Clinton's Affair Research Articles

Pastoral response to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair in conservative and liberal churches.

The study examined what factors led pastors to say something either negative or positive about former President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky for a sample from "Middletown." There was no significant difference between three Protestant categories (Holiness/Pentecostal, white conservative Protestant, and mainline Protestant) in whether ministers said something or not. Analysis for those who said something indicated that the ministers who made the most critical statements in their sermons were from the most conservative/orthodox of our category of churches, i.e., Holiness/Pentecostal congregations, from the strictest churches and from churches with the greatest number of Republicans (betas were .30, .26, and .19, respectively). Also, members of Holiness/Pentecostal churches were more likely to be working class but not more Republican. Possible explanations are discussed.

Strategies of Illumination: U.S. Network News, Watergate, and the Clinton Affair

This study examines the metaphors of publicity that structured U.S. network television news coverage of Watergate in 1973-74 and the Clinton affair of 1998. During both Watergate and the Clinton affair, the networks understood publicity to be the light of public inquiry. The two sets of coverage, however, differ substantially in the nature of that light. The Watergate coverage gives explicit voice to the metaphor of publicity as a searchlight, an apersonal and disembodied agent of surveillance that illuminates the political in a rational-institutional light. By contrast, the Clinton coverage implicitly rests upon a metaphor of publicity as a floodlight, a dramaturgical exposure of the political process that celebrates instead an emotional, personal, and narrativistic frame for the political and a subjective, embodied approach to journalism. While the floodlight model is often maligned, this analysis concludes that it is expanding the assumptions and boundaries of public discourse.

One scandalous story: Clinton, Lewinsky, and thirteen days that tarnished American journalism

In 1963 Marvin Kalb observed the Secret Service escorting an attractive woman into a hotel for what was most likely a rendezvous with President Kennedy. Kalb, then a correspondent for CBS, didn't consider the incident newsworthy. Thirty-five years later, Kalb watched in dismay as the press dove headfirst into the scandal of President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, disclosing every prurient detail. How and why had the journalistic landscape shifted so dramatically? One Scandalous Story seeks to answer this critical question through the inside story of thirteen days -- January 13-25, 1998 -- that make up a vital chapter in the history of American journalism. In riveting detail, Kalb examines just how the media covered the Lewinsky scandal, offering what he calls an X-ray of the Washington press corps. Drawing on hundreds of original interviews, Kalb allows us to eavesdrop on the incestuous deals between reporters and sources, the bitter disagreements among editors, the machination of moguls for whom is Big Business, and above all, the frantic maneuvering to break the story. With fresh insight, he retraces decisions made by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Internet renegade Matt Drudge, Jackie Judd of ABC, Clinton-basher Lucianne Goldberg, Susan Schmidt of The Washington Post, Jackie Bennett of the Office of the Independent Counsel, and other key players in this scandal that veered from low comedy to high drama. Through the lens of those thirteen turbulent days, Kalb offers us a portrait of the new news in all its contradictions. He reveals how intense economic pressures in the business, the ascendancy of the Internet, theblurring of roles between reporters and commentators, and a surge of dubious sourcing and copy-cat have combined to make tabloid-style journalism increasingly mainstream. But are we condemned to a resurgence of yellow journalism? Painstakingly documented and sobering in its conclusions, One Scandalous Story issues a clarion call to newsmakers and the American public alike: Journalism can change for the better -- and must.

Cruelty and deception: the controversy over dirty hands in politics

Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Defending Dirty Hands 1. Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life, Michael Stocker (Syracuse) 2. Missionaries and Mercenaries, Ronald Beiner (Toronto) 3. Bernard Shaw and Dirty Hands Politics: A Comparison of Mrs. Warren's Profession and Major Barbara, John Allett (York) 4. Politics, Power, and Partisanship, Tom Sorell (Essex) 5. Principles and Politics, Leah Bradshaw (Brock) 6. Justice, Expediency and Practices of Thinking, Evan Simpson (McMaster) 7. Democratic Legitimacy and Official Discretion, Arthur Applbaum (JFK School of Government, Harvard Part II: Rejecting Dirty Hands 8. There is No Dilemma of Dirty Hands, Kai Nielson (Emeritus, Calgary) 9. On the One Hand and On the Other, Michael Yeo (Research Directorate, Canadian Medical Association) 10. Bribery, Business, and The Problem of Dirty Hands, A. W. Cragg (York) 11. Hands: Clean and Tied or Dirty and Bloody, Michael McDonald (British Columbia) 12. Ethical Politics and the Clinton Affair, Ian Greene and David P. Shugarman (both at York) 13. Retrospection and Democracy: Bringing Political Conduct Under the Constitution, S.L. Sutherland (Carleton) 14. Democratic Dirty Hands?, David P. Shugarman (York) Appendix: Selected Classic Statements of Dirty Hands: Excerpts from Machiavelli, Weber, Sartre, and Walzer Selective Bibliography Index

How Two Korean Newspapers Covered the Starr Report

The release of Kenneth Starr's Report on U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1998 affected media coverage not only in America but also in countries worldwide. Even conversational mainstreams were exposed to the explicit language of sexual acts because of the scandal-driven frankness of the press. Although the social mores of the United States traditionally have been liberal regarding sexuality, even in America the Starr Report broke through some boundaries on acceptable discourse.1 Because of the radical language contained in the report and the unchallenged global interest in the subject, journalists worldwide had an ethical dilemma in reporting President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. Should they cover the findings of the Starr Report by including the explicit sexual language used in the report, or should they modify or edit out some of the language so as to make it less offensive to their audiences? It would be natural to assume that journalists from traditionally more conservative countries, such as South Korea, would have more conservative mores than their counterparts in America, and that they would therefore be likely to keep a more respectful distance from a Korean president suffering similar troubles. However, what about their coverage of the Starr Report? Both Joongang Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo are major national newspapers in Korea, and fierce competitors. In 1998, Joongang Ilbo had a readership of 1.5 million and Chosun Ilbo's circulation was approximately 2.2 million.2 According to a 1999 survey conducted by Sisa Journal, a Korean weekly newsmagazine, 1,025 Korean opinion leaders, including bureaucrats, statesmen, lawyers and professors, rated Chosun Ilbo the most influential news medium on public policies, and they rated Joongang Ilbo fourth.3 While most Korean media reported on the excerpts of the Starr Report, the two major newspapers handled the explicit language of the report very differently: Joongang Ilbo translated and published the report verbatim, whereas Chosun Ilbo eliminated or softened the sexual content of the report. Why did these two rival Korean newspapers cover the Starr Report differently? Did they have different journalistic ethics about reporting materials that could be considered indecent? For whose benefit did they take these stances? This study attempts to answer these questions. In an editor's note, Joongang Hbo gave the basis of its editorial decision, saying that the Starr Report was an investigative record of an important historical event; the possible grounds for impeachment of an American president; and therefore it was newsworthy.4 It also noted that the entire report had already been released to the world through the Internet. In contrast, an editor's note in Chosun Ilbo said its editorial staff chose to include the newsworthy report, but had eliminated or softened the sexually explicit language of the report because it might shock readers and harm children.5 In general, journalists consider journalistic values and then tend to make an ethical choice.6 Covering the Starr Report, each Korean newspaper weighed the value of truth telling versus protecting social mores. Yet, according to Clifford Christians et al., an ethical decision is not morally justified without an appeal to an explicit philosophical principle and consideration of how that decision might influence various relevant parties.7 To understand better the choices made by Joongang Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo, this study will employ the Potter Box, an ethical decision-making model developed by Harvard theologian Ralph Potter. This model was chosen because of its process of sorting out a host of values and loyalties inherent in ethical decision making. These values and loyalties reflect the presuppositions about social life and human nature in Korea and will have influenced the decision made at both Korean newspapers. After a review of critiques on the Starr Report coverage, this study will follow the four steps of the Potter Box to discover the ethical reasoning behind the two papers' decisions. …

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Mass Media Ethics Course

At a time when numerous audience surveys report significant loss in mass media credibility and when celebrity Internet reporters accept mediocre accuracy rates, there appears be a renewed enthusiasm across the media profession for instruction in ethical decision-making. Made urgent by increasing competition from new media, print and broadcast executives alike are scrambling shore up audience support. Stopping the erosion in trust through renewed attention ethics may be a move in the right direction. Responding this crisis, educators have done their share by making the credibility/ethics issue a priority in program design, faculty workshops, and the classroom. Mass communication programs have tripled the number of mass media ethics courses since 1977; however, many programs still do not offer a freestanding ethics course. In addition, many students may end up without an ethics course if the course is offered as an elective. This means that many mass communication students are exposed ethics education only through other communication courses. Scholarly journals such as Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, and Mass Comm Review have provided an ongoing forum for discussion of issues related the teaching of ethics. A few studies assessing the effectiveness of classroom instruction in ethics have been limited stand-alone ethics courses. Therefore, this article examined ethics education as a component of a course - four or five weeks in the regular semester and a few days of threehour classes during the winter term and attempted find whether the course could contribute alleviating the media crisis in credibility. It studied whether the ethics course improved students' values and analytical skills, what students perceived they learned from the course, and what they wanted learn in an ethics class. Literature review The current crisis in journalism ethics. The first sentence of the first chapter of Ed Lambeth's 1986/1992 Committed Journalism could have been written yesterday: If a storm is not sounding within the halls of American journalism, one should be (Lambeth, 1992, p. 1). In Lambeth's classic work, he proceeds demonstrate the depth of what he calls the public malaise (p. 2), by citing national survey results showing loss of confidence in the media and recalling 1980s media scandals from The Washington Post's Janet Cooke affair ethical indiscretions at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Finally, he cites the 1947 Hutchins Commission Report as an earlier example of the national media's determination self-analyze. Lambeth dismisses the contemporary value of the social responsibility theory, commenting that it contained little that would assist individual journalists in daily ethical judgments (p. 7). Concern for media well-being was the impetus for Henry Luce form the Commission on the Freedom of the Press in the 1940s. In the postWatergate, post feeding-frenzy era, it led numerous academic pundits rail at media's sudden moral lapse and ultimately gave birth an increased study of media ethics in American colleges and universities. Of course, there was nothing sudden about it. Samuel Warren and Lewis Brandeis (1890) criticized the press and its apparent need to satisfy a prurient taste (p. 220) in their article, The Right of Privacy. They, no doubt, would have been shocked at how the Clinton affair aired publicly more than 100 years after they expressed considerable disdain for newspapers filling column upon column idle gossip (p. 220). It is easy relax with the notion that indeed there were other crises which the media weathered. However, the competitive nature of the media mix in the 21st century is far different from that which existed in 1890, 1947, or even during the 1970s/1980s era about which Lambeth wrote. …

An affair of state: the investigation, impeachment, and trial of President Clinton

President Clinton's year of crisis, which began when his affair with Monica Lewinsky hit the front pages in January 1998, engendered a host of important questions of criminal and constitutional law, public and private morality; and political and cultural conflict. In a book written while events of the year were unfolding, Richard Posner presents a balanced and scholarly understanding of the crisis that also has the freshness and immediacy of journalism. Posner clarifies the issues and eliminates misunderstandings concerning facts and the law that were relevant to the investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and to the impeachment proceeding itself. He explains the legal definitions of obstruction of justice and perjury, which even many lawyers are unfamiliar with. He carefully assesses the conduct of Starr and his prosecutors, including their contacts with lawyers for Paula Jones and their hardball tactics with Monica Lewinsky and her mother. he compares and contrasts the Clinton affair with Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, exploring the subtle relationship between public and private morality. And he examines the place of impeachment in the American constitutional scheme, the pros and cons of impeaching President Clinton, and the major procedural issues raised by both the impeachment in the House and the trial in the Senate. This book will be the foundation for anyone who wants to understand President

A Symposium on the Clinton-Lewinsky Affair

The Clinton Affair raises so many issues around sexuality that a new journal on sexualities could hardly afford to ignore it. In this symposium, six prominent commentators provide brief analyses. Arlene Stein examines the role of the Clinton-Lewinsky Affair within the debate in the US known as ‘culture wars’. Stevi Jackson ponders why US feminists were so quiet on the issue, and provides her own analysis. Stephen O. Murray and Laurie Shrage both look at the issues raised around ‘sexual meaning’ - or ‘what is sex?’ Rob Stones discusses why and how people increasingly seem to be capable of becoming so involved with ‘abstract figures’, and draws some parallels with the concern over Princess Diana. Finally, Jeff Hearn links the affair to the growing interest in sex in organizations.