class journalist could dissect his own profession's reporting of the messy scandal that ruined a presidency....This is a brilliant, unsettling book.

Judy WoodruffCNN Anchor and Senior CorrespondentOuch! No one in the Washington press corps -- print or television or radio -- escapes the laser eye and X-ray analysis of Marvin Kalb. If there was a lingering question about whether the national news media have wandered off familiar territory and on to explosively unpredictable ground, thereby redefining themselves, this book removes all doubt.

Mike McCurryCEO of Grassroots Enterprise, former White House Press SecretaryMarvin Kalb understands how the Lewinsky story stained everyone, but his compelling argument about rethinking the rhythms of the twenty-four-hour news cycle is the two-by-four across the forehead that our political information establishment has needed for some time.

Tom BrokawNBC NewsMarvin Kalb has given us a richly detailed and provocative account of one of the most tumultuous times in modern American journalism. It is a cautionary tale, told in a compelling narrative. I hope every editor and journalist will read it -- even if they disagree with many of its conclusions.

Dan Rather

CBS NewsA great book by a great reporter.

President of the University of MiamiOnly a world-class journalist could dissect his own profession's reporting of the messy scandal that ruined a presidency....This is a brilliant, unsettling book.

CNN Anchor and Senior CorrespondentOuch! No one in the Washington press corps -- print or television or radio -- escapes the laser eye and X-ray analysis of Marvin Kalb. If there was a lingering question about whether the national news media have wandered off familiar territory and on to explosively unpredictable ground, thereby redefining themselves, this book removes all doubt.

CEO of Grassroots Enterprise, former White House Press SecretaryMarvin Kalb understands how the Lewinsky story stained everyone, but his compelling argument about rethinking the rhythms of the twenty-four-hour news cycle is the two-by-four across the forehead that our political information establishment has needed for some time.

NBC NewsMarvin Kalb has given us a richly detailed and provocative account of one of the most tumultuous times in modern American journalism. It is a cautionary tale, told in a compelling narrative. I hope every editor and journalist will read it -- even if they disagree with many of its conclusions.

Kalb is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore. A distinguished TV journalist for 30 years and now director of the Washington office of Harvard's Shorestein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy Kalb (The Nixon Memo; etc.) decries the decline in standards he now finds in a profession he loves. He presents a detailed account of how journalism debased itself with a feeding frenzy in 1998, when l'affaire Lewinsky first broke. Television and newspapers' new motto became "All Monica, All the Time." Few reporters, however, really knew much about the story, and they were all too willing, according to Kalb, to report gossip as news, innuendo as fact, without finding reliable sources. Reporters even became sources in a "prairie fire of copycat journalism." A rumor would appear on the Internet, particularly the Drudge Report, and be picked up by a TV reporter, who would in turn be used as a source by a print journalist. So, whether eventually substantiated or not, stories of a stained blue dress or a witness to a Clinton-Lewinsky tryst, or allegations the President told Lewinsky to lie were all fed into the sordid national discourse. The problem, Kalb finds, is that the corporate concentration of ownership of news pushes the bottom line above all else. And with the proliferation of news outlets, especially in cable TV, reporters must titillate rather than teach in order to compete, to draw in viewers. Kalb's report on reporting is an engrossing and disturbing story of what happens when integrity gives way to expediency. (Oct.) Forecast: Hopefully, the news media won't be so stung by Kalb's sharp criticism that they ignore it and media attention should help this important study sell well. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.