_______________ DAY OF RECKONING BY ANDREW ROSS (04/03/98)

To all of you brave, creative and relentless reporters working on your many revelatory and bracing Clinton stories, I say thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for your clear-eyed approach and your sadly old-fashioned journalistic skepticism on the most despicable trash ever thrown at a sitting president and perpetrated by the most loathsome characters lurking in America today. As for Andrew Ross, I set my alarm this morning so I could get up and read his response to Judge Weber's ruling. He didn't let me down. I'll save his editorial to show my grandchildren. -- Jill Wandrey With people such as Andrew Ross, Gene Lyons, Murray Waas and Joe Conason willing to continue to do the hard work of finding out the facts of a story rather than taking sound bites from people who have their own agenda, I once again have hope for this country. I woke up this morning with the knowledge that I could turn to this Web site and read a fairly balanced story. You are doing a service for all people who are tired of the tabloid tales we are being fed by the once-respected media that we once enjoyed in this country. -- Marie Pickert Thank you for your insightful and breathtaking investigative work. Your publication has helped restore my faith that somewhere, honest and objective people will always fight the good fight to find the truth. That place, at this time, is Salon Magazine. My hope is that complacent mainstream journalists, who have seemingly come under the spell of the siren call of tabloid journalism, will somehow find their way to your publication to re-learn what the profession of the noble art of journalism is supposed to be about. -- Ronald Bishop I enjoy reading the articles that appear in Salon. They are informative, entertaining and intelligent. Although I may disagree on some opinions raised, I'm glad I'm given the opportunity to read them. However, the editorial of April 2 regarding the Paula Jones lawsuit dismissal, is one of the worst pieces of composition I've seen since my own high school essays. Never mind the juvenile "see, we told you so" tone of the editorial, or its self-congratulatory nature; perhaps the most disturbing aspect of it is the idea that a "baseless, foundless" debacle should be followed by an investigation into the conspiracy that created it. While the image of "excrement thrown at" the first family is amusing, what exactly were the high hopes that were shattered by the lawsuit? I do agree though that Hillary would weep about "what might have been," but I think that has to do more with her choice of a spouse than about an angry media establishment that has tried to topple the presidency. Stop the self-congratulations. Because one judge agreed with one side's opinion does not a victory make. Most of us wish the stories would go away. Perhaps then we could focus on the more severe problems facing America than white, upper-middle-class adulterers. -- Joe Warren I wish I could share your optimism that the press will be forced to reckon with its abysmal performance regarding the Clinton administration and the Whitewater and Paula Jones cases in particular. Unfortunately, I can't. There's nothing in the past to indicate that the press will do anything to right the damage they've done to the president or to the country, or even to keep it from happening again. Oh, sure, there may be some breast-beating in conferences aired on C-SPAN at 3 in the morning, some self-flagellation in the pages of the Columbia Journalism Review. But it won't have any effect. The press finds questioning of its role unacceptable. This is an institution where corrections to front page stories are routinely buried on page D-34. At the slightest hint of criticism, they scream about First Amendment protections. The press is not an institution given to admissions of its own misbehavior, or to changing its ways in the long run when such misbehavior is pointed out to them. You should be well aware of this yourselves. Aside from one AP report that was buried by any papers that even bothered to run it, what effect has your series of the last few weeks about the money behind Paula Jones had? I have seen no evidence that the New York Times or Washington Post are on the story. No, they've been too busy engaging in the kind of behavior you so rightly castigate in "Day of Reckoning." After the malpractice of the last six years. I've written off the mass press in this country. Perhaps, if they follow the path you predict, I'll be proven wrong. I hope so, for the sake of the country. But I'm not holding my breath. -- Ralph Brandi It's good to know that there are still a few adults left who harbor the touching belief that our president is a saintly, much-maligned hero whose misty-eyed liberal beliefs and good-hearted efforts to comfort lowly interns have been sullied by vicious right-wing attack dogs bent on destroying him. Andrew Ross' pathetic editorial -- like much of Salon's coverage of the Lewinsky affair -- is laughably myopic. Anyone who has been following the events of the past several months with even a modicum of non-partisan interest knows several things for a fact: 1. Bill Clinton has repeatedly engaged in extramarital affairs, first as Arkansas governor and later as president. 2. He has repeatedly lied to the public about his affairs, sometimes while under oath. 3. A number of people close to the president have made extraordinary efforts to keep news of his affairs from getting out, possibly including encouraging people to lie. Whether you believe any of this "matters" or not, at a minimum you would have to say that Mr. Clinton has only himself to blame for his current troubles. Yes, his political enemies have tried to use these facts to bring him down -- but what would you expect them to do? Once you scrape away all the dime store analysis and the ravings of lunatics like James Carville and Rush Limbaugh, what you're left with is one inescapable conclusion: If Bill Clinton had behaved like a morally responsible adult who honored his promises (to Hillary and to the American people), he would not be in this mess. Any attempt to turn Bill Clinton into a "victim" -- as Mr. Ross tries to do -- should be met with jeers, not cheers. Russell Evansen Madison, Wisc. I honestly believe that Judge Susan Wright may have read your excellent series of articles. She apparently likes to surf the Web -- and I bet her attention was brought to your articles on the Starr, Jones, Falwell payoffs, etc. In any case, I've been sending links from Salon to all my friends, including the editors at Slate. Jacob Weisberg told me that he appreciated the link on the Media Circus article. Thanks for all your good work! Jackie Marcus N E X T+P A G E+| More praise -- and more invective