This is a summary of the seventh forum of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. The forums form a coordinated inquiry, which with other research, will lead to a monograph outlining the common principles journalists share. The Committee is underwritten with a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The day, held at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., examined the future of political reporting. It began by looking at the implications of the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton story. Academic research suggests that the Lewinsky story is the culmination of long developing trends, including a move toward more interpretative or journalist-focused reporting, toward heavier reliance on allegations from unnamed sources without as much background reporting as once was true, toward more personal topics and toward a presumption of wrongdoing. Many journalists involved in the story thought the criticism of the Lewinsky story was unfounded and sounded irritated by the introspection it has produced. At the same time, others in and out of journalism thought the story signaled the degree to which sources who would manipulate the news have gained a strengthened hand in dealing with the press, which only fed the weakening self confidence of the press to maintain standards.

This sense of standards under pressure, of more competition to get stories published and of sources gaining an upper hand, is compounded, journalists argued, by the growing sense of cynicism that has engulfed so much coverage. Phil Trounstine delivered a paper on the topic, and offered a model for self correcting against cynicism:

Finally, four prominent political reporters agreed to have their interpretative work deconstructed and found that the press should probably think much more closely about the assumptions built into the interpretative framing that they build around their stories. Interpretation is a higher form of journalism, they agreed, equivalent, said Eric Engberg of CBS, to "when you stop covering bricks and start covering architecture." But, Tom Fiedler of the Miami Herald points out "if you happen to be a lousy architect and what you construct has no resemblance whatsoever to what the reality should be."

The problem may be we have not developed any discipline either for training or verifying our new interpretative role. As Jack Fuller, the president of the Tribune Publishing Company would put it later that week at the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting, "I'm not sure we have taught (journalists) to be as careful about justifying the judgements they make that may malign someone's motives as we have been about checking the spelling of a name."