Pressing The Flesh Clinton’s Steamy Scandal Is A Test Of Media Priorities.

White House reporters, sailing full steam ahead through public anger and competing headlines, expect a contentious news conference today as they press President Clinton about his alleged affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The 11 a.m. EST event will be Clinton’s first extensive encounter with the press since allegations emerged last month that he had sex with Lewinsky and asked her to lie about it.

Neither the prospect of war with Iraq nor British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s presence at the joint event is likely to deter the press corps from asking about the scandal.

“It would be appalling if they do not pursue this matter aggressively because this is the most brazen case of stonewalling I have ever seen,” said Brit Hume, a former ABC White House correspondent and now Fox News bureau chief.

“This is not a complex web of campaign finance organizations,” he said. “It is about a relationship, the nature of which only two people know about. And one of them is the president.”

Ann McDaniel, bureau chief of Newsweek, said it would be “inappropriate to spend all the time (questioning the president) on the sex scandal,” especially in view of the situation with Iraq.

However, “any question, as long as it is relevant to the news today and is asked in a respectful manner,” is legitimate, McDaniel said.

That attitude prevails even though reporters who regularly cover the White House, as well as their bureau chiefs, expect the questions to fan public indignation about their coverage.

“We can be relied upon to be our own worst enemy,” said Kenneth Walsh, chief White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report and author of “Feeding the Beast,” a 1996 book about the failings of the press.

“There are many questions that do need to be asked, and we’re perfectly entitled to ask them,” Walsh said, “but I have little confidence that the president will answer them, and so we will be seen as hectoring him.”

“We have to do our jobs,” said Wolf Blitzer, senior White House Correspondent for CNN. “We’re sensitive to how the viewers see us doing our jobs, and we try to do it respectfully. But sometimes we just have to ask the unpleasant questions.”

The White House press office has already indicated that the president does not intend to respond to questions about Lewinsky or any other the matters under investigation by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

On Thursday, an uncharacteristically testy press secretary Michael McCurry assailed coverage of the Lewinsky scandal, saying competitive pressures and the emergence of an “endless news cycle” were driving even respected publications like the Wall Street Journal to try to compete “hour by hour” against television “with news that is false.”

He was referring to a story the Wall Street Journal posted Wednesday afternoon on its Internet site - before, McCurry said, the White House had had a chance to respond to it. Key allegations made in the story were later removed before the article was printed in Thursday’s Journal. Those allegations were “absolutely false,” McCurry said.

“We went through one of the sorriest episodes of journalism yesterday that I have ever witnessed,” McCurry said at the daily White House briefing.

Clinton, posing Thursday for pictures in the Oval Office at the start of Blair’s visit, repeated his statement that “the charges are false.”

However, McCurry, asked whether he expected the comments to satisfy reporters’ questions about Lewinsky so that other topics might dominate the Friday press conference, replied, “I doubt it.”

Even some journalists are beginning to question the propriety of an unending inquisition.

If the president steadfastly refuses to answer questions about Lewinsky, “what’s to be gained by continuously asking questions that elicit no response?” said Darrell Christian, managing editor of the Associated Press, the world’s largest news-gathering organization.

“When does it become farce?” he asked. “You can put Clinton on the stand, but you can’t make him answer.”

AP’s first question to Clinton at Friday’s news conference “will depend on what’s hot at that time,” Christian said.

“While Lewinsky is an important story from the standpoint of putting the presidency itself in peril, Iraq, if military action is imminent, would be a bigger item to discuss,” he said.

Because Clinton is holding the news conference jointly with Blair, British reporters will also ask questions. War with Iraq and Northern Ireland peace talks, not sex or Lewinsky, is expected to lead the list of British questions. “I can’t honestly see our boys raising it (the Lewinsky matter) unless they see it impinges on Clinton’s relationship with Blair,” said David Watts, deputy foreign editor of the Times of London

Hugo Gurdon, Washington correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, said he was curious about what Blair thinks of Clinton’s difficulties, but he is not sure he has “the courage to shout an embarrassing question” to find out.

Interest in the story of Clinton’s alleged affair with Lewinsky is fading in America’s heartland, even in newsrooms.

The publisher of the State JournalRegister in Springfield, Ill., told readers that Wednesday’s paper was “Monica-free.”

“We’re just trying to respond, however symbolically, to the criticism that news organizations, including the State Journal-Register, are blowing this story out of proportion,” wrote the publisher, Pat Coburn.

Jack Brimeyer, managing editor of the Journal Star in Peoria, Ill., said that “a common view here is that the only people who care about Monica Lewinsky any more are the Washington media.”

“The public pretty much regards it as a joke,” Brimeyer said. “Their attitude is: Let the man go back to his job, let Bill and Hillary resolve their own problems.”

Brimeyer believes the White House press corps should pursue the Lewinsky matter with the president, but with caution.

“What gets the press in trouble is the audience senses that what we keep asking the same questions hoping to trip up the guy, that we’re not really seeking new information on their behalf,” he said.

Nevertheless, “while the president may want to hide behind not saying anything, there are a number of questions that people deserve answers to,” said Paul West, bureau chief of the Baltimore Sun.

In pursuing those questions, reporters should be “respectful but persistent,” added West. And if the president refuses to answer, “it could get ugly.”

MEMO: Cox Newspapers White House correspondent Bob Deans and Cox European correspondent Lou Salome contributed to this report.