CH 19. Who Created the Tone?: O’Reillys claim that LA Times never mentioned Broaddrick’s name

Franken asserts that Bill O’Reilly was wrong when he declared in a magazine interview that the liberal Los Angeles Times “never mentioned Juanita Broaddrick’s name, ever.” (Lies, p. 138 (paperback, p. 147))¹ (Juanita Broaddrick is a woman who has claimed that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978.)    However, in his effort to besmirch O’Reilly, Franken then cites Times editor Melissa Payton as saying that its paper’s archives contained “twenty-one articles mentioning Broaddrick.” (bold and italics added)

Hmmm. Let’s apply that “impossibly high standard” to Franken and Ms. Payton and take a closer look at those alleged “twenty-one articles.”

A search of “Juanita Broaddrick” in the archives at latimes.com returns 21 items that date before the 2000 election.² But “twenty-one articles”?? Sorry, Al. Not even close.

The 21 results include (calculators for addition are permitted):

… two Letters to the Editor

… four references to TV listings and/or TV ratings reports

… one theater review reference

… one book review reference

… three “Laugh Lines” mentions (a former feature within a defunct Times section in which they printed jokes on current events from comedians like Jay Leno)

… one public interest feature about the general legal issue of the statute of limitations

… one reference to a “News, Trends, Gossip, and Stuff To Do; Out and About; Dick Morris on Affairs of State” segment

… one article entitled “Clinton Cites Social Security Consensus: Budget: President commends GOP agreement …”

… one March 1999 article entitled “Clinton Says Legacy Will Be Truth” [Author’s note: I’m not making this up. I laughed also. What’s even funnier? The article is on page 1.]

… one March 1999 commentary piece on the issue of character in the forthcoming 2000 election.

If you added along down the list, there should be five results remaining. Let’s take a look at those.

1. A February 28, 1999, opinion/editorial piece was entitled “Clinton Mess Will Become Even Messier,” and it addresses the Broaddrick claim. However, this piece is only listed for Section B of the Orange County edition of the paper. (Orange County is south of Los Angeles County and above San Diego County. In other words, most of the Times readership never even saw this piece.)

2. and 3. There were two opinion/editorial pieces on the same day and on the same page in the Section B Commentary pages, on February 26, 1999 … The first, under the banner “Column Left,” was written by nationally syndicated liberal columnist Bill Press: “Clinton Rape Charge Can’t Be Proved.” The other was by Michael Kelly: “This Accuser’s Claim Has Ring of Credibility.”

4. On February 25, 1999, a fluffy media news analysis was published on the morning after an NBC Dateline interview of Broaddrick. Its title is “Journalists Weigh Standards, Scoops; Media: Whether a woman’s allegation of a sexual assault by Clinton in 1978 is true becomes secondary to competitive pressure.” The item, published on page 9, can hardly be described as a bona fide news story about Broaddrick’s claim.

And, finally …

5. Here is the strongest evidence that the Times delivered an actual news report of the Clinton/Broaddrick issue. On Saturday, February 20, 1999, the Times published a puny 226-word (!)³ article under the title “Clinton Camp Denies Alleged Sex Assault.” Buried on page 13, the piece begins with a denial by Clinton’s lawyer.

So, was Bill O’Reilly really that far off in his analysis of the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the Clinton/Broaddrick issue? A rape allegation against a sitting President merits just one tiny news report on page 13 of its Saturday issue?

Could just one of Al’s 14 Harvard researchers have looked into the facts of this topic a little closer, as this author did?

An “impossibly high standard”? Ugh.

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Notes:

1  On page 138 of Lies, Franken cites a 2001 interview with Bill O’Reilly in Media Week magazine.

2  The words “Juanita Broaddrick” (with quotation marks) were entered into the search box at the Archives section at latimes.com.

3  To give you an idea how puny 226 words is, the page you are reading right now contains approximately 600 words.