Bob Edwards: This is NPR's Morning Edition. I'm Bob Edwards. As the House of Representatives considers articles of impeachmentagainst President Clinton, Internet chat rooms arebusy. Web sites on impeachment are proliferating, as are email petitions. Seven small groups are discussing the issue at one site, called reality-check.org. NPR's Margot Adler reports.

Margot Adler:
Reality Check was conceived by a group of people who were trying to find innovative ways to use the Internet in public discussion. The executive producer of Reality Check, Marc Weiss, previously helped create one site where working people discussed their lives and another where former soldiers in Vietnam and former protestors talked together about their experiences.

Using the issue of impeachment, Weiss says Reality Check is giving many who join it their first opportunity to talk in depth with people who are very different from them.

Marc Weiss:
That's one of the strengths of the Internet -- I mean it's one of the possibilities of the Internet, but it's one of the possibilities that's very rarely explored. Because mostly on the Internet people find each other based on common interests and common experiences, so it's people who share experiences talking to each other as opposed to people who have very divergent experiences walking in the other person's shoes for a few moments.

Marlyn Bumpus:
It was kind of like, we were led to a room with a group of strangers, and we had to kind of go through the process of finding our way by ourselves.

Margot Adler:
Marlyn Bumpus is a 44-year old homemaker who lives on the California coast. She has been against impeachment. Most of the Internet groups she's been involved with had common interests. Not this one.

Marlyn Bumpus:
It's been a very interesting process of learning who they are, where they're coming from, why they think the way they do...

Margot Adler:
The discussion may have started with impeachment, but it has veered in all directions: education, religion... anyone can start a different thread. Sheila Lee is from Louisiana.

Sheila Lee:
It seems to have gone from basically a question about impeachment to questions about how you came to feel the way you do, so that goes into culture, and responsibility, and attitudes and so on.

Margot Adler to Lee:
Now, you started out as one of the pro-impeachment people, and do you think...

Sheila Lee to Adler, over-lapping:
Yes, I still am.

Margot Adler to Lee:
... and you still are, sorry... [laughing]

Sheila Lee to Adler:
Yes, I certainly still am. [laughing] I am a strict Constitutionalist, and I am pretty emotional about it. But, on the other hand I am not so emotional about it so that I think that anyone who doesn't agree with me is a creep.

Margot Adler:
John Sarette is from Minnesota. He's 52. He doesn't favor impeachment, but now argues that the president should resign if impeached. While he hasn't changed his views since he joined Reality Check, he says his attitude towards those with opposing views ha s moderated.

John Sarette:
I didn't see how a person of good will could come to the conclusion that impeachment ought to go forward. And while I still disagree that it ought to go forward, I can now see how a person of good will can come to the conclusion it should.

Margot Adler:
Marc Weiss, the executive producer of Reality Check, says real people's voices have been missing from the impeachment debate - pundits give their wisdom, polls give black and white snapshots of the population, chat rooms give a moment for quick, unthought ful posting - but here he says you commit to four weeks of discussion, and although you can be argumentative and passionate, you have to be responsible to keep the dialogue going. It's more personal, he says. You talk about your life and how you formed yo ur views. And he believes the discussion is more complex then what you get in the newspaper or on call-in shows.

Marc Weiss:
The mode of discussion in this country has become so much about obliterating your opponent, and it's very much about choosing up sides and deciding which one you are on. Then it's a fight to the death. I think there are a lot of people who yearn for a dif ferent way of talking about this stuff. Some of them have found their way to Reality Check, and they're kinda creating a model of a different way of talking about public issues that does not have to be just about one side winning and one side losing but c an also be about people really exploring their differences in an honest way, but in a respectful way.

Sheila Lee, on a three way call with Bumpus and Sarette:
You can disagree without becoming ugly.

Marlyn Bumpus:
Yeah. [Laughter]

John Sarette:
[Laughter] At least you can disagree when you're not in person without becoming ugly.

Margot Adler:
We put Marlyn, John and Sheila on the phone together. They had never heard each other's voices before.

Sheila Lee:
I tend to be much more polite in person than I would be on the board.

Marlyn Bumpus:
It takes time between the composition and posting it on the list...

Sheila Lee:
That's true

Marlyn Bumpus:
... so that we have a chance to go back and look at it and say "Ooh, do I really want to say it that way!"

John Sarette:
[Laughter] I guess in person when I get in those kind of discussions there's a lot more threatening body language that goes on, it...

Sheila Lee:
I think half of it is finding a safe place where you feel like it's okay for you to open up and say what you think.