|
Seen a Rogue on
the loose?
This week's Rogue goes to editors atThe Oregonian for letting squeamishness about sex rob readers of crucial information. Last week, like papers across the country, The Oregonian kept readers up-to-date on the White House sex scandal. One of the few stories to break real news was a front-page Aug. 21 article reprinted from The New York Times. It was there that the Big O cheated readers, nixing key passages that the nation's paper of record saw fit to print. Central to last week's episode of All My Interns were the lovers' accounts of their physical contact--which could determine whether President Clinton committed perjury in his deposition in the Paula Jones case. Clinton has argued that the physical contact between him and Monica Lewinsky did not meet the narrow definition of "sex" used by Jones' lawyers. Clinton appears to be arguing that being on the receiving end of a blow job isn't sex. That logic might not fly with Hillary, but it could keep him from being impeached. Last week, however, it became clear for the first time that, according to Lewinsky, the president's conduct did fit the lawyers' definition of sex. Yet you wouldn't know this key fact from reading The Oregonian. In addition to editing out the Times' references to "oral sex" and "semen" stains, the state's largest newspaper left out the following sentence from the Times story about Lewinsky's grand jury testimony: "Ms. Lewinsky...told the panel that he [Clinton] intimately caressed her breasts and touched her genitals during several encounters inside the White House." The Oregonian's national desk editor, Howard Scott, would not talk about his paper's editing decisions. He referred all questions to public editor Michele McLellan. Her assistant promised that McLellan would call back with an explanation, but we never heard from her. Richard L. Berke, The Times reporter who co-wrote the piece, says the Times is a "family paper" and is "squeamish" about such details but felt their news value warranted their inclusion in his front-page story. "It spotlights whether Clinton committed perjury," he told WW. "It's an important part of the whole story as the evidence stacks up."
Originally published August 26, 1998 |
