Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, December 27, 1993                   TAG: 9312270029
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT'S AGGRESSIVE, IT'S CONSERVATIVE, BUT IS IT ACCURATE?

Then it seemed to disappear, only to return with a vengeance last week with "His Cheatin' Heart," which contends that President Clinton used Arkansas state troopers to help him conduct adulterous affairs while he was governor.

In fact, the aggressively conservative journal has enjoyed rapid growth in the past two years; it says its circulation has increased sevenfold since January 1992, to more than 200,000.

"People are turning to us because they are living in a culture polluted with someone else's preferences, tastes and perspectives," said R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., 50, the editor of The Spectator. "The White House and the major editorial boards are trying to sell a vision of America that does not exist, and people are turning to our magazine to learn what is really going on."

Tyrrell, who founded The Spectator in 1967 while he was a student at Indiana University, traces his magazine's growth to an overhaul two years ago.

He punched up the copy, blending more topical and hard-hitting articles with its musings on Keynesian economics and the decline of Western civilization. And, he said, "We began running more investigative pieces on people and issues that our readers feel are slanted by the mainstream media."

But critics contend that the magazine merely apes the conventions of objective reporting to appear fair-minded.

"They go on about how they spend months during dozens of interviews for their stories, but they don't have any of the scrupulousness about facts of serious investigative journalists," said Michael Kinsley, a senior editor at The New Republic and the liberal co-host of CNN's "Crossfire."

"They are untrustworthy, though I wouldn't say everything they print is wrong. Even a stopped watch is right twice a day."

Conservatives have also criticized The Spectator, especially for the near-pornographic detail in the Clinton article.

"I've never seen this kind of detail in a respectable magazine," said Patrick Buchanan, the former presidential candidate who is now a conservative syndicated columnist. "This is the kind of stuff that used to be confined to the supermarket tabloids."

Writers for The New Yorker magazine and other publications found that The Spectator's March 1992 article on Anita Hill, which portrayed her as a love-scorned left-winger, contained important errors.

The writer of the Hill and Clinton articles, David Brock, has acknowledged errors while defending the thrust of his work.

Tyrrell, justifying the article, said, "there were mistakes in those pieces; in fact I'm surprised there were so few." He called them minor.

He said his critics "know the main point is true, that Clinton abused his power, so they try to chip away at the periphery so they can say, `See, they can't be trusted.' "

One of the state troopers quoted in the article has since denied a key allegation - that Clinton had offered him a job to remain silent. Two other troopers have admitted that they had lied about wrecking a police car while intoxicated in 1990. These facts, which could raise doubts about their credibility, were never mentioned in The Spectator.

Criticism about accuracy has not put off new subscribers, many of whom have learned about the magazine through Rush Limbaugh on his radio and television shows.

Many conservative magazines are enjoying impressive circulation gains. During the last 18 months, the National Review's circulation has grown from 161,000 to nearly 250,000 and the Conservative Chronicle, a sort of Reader's Digest of conservatism, has almost doubled its circulation, to 92,000.

The advance of conservative magazines since Clinton's election mirrors the rise of liberal publications during the Reagan era.

"The mainstream press tends to amplify the message of the `ins,' which makes the `outs' feel alienated," said Victor Navasky, editor of liberal magazine The Nation.

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