Helping or Hurting Hillary?

June 7, 2007 — -- Like any couple in a co-dependent relationship, politicians and the press are constantly fussing and fighting, but at the end of the day, they make sure to kiss and make up.

The tangled relationship between Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and The New York Times is a little more complicated than that.

Since the paper first broke the story of the Whitewater land deal in 1993 through its relentless coverage of the impeachment drama in 2001, the Clintons have felt targeted by the Times. Although relations thawed during Clinton's Senate campaigns and former President Bill Clinton's philanthropic efforts, they've hit a rough patch lately. The paper was criticized for underplaying its story about the senator's launch of her presidential campaign and, at a March fundraiser, the former president reportedly attacked the Times for its coverage of his wife's vote on the war in Iraq.

Both politicos and journalists were buzzing Wednesday about the paper's less-than-glowing review of "Her Way," a new Clinton biography by two of the Times' star reporters, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.

"The book is almost uniformly negative and overly focused on what they consider the Clintons' scandalous past and the darker aspects of Mrs. Clinton's personality," wrote presidential historian Robert Dallek. In the second paragraph of his review, he quotes a Clinton spokesman complaining that the biography is "nothing more than cash for rehash."

The harshness of the review was accentuated by its placement alongside a positive review of "A Woman in Charge," a competing Clinton biography by Carl Bernstein, the legendary Washington Post reporter.

And the authors weren't pleased, claiming that Dallek didn't understand their book. "I didn't have a problem with the headline," noted Gerth, who worked at the paper for 30 years before leaving last year. "I think there's a disconnect between the judgment of the editors and Professor Dallek. The editors chose to excerpt it and put 8,000 words in the Sunday magazine. … It's an investigative biography. It's not meant to be the definitive historical look back at her life and career."