Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Tabloid Show Touts Story, Then Shoots It Down
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 5, 1998; Page C01
Last night, the syndicated program "Inside Edition"
aired eye-popping
charges by Cristy Zercher, a former flight attendant,
that Bill Clinton
groped her on a 1992 campaign flight.
Tonight, in Part 2 of the "world television
exclusive," the program adds
crucial details of how Zercher flunked a lie detector
test administered by
"Inside Edition." In fact, "she failed miserably,"
says Jan Murray, a
spokeswoman for the King World show.
Which raises the question: Why air the story at all?
"You have to set up the premise of what her story is
in order to thoroughly
examine the results," says Marc Rosenweig, a King
World vice president.
Since "we didn't want to withhold the headline from
people," he says, last
night's show included a sound bite "that there's a 99
percent probability
she's not telling the truth."
"Inside Edition" did not plan to disclose the
polygraph results in Part 1 until
what Murray called a "last-minute change" in
programming. The mention
came in the final minute of last night's report.
The show's first press release last Friday avoided
spilling the beans. "Cristy
Zercher Claims Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton
Groped and Fondled
Her While Hillary Slept Just Feet Away," it roared.
The release urged
viewers to "stay tuned for the results" of the
polygraph exam in Part 2.
A second release announcing the polygraph results went
out yesterday
afternoon, too late to be published before last
night's program. It said that
in the examination, Zercher had negative ratings for
truthfulness on four
questions asked last week.
"She's not telling the truth," Bob Brisentine, a
former president of the
American Polygraph Association, told the show.
Zercher is quoted as saying, "I want everybody to know
that I'm not lying.
. . . I had no resistance in doing the test because I
knew I was telling the
truth."
If Zercher's tale sounds vaguely familiar, that's
because she sold it to the
Star supermarket tabloid in March. Apparently she also
made a financial
deal with "Inside Edition," which pays for interviews
but would not confirm
that it bought Zercher's story.
In an account largely ignored by the mainstream press,
the "stunning
blonde," as "Inside Edition" calls her, said that
Clinton fondled her breast
for 40 minutes on the plane and she accused him of
other lewd behavior.
(In a 1994 interview with The Washington Post, Zercher
made no mention
of being harassed by Clinton.)
Rosenweig says that "Inside Edition," which airs
locally on WBDC-TV
(Channel 50), interviewed another former flight
attendant who challenges
Zercher's account. "We feel this is an important
story," he says. "We made
sure we did it right."
But White House spokesman Joe Lockhart sees it
differently: "It used to
be, you checked your facts first and did the story
second. Now you do the
story and then you check your facts. Anyone can see a
problem with that."
As for the allegations themselves, Lockhart says: "We
don't comment on
tabloid stories -- especially this one."
Bye Bye
Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke, two longtime mainstays
of the
"McLaughlin Group," are jumping ship to launch their
own political show
for Fox News Channel.
Adding insult to injury, the still-unnamed Saturday
night program, which
debuts next month, will appear on the cable network
opposite McLaughlin
in the Washington market.
Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, and
Kondracke,
executive editor of Roll Call, are the latest to
defect from McLaughlin, the
high-decibel former priest who essentially invented
the shout show in 1982.
Both prognosticators were already Fox contributors.
Their departure
follows that of columnist Jack Germond, who quit for
the syndicated
"Inside Washington" in late 1996.
"I've enjoyed it for 10 years," says Barnes, long
called "Freddy the Beadle"
by McLaughlin. "But at some point you want to go out
and do a show of
your own." He says the McLaughlin gabfest has
"unbelievable" visibility
and that "we'll be performing for a much smaller
audience" on the Fox
show. Barnes said the new show will focus on "politics
at the lowest
possible level: who's gonna run, who's gonna win. We
won't be doing a
show on how the IMF guidelines affect Indonesia."
In a letter to McLaughlin, Barnes said he was
"enormously grateful" to the
"master" for having "taught me practically everything
I know about
television."
Kondracke says the new program will be "more like a
magazine," featuring
interviews with pollsters and media consultants rather
than round-table
discussions. "It's going to be fun and interesting and
different and a chance
to develop something," says Kondracke, who also wrote
McLaughlin a
"grateful" letter.
McLaughlin took the high road, saying: "That is the
type of challenge that
cannot be resisted. Business is business. I am proud
of the fact they were
grown on the 'McLaughlin Group.' " He says Barnes and
Kondracke
appeared on only half the shows this year and that he
still plans to use them
as "irregular" guests.
Fox News, part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, has
been on a
spending spree, signing up such big-name contributors
as former Clinton
strategist Dick Morris, "McLaughlin" panelist Eleanor
Clift and Internet
gossip Matt Drudge.
Less Than Live
Stung by criticism of its live coverage of a man
committing suicide on a Los
Angeles freeway, MSNBC now plans to delay certain live
shots by several
seconds. The Thursday tragedy was also carried live by
a half-dozen L.A.
stations, some of which have apologized for not
cutting away. "We deeply
regret that we aired this disturbing scene," MSNBC
spokeswoman Maria
Bataglia told USA Today.
Sam Sounds Off
Sam Donaldson, ABC's high-profile White House
correspondent, says his
network was "wrong" not to carry President Clinton's
news conference live
last week, as CBS and NBC did. ABC executives say they
concluded that
Clinton would probably not make news, but Donaldson
told the
Philadelphia Inquirer: "There are some events that
major news
organizations have to cover, even if it's unlikely
that news will happen. . . . I
regret that we didn't take it live. I think we should
have."
--
Two rules in life:
1. Don't tell people everything you know.
2.
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