Eric Boehlert: Jeff Gerth blames NY Times editors for Whitewater "mistakes"
Former New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth has often been criticized for the reporting he did on Whitewater during the Clinton years -- reporting that prompted federal authorities to launch several fruitless investigations. Now, Gerth is finally offering up some clues about his past work. They can be found in the pages of the new Hillary Clinton book that Gerth co-authored, Her Way, a prepublication copy of which was obtained by Media Matters for America.
Be prepared to be disappointed, though. Gerth makes little effort to answer his critics in detail. He simply offers off some scapegoats and, when possible, buries his previous blunders.
In one key instance, Gerth actually points his finger at Times editors who have steadfastly defended his work in the past and blames them for nearly ruining his Whitewater exposé. Gerth claims that editors, without his knowledge, rewrote his first and best-known Whitewater article and saddled it with factual errors. The unsettling revelation, buried in a Her Way endnote, raises even more questions about Gerth, the Times, and their Whitewater misadventure.
Elsewhere, there's a lot of narrative improvements going on in Her Way, instances in which the book's depiction of Whitewater does not match the reporting Gerth was producing in the pages of The New York Times. In Her Way, Gerth papers over some of the most sensational aspects of his 1990s reporting, rewriting the Whitewater history and simply erasing chapters and events that can no longer withstand scrutiny. In fact, the entire premise of Gerth's early Whitewater reporting simply vanishes in Her Way.
But really, why fret about articles printed 15 years ago? Good question. It's important because Gerth's sloppy Whitewater work, picked up and amplified by Republican partisans, soon entangled the Clintons in an octopus-like investigation that stretched on for years, cost tens of millions of dollars, and even branched out into scrutinizing President Clinton's sex life. It's impossible to understand the Clinton presidency without understanding Whitewater, as well as the skewed media environment that spawned the phony scandal. The context also helps in terms of judging Gerth's current reporting on Hillary Clinton.
Whitewater's cost to the Clinton presidency was enormous. But that's politics, and there are mechanisms in place for public players to try to combat attacks like that. In terms of journalism, though, the much greater significance was the damage Gerth's reporting did to the profession and the way his dishonest work helped shepherd in a new era of Beltway reporting in the 1990s. During those years, iconic press institutions such as The New York Times adopted with disturbing ease loose new standards under which innuendo was enough to sustain reports of serious ethical wrongdoing and the omission of exculpatory facts was deemed to be acceptable, if not preferable.
It's no exaggeration to suggest Gerth ushered in the new era on March 8, 1992, with his first, and now infamous, story purporting to break the Whitewater scandal. At the time, Whitewater centered on allegations that the Clintons' (money-losing) Arkansas real estate investment with James McDougal in the late 1970s led to an elusive yet labyrinthine web of conflicts of interest once Clinton became governor and McDougal became the owner of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, which later failed and required a government bailout. According to the Times -- both its news team and its opinion writers -- Whitewater was terribly important, disturbing, and revealing.
And for years, Gerth's inaugural Whitewater article, which tried to lay out the premise of the scandal, was referred to in hushed tones among Beltway media elites, who dubbed it a landmark piece of investigative journalism. (It did prove to be a landmark, although not in the way Gerth's fans first assumed.)
Eventually some mainstream media players did dare to question the story, noting its incomprehensible nature, as well as its factual errors. In 1994, CNN reporter John Camp, newly assigned to the Whitewater beat, said he counted no fewer than 19 factual errors or points of contention in Gerth's original article. Little Rock columnist Gene Lyons went one better and wrote an entire book detailing the inexhaustible ways the Times was messing up its Whitewater coverage: Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater (Franklin Square Press, 1996).
Over the years, Gerth has adhered to the Times' standoffish, the-article-speaks-for-itself approach and said little publicly about his reporting. He has rarely allowed himself to be interviewed on the record at length about Whitewater.
Now comes the Whitewater endnote in Her Way, and it's a doozy. It appears on Page 109 as the book details Gerth's first report, which was published just days before the Super Tuesday primaries during the 1992 campaign. The endnote is connected to this Her Way passage: "The [Times] article pointed out that the Clintons had been 'under little financial risk' because McDougal had been making most of the payments for a supposedly fifty-fifty joint venture."
First of all, Gerth ignores the embarrassing fact that the article also reported the Clintons "appear to have invested little money" in Whitewater, which was categorically false. (They invested more than $200,000; they lost about $42,000.) But we'll let that slide. To the endnote, which reads in full:
21. Jeff Gerth, "Clintons Joined S&L Operator in an Ozark Real Estate Venture," New York Times, March 8, 1992, Al. Gerth, who returned to Washington late Friday night, did not see the edited version of the article until it was first published in the Times's bulldog edition late Saturday afternoon. To his dismay, that version had been rewritten by editors to include a number of mistakes. Gerth quickly corrected the mistakes for subsequent editions. He never saw the headline, which was written by editors in New York.
Let's dissect this. First, why the passing reference to the fact that editors wrote the article's headline? That's because the headline was wildly misleading. The Clintons did not, as the Times stated, join a savings and loan operator in a real estate venture. In 1978, when the Clintons teamed up with McDougal for the Whitewater investment, McDougal was not a savings and loan operator. He became one years later. (The headline simply mirrored Gerth's disjointed reporting, in which he stressed, in the very first sentence, that the Clintons were business partners with a savings and loan operator.) Yet the implied connection -- the Times-fueled perception -- that Gov. Clinton was using regulatory powers to benefit a banking buddy became a key element in propelling the story nationally and sparking congressional investigations.
But the big news from the endnote is that 15 years after the Times' inaugural Whitewater report was published, Gerth now concedes that much to his "dismay," the article was riddled with "a number of mistakes" caused by editors who had "rewritten" his article. Only Gerth's quick fix-it action, we're told, saved the article for subsequent editions of the Times. Unfortunately, Gerth does not detail which mistakes editors inserted into his story and which were corrected.
And what are readers to make of the fact that even after Gerth says he fixed the article, it still contained substantial errors, such as the allegations that the Clintons had invested little money in Whitewater?...
Read entire article at Media Matters (liberal website that monitors the media) Click on the SOURCE link for embedded links.
Be prepared to be disappointed, though. Gerth makes little effort to answer his critics in detail. He simply offers off some scapegoats and, when possible, buries his previous blunders.
In one key instance, Gerth actually points his finger at Times editors who have steadfastly defended his work in the past and blames them for nearly ruining his Whitewater exposé. Gerth claims that editors, without his knowledge, rewrote his first and best-known Whitewater article and saddled it with factual errors. The unsettling revelation, buried in a Her Way endnote, raises even more questions about Gerth, the Times, and their Whitewater misadventure.
Elsewhere, there's a lot of narrative improvements going on in Her Way, instances in which the book's depiction of Whitewater does not match the reporting Gerth was producing in the pages of The New York Times. In Her Way, Gerth papers over some of the most sensational aspects of his 1990s reporting, rewriting the Whitewater history and simply erasing chapters and events that can no longer withstand scrutiny. In fact, the entire premise of Gerth's early Whitewater reporting simply vanishes in Her Way.
But really, why fret about articles printed 15 years ago? Good question. It's important because Gerth's sloppy Whitewater work, picked up and amplified by Republican partisans, soon entangled the Clintons in an octopus-like investigation that stretched on for years, cost tens of millions of dollars, and even branched out into scrutinizing President Clinton's sex life. It's impossible to understand the Clinton presidency without understanding Whitewater, as well as the skewed media environment that spawned the phony scandal. The context also helps in terms of judging Gerth's current reporting on Hillary Clinton.
Whitewater's cost to the Clinton presidency was enormous. But that's politics, and there are mechanisms in place for public players to try to combat attacks like that. In terms of journalism, though, the much greater significance was the damage Gerth's reporting did to the profession and the way his dishonest work helped shepherd in a new era of Beltway reporting in the 1990s. During those years, iconic press institutions such as The New York Times adopted with disturbing ease loose new standards under which innuendo was enough to sustain reports of serious ethical wrongdoing and the omission of exculpatory facts was deemed to be acceptable, if not preferable.
It's no exaggeration to suggest Gerth ushered in the new era on March 8, 1992, with his first, and now infamous, story purporting to break the Whitewater scandal. At the time, Whitewater centered on allegations that the Clintons' (money-losing) Arkansas real estate investment with James McDougal in the late 1970s led to an elusive yet labyrinthine web of conflicts of interest once Clinton became governor and McDougal became the owner of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, which later failed and required a government bailout. According to the Times -- both its news team and its opinion writers -- Whitewater was terribly important, disturbing, and revealing.
And for years, Gerth's inaugural Whitewater article, which tried to lay out the premise of the scandal, was referred to in hushed tones among Beltway media elites, who dubbed it a landmark piece of investigative journalism. (It did prove to be a landmark, although not in the way Gerth's fans first assumed.)
Eventually some mainstream media players did dare to question the story, noting its incomprehensible nature, as well as its factual errors. In 1994, CNN reporter John Camp, newly assigned to the Whitewater beat, said he counted no fewer than 19 factual errors or points of contention in Gerth's original article. Little Rock columnist Gene Lyons went one better and wrote an entire book detailing the inexhaustible ways the Times was messing up its Whitewater coverage: Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater (Franklin Square Press, 1996).
Over the years, Gerth has adhered to the Times' standoffish, the-article-speaks-for-itself approach and said little publicly about his reporting. He has rarely allowed himself to be interviewed on the record at length about Whitewater.
Now comes the Whitewater endnote in Her Way, and it's a doozy. It appears on Page 109 as the book details Gerth's first report, which was published just days before the Super Tuesday primaries during the 1992 campaign. The endnote is connected to this Her Way passage: "The [Times] article pointed out that the Clintons had been 'under little financial risk' because McDougal had been making most of the payments for a supposedly fifty-fifty joint venture."
First of all, Gerth ignores the embarrassing fact that the article also reported the Clintons "appear to have invested little money" in Whitewater, which was categorically false. (They invested more than $200,000; they lost about $42,000.) But we'll let that slide. To the endnote, which reads in full:
21. Jeff Gerth, "Clintons Joined S&L Operator in an Ozark Real Estate Venture," New York Times, March 8, 1992, Al. Gerth, who returned to Washington late Friday night, did not see the edited version of the article until it was first published in the Times's bulldog edition late Saturday afternoon. To his dismay, that version had been rewritten by editors to include a number of mistakes. Gerth quickly corrected the mistakes for subsequent editions. He never saw the headline, which was written by editors in New York.
Let's dissect this. First, why the passing reference to the fact that editors wrote the article's headline? That's because the headline was wildly misleading. The Clintons did not, as the Times stated, join a savings and loan operator in a real estate venture. In 1978, when the Clintons teamed up with McDougal for the Whitewater investment, McDougal was not a savings and loan operator. He became one years later. (The headline simply mirrored Gerth's disjointed reporting, in which he stressed, in the very first sentence, that the Clintons were business partners with a savings and loan operator.) Yet the implied connection -- the Times-fueled perception -- that Gov. Clinton was using regulatory powers to benefit a banking buddy became a key element in propelling the story nationally and sparking congressional investigations.
But the big news from the endnote is that 15 years after the Times' inaugural Whitewater report was published, Gerth now concedes that much to his "dismay," the article was riddled with "a number of mistakes" caused by editors who had "rewritten" his article. Only Gerth's quick fix-it action, we're told, saved the article for subsequent editions of the Times. Unfortunately, Gerth does not detail which mistakes editors inserted into his story and which were corrected.
And what are readers to make of the fact that even after Gerth says he fixed the article, it still contained substantial errors, such as the allegations that the Clintons had invested little money in Whitewater?...