CyberAlert -- 02/09/1999 -- More Trial Would "Terrify People"; Hitchens: "A Male Linda Tripp"
More Trial Would "Terrify People"; Hitchens: "A Male Linda Tripp"
ABC and CBS led with King Hussein's funeral while NBC, CNN and FNC went first with the Senate trial. Contrasting Clinton's trip to Jordan as his trial continued, Tom Brokaw contended: "Once again the two worlds of this President could not be more distinctive or disconnected." All but NBC showed clips from both managers and White House counsel Charles Ruff. NBC's Gwen Ifill played only a soundbite from Ruff. Only CNN's Bob Franken picked up on complaints from managers that Senators were not paying attention and NBC's Lisa Myers looked at how the trial has hurt Republicans, featuring two women in Henry Hyde's district who castigated him. Here are some highlights from the Monday, February 8 evening shows: -- ABC's World News Tonight began with highlights from both sides from Linda Douglass. Then anchor Peter Jennings talked to Cokie Roberts who expressed bafflement over why Republicans would not support censure: "I don't understand how the Republicans are going to explain the politics of this if the Democrats come back and say let's censure him and some Republicans, as Senator Phil Gramm is saying 'no, let's filibuster that. Censure is not good enough.' How they explain that at home I don't know but the fact that we might still be going through it in March is pretty depressing." Conservatives are on both sides of censure, but those opposed might argue that there is no sense politically in giving Democrats cover to condemn Clinton when they refused to follow the rule of law and vote to remove him if they really think he did the things listed in the various censure proposals. Next, Jennings reported: "Law enforcement sources tell ABC News today that the Justice Department has informed independent counsel Ken Starr it is going to start investigating his office. One thing to be investigated are complaints about the night that Monica Lewinsky was detained by Mr. Starr's prosecutors." "Night"? How about an afternoon she spent window shopping in the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, including time browsing in Crate&Barrel. (On Monday's Upfront Tonight Geraldo Rivera told viewers the Justice Department would look at "whether his henchmen denied Monica access to her lawyers.")
Next, Wolf Blitzer checked in from a very confident White House.
Gwen Ifill played a clip of Ruff but not of any Republican managers on the floor before noting their interest in further probing Blumenthal and reciting some of the proposed censure language. Lisa Myers then
examined the political damage to Republicans caused by the impeachment
process, beginning with the backlash in Pasadena against James Rogan. (She
did play a clip from the floor of Rogan.) Noting that pollsters presented
a "gloomy picture" to House Republicans at retreat over the
weekend, Myers illustrated: "The erosion can be found even in
overwhelmingly Republican districts, like Henry Hyde's outside
Chicago."
-- Eleanor Clift on the February 8 Fox Report: "I think the Sidney Blumenthal story is a sideshow to a sideshow to a sideshow. It doesn't change any minds and I agree with the heckler in the gallery last week who said, 'God almighty, take the vote and get it over with.'" -- Geraldo Rivera on CNBC's Upfront Tonight: "Ken Starr's in his own hot water now. He's been notified by the Justice Department that they're investigating his handling of Monica Lewinsky among other things so maybe he and Sid Blumenthal will share a holding pen in the DC jail." -- Former Boston Globe reporter Chris Black, now CNN's #3 at the White House behind Wolf Blitzer and John King, provided a full story on Blumenthal for Monday's The World Today. (CNN earlier showcased Hitchens, interviewing him live from 6:40pm when the Senate adjourned to almost the top of the hour.) Black began by explaining how Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair filed an affidavit contradicting Sidney Blumenthal's insistence that he never passed on Clinton's description of Lewinsky as a "stalker." After a soundbite from Hitchens Black explained that Blumenthal's defenders claim he only said he never attributed the "stalker" assessment to Clinton, an assertion Hitchens corroborated. Black continued:
"Blumenthal's lawyer, William McDaniel, calls the perjury charge
ludicrous and says that Hitchens has become a male Linda Tripp, betraying
his friend. Hitchens' allegation has also raised ethical questions in
journalism circles." Remember what Abrams was doing last June and July before Black signed aboard CNN? He was the lawyer CNN hired to investigate and write a report on the Tailwind story.
A conservatively-biased network news team would have opened coverage by pointing out how a short-circuited trial, in which the House managers were "denied a chance" to put on their case, was about to come to an end. An analyst would ruminate about the embarrassing legacy the Senators would have to defend when people in the future ask why they were afraid of exposing all the evidence. But in the real world ABC opened the 1pm ET news special with Peter Jennings worrying that the idea the Senate trial may continue could "terrify people," legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin assuring viewers "this national nightmare is over" and Jennings highlighting a poll showing 81 percent of the people are "sick" of the trial. A couple of
minutes past 1pm, before the managers began their presentations, ABC
viewers heard this exchange: Indeed, Jennings cynically opened the February 4 World News Tonight by claiming the heckler reflected "the voice of the people." (A RealPlayer clip of this exchange will be posted on the MRC home page Tuesday morning: http://www.mrc.org)
The background:
Lawyer Kendall Few uncovered a memo written by GM engineer Edward Ivey
that Few claims went to Ivey's superiors. The memo calculated the costs
of repairing the problem versus litigation costs for expected lawsuits. GM
failed to produce the document for trials and Ivey claimed he didn't
recall it and never circulated it, assertions Few considers false. Or
something like that, the case is complicated. Anyway, after the requisite
emotional recollections of parents who lost a son to a fire in a GM car,
Kroft got to Starr's complicity in this segment transcribed by MRC
analyst Brian Boyd: Few asserted:
"I wrote him four letters, I asked him to please take the document in
his hand, look at it and tell me whether or not Mr. Ivey's complete and
total amnesia, had been acquired before or after that interview. I told
him some judge some day, is going to read this and I invite you and
General Motors to come clean about it now." 60 Minutes arrived on the story 11 months after CNN. As detailed in the March 9, 1998 CyberAlert, on the March 4 The World Today CNN's Ed Garsten asserted: "In 1994, Kenneth Starr and his law firm, Kirkland and Ellis, represented General Motors in a suit brought by victims of a fuel tank fire. Now, a South Carolina lawyer who represented the plaintiffs in another case against GM, charges Starr knew one of the key witnesses perjured himself and helped hide the documents that could prove it. Now, he's asked for a Justice Department investigation...."
Interviewing Alvin Poussaint of the Harvard Medical School on January 31, Brown suggested: "Should we just, are we at the point where the solution here, like it or not, is we should just take the word and throw it out of the language because it's just going to cause too much trouble?" While we're at it let's dump any word dumb people might confuse for a vulgarity or slur, such as duck, puck, muck, hit, mike, bike, donkey and shell, to name a few. One term that will soon be "thrown out," at least out of your television listings: "Good Morning America/Sunday." ABC has canceled the low-rated show as of February 28. -- Brent Baker >>>
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