T A B L E+T A L K Have we learned anything at all? Discuss the lessons of Impeachment '99 in the Politics area of Table Talk   Find deep discounts and great selection on the books you need to read at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author       R E C E N T L Y Sex and the single intern By Richard Goldstein What does it mean that the president preyed upon an employee half his age? (02/19/99) A new racial era for San Francisco schools By Joan Walsh A court settlement ending the city's 16-year experiment in desegregation marks acceptance of California's new racial realities (02/18/99) Fear of fluoride By Mark Hertsgaard and Philip Frazer Questions about the safety of this cavity-fighting chemical aren't just for right-wing conspiracists anymore (02/17/99) Bull's-eye By Bruce Shapiro The Brooklyn lawsuit that rocked the gun industry changes the argument from gun control to corporate responsibility (02/16/99) Mommie dearest By Gary Kamiya Linda Tripp, America's favorite back-stabber and ghoul, kicks off her long-awaited National Rehabilitation Tour '99 (02/13/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		The ugliest story yet Why the Wall Street Journal ran the Clinton rape story that no other reputable news organization would touch. BY JOAN WALSH | When the story of Juanita Broaddrick, the Arkansas nursing home owner who claims President Clinton raped her in 1978, quietly appeared on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page Friday, its placid tone of worried sympathy did not betray the rough, partisan road the tale had traveled before seeing print. Of all the allegations against Clinton, it is by far the ugliest. Broaddrick claims Clinton sexually assaulted her in her Little Rock hotel room, and roughed her up in the process, when she was a volunteer in his first campaign for governor. But the story is not new. The Broaddrick allegation has been traveling in right-wing circles at least since Clinton ran for president in 1992. In 1994, attorneys for Paula Jones tried to confirm it, but Broaddrick denied it, submitting an affidavit swearing that the allegation was untrue. Then, 11 months ago, Broaddrick's name surfaced nationally, when independent counsel Kenneth Starr subpoenaed the Jones lawyers to get information on Broaddrick and three other women believed to have had sexual relationships with Clinton. These "Jane Does" and their stories became a particularly lurid but short-lived sideshow in the impeachment trial, when sealed materials from Starr's investigation of those allegations were shown to selected House members on the eve of the impeachment trial. Reporters have circled around the Broaddrick story for more than six years now, trying to confirm it, treating its radioactive allegations against the president with understandable caution. Now, with impeachment over, the Wall Street Journal chose to run an interview with Broaddrick on its editorial page, penned by Dorothy Rabinowitz, a journalist best known, ironically, for her work debunking false claims of sexual abuse. Rabinowitz did not try to debunk Broaddrick's claims. She depicts her sympathetically, as a woman twice victimized: once by Clinton, and then again by NBC News, which Rabinowitz says interviewed Broaddrick and at least four corroborating witnesses, but then sat on the story, presumably out of political cowardice. The Wall Street Journal's editorialists go further than Rabinowitz in accusing NBC News of playing politics with the truth. "With the revelations about the Juanita Broaddrick story by Dorothy Rabinowitz," a Friday Journal Review and Outlook speculated huffily, "perhaps NBC President Andy Lack will stop censoring his news division." But significantly, the Journal's own news division didn't produce the Broaddrick story. It was the work of an editorial board member, not a reporter, and it ran on the paper's notoriously anti-Clinton editorial page. The Broaddrick story is indeed a window onto the world of journalistic decision-making, but the view isn't exactly what the Journal's editorialists would have you see. N E X T+P A G E+| "He held her down forcibly"