CyberAlert -- 05/17/1997 -- Liberals Promoted at CBS & ABC

Liberals Promoted at CBS & ABC; Reporter Confronts Police

1. An operative for Ted Kennedy, Mondale-Ferraro and the DNC is now in charge of CBS political coverage; ABC picks a McGovernite to run ABCNEWS.com.
2. The reporter who published quotes from Newt's phone call has a confrontation with police, and he's not happy it got reported.

1) ABC and CBS have just promoted Democratic operatives to influential positions overseeing news content -- to coordinate political coverage at CBS and to run the Web site for ABC News.

-- "CBS News has named Dotty Lynch as Senior Political Editor, effective immediately," The Washington Post's John Carmody reported May 8. Carmody reviewed her background: "Lynch began her political research career as a researcher for the NBC News election unit in 1968, went on to become Vice President of Cambridge Survey Research, which did polling for the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter, among others, then served as Director of Survey Research for the Democratic National Committee in 1981-83 and headed her own political polling firm for two years before joining CBS."

Lynch, who had been political editor for CBS News, is now in charge of the three-member, Washington-based political operation. In addition to the political work listed by Carmody, she also handled polling for Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential run and coordinated polling for Gary Hart in 1984 before jumping to the Mondale-Ferraro effort.

-- On Thursday ABC News launched its new Web site: ABCNEWS.com. In charge of the new project: Jeff Gralnick, Vice President and Executive Producer of special events for ABC News. Back in 1971 Gralnick toiled as Press Secretary for liberal Senator George McGovern.

Gralnick soon after joined ABC News, rising to Executive Producer of World News Tonight by 1979. He gained the VP title and took over special event coverage, such as elections and conventions, in 1985, but jumped to NBC News in 1993 to become Executive Producer of NBC Nightly News. ABC lured him back last year with the promise to put him in charge of their planned all-news cable channel, an idea that fizzled.

2) Angry White Male at the New York Times? Adam Clymer, the New York Times reporter who wrote the story in January quoting from the tape of Newt Gingrich's phone call, had a run-in with the police. And he didn't appreciate the cops telling the Washington Times all about it.

In the May 5 edition, Washington Times "Inside the Beltway" columnist John McCaslin reported a May 1 incident:
"Sergeant Dan Nichols, Capitol Police spokesman, says Mr. Clymer became 'belligerent' Thursday and unleashed profanities at an office who denied him access to a roped off area off the Senate floor. Mr. Clymer says he doesn't recall using nasty language. He adds that he disengaged once the officer told him the area was secured due to a visit by the Spanish Prime Minister.

"'He was stopped by the officer, at which point he became belligerent and began using profanities,' Sgt. Nichols said. 'He was advised by the officer hat his conduct was inappropriate, at which point he became more belligerent, at which point the officer's supervisor stepped in and tried to explain the situation He again used profanity and then left the area.'"

Clymer was none too pleased by the publicity. In a "Scrapbook" item, the May 19 Weekly Standard revealed that Clymer "is known as one of the more sour members of the media." The Standard relayed his contempt: "The story was first reported in the Washington Times, and Clymer believes the paper was fed the information by the police. Revealing his contempt for both, he told the Hill [newspaper] that 'a real police force would have talked to me before going to The Washington Times, of all places.'"

Now maybe he has a better appreciation of how it feels to have what you thought was a private conversation highlighted by the media. -- Brent Baker (Notable Quotables follows below)

-- Brent Baker