ABC Pushed UN Report on Guns; Nets Ignored How China To Test Missile
1) All but FNC led Monday with
the surplus announced by Clinton which Dan Rather credited to the
"zooming, booming U.S. economy." Only FNC noted that the
Starr/Hubbell plea deal could be bad news for Hillary Clinton since
Hubbell admitted "covering up" for her.
2) ABC promoted a UN report:
"As increasingly restrictive gun laws are enacted in major industrial
countries, gun-makers around the globe are flocking to the biggest and
least regulated gun market in the world -- the United States."
3) "China is making final
preparations to test fire a new mobile intercontinental ballistic missile
that the CIA believes will incorporate stolen U.S. missile and warhead
secrets," The Washington Times revealed to network apathy.
1
ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC led Monday night, June 28, with Bill Clinton's
announcement of a larger than expected surplus and his plan to spend much
of it on Social Security and Medicare. FNC went first with an apparent
plea deal between Webster Hubbell and Ken Starr's office, a story
mentioned on ABC, discussed with Tim Russert on NBC and also given a full
story on CBS and CNN. Only FNC raised the possibility that Hubbell's
confession that he did cover up the Castle Grande deal with Hillary
Clinton could mean an even more critical final report from the independent
counsel on her role.
-- Budget surplus:
Dan Rather opened the CBS Evening News by
celebrating:
"Good evening. President Clinton talked
today about a remarkable financial and political accomplishment resulting
from the zooming, booming U.S. economy. The President said a new and
rosier long-range federal budget surplus forecast could help wipe-out the
national debt, bolster health and retirement programs for older Americans
and perhaps even expand your budget with a tax cut."
NBC Nightly News
anchor Brian Williams characterized the surplus as a "problem"
since it means figuring how to spend it all:
"Good evening. The only thing they fight
about in Washington more than how to save money is how to spend it.
Tonight that means your government has a huge problem on its hands. With
much fanfare the President announced today the U.S. is about to have a
huge surplus, about a trillion dollars to put somewhere."
--
Starr/Hubbell deal:
Jim Stewart provided a full report for the CBS
Evening News about how Hubbell had agreed to plead guilty to a felony for
covering up the sham Castle Grande deal and a misdemeanor for tax evasion.
Stewart concluded: "Barring any surprises this should just about do
it for independent counsel Ken Starr. After five years and $40 million the
investigation that rocked America is apparently out of targets to shoot
at."
On NBC Nightly
News Williams talked about the deal with Tim Russert who termed it a
"win, win, win" as it means Hubbell avoids jail, Starr avoids a
trial he could have lost and Hillary avoids having to testify. Williams
also asked Russert about the story that Bill Clinton will run for Senate
from Arkansas in 2002. Russert called it unlikely.
At the top of
FNC's Fox Report David Shuster handled the Hubbell/Starr deal and
uniquely observed that avoiding testifying may not be all good news for
the First Lady:
"The independent counsel law requires that
Starr issue a final report. Now with an admission from Hubbell about
covering up for Mrs. Clinton the criticism for the President and First
Lady is expected to be even stronger."
2
ABC's World News Tonight on Sunday and Monday night ignored a Sunday,
June 27 front page New York Times story about how contrary to Clinton
administration assertions they learned of Chinese espionage in 1995, not
1996. But Monday night ABC jumped on a story about guns played on the
front page of the Monday Washington Post, even getting soundbites from the
very same liberal activists quoted in the Post story.
Under the heading
of "Targeting Guns: Exporters to the U.S.," the June 28
Washington Post headline declared: "Selling in a Land of Opportunity:
Foreign Firms Find a Big Market." Post reporter Sharon Walsh began:
"As increasingly restrictive gun laws are
enacted in major industrial countries, gun-makers around the globe are
flocking to the biggest and least regulated gun market in the world -- the
United States."
Citing a United
Nations study on how 29 nations have tightened gun laws in the past five
years, Walsh used Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center and Wendy Cukier
of the Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto, as her experts.
Now check out how
ABC picked up the Post story without any credit. World News Tonight anchor
Peter Jennings asserted:
"The United Nations tells us that 29
countries have now tightened the rules on gun ownership so considerably
that it is more difficult for the gun manufacturers to sell their product.
Now none of those countries has a Second Amendment so that makes the
United States an important market. Guns, like any other product, end up
where they are welcomed."
ABC News
reporter/Washington Post reader Lisa Stark explained, as the Post did, how
half of the guns sold in the U.S. come from companies owned overseas.
After a soundbite from Diaz she noted how Smith & Wesson is owned by a
British firm but their guns cannot be sold there and British "laws
are so strict, the British Olympic shooting team, which uses guns like
these, had to practice in France."
Other foreign gun-makers she cited matched a
chart in the Post: Glock of Austria, Browning of Belgium, Beretta of Italy
and Taurus of Brazil. Wendy Cukier suggested that like other
"dangerous commodities," such as cigarettes and leaded gasoline,
producers must shift sales to where there is less regulation.
Stark did allow a gun store owner to point out:
"Just like the camera you're using here, it's made in another
country. We're in a world market today and there's free
enterprise."
Stark then ruefully concluded: "And so far
in this political season Congress sees no reason to change that, leaving
gun makers and sellers a lucrative and legal U.S. market."
3
Not a word on the Monday morning shows about Sunday's New York Times
story on how "Senior White House officials were informed that China
might have stolen American nuclear secrets nearly a year earlier than the
Clinton administration originally disclosed." (NBC's Today did
however, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens pointed out, make room for the
really important news of the day. Its lead interview segment discussed
speculation about Bill Clinton running for the Senate from Arkansas in
2002.)
In Monday's
Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz brought fresh warnings about how
"China is making final preparations to test fire a new mobile
intercontinental ballistic missile that the CIA believes will incorporate
stolen U.S. missile and warhead secrets." But that didn't generate
any network interest without a syllable about it Monday morning or night
on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, nor on FNC which already covered the basic story
weeks ago.
Gertz's
disclosures advanced information first revealed on June 3 by FNC's Carl
Cameron, who reported: "China now plans to move up its development
time table and later this year will test not one but two new
intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the U.S. The second
is particularly surprising because it comes years before any U.S. analyst
had predicted China would be able to do it and because of how similar it
will be to the top weapon in the U.S. arsenal." (See the June 4
CyberAlert for details.)
In his front page
June 28 story Gertz reported:
Preparations for the launch of the
road-mobile DF-31 -- which could take place as early as next week -- were
spotted by U.S. spy satellites at Wuzhai in central China and reported in
classified U.S. intelligence reports earlier this month, said U.S.
intelligence officials familiar with the reports.
"They are getting ready for a
launch," one official said.
The official said one U.S. intelligence
agency assessed the DF-31 test missile to be capable of carrying a 2 '-megaton
warhead. A megaton is the equivalent of a million tons of TNT.
Other intelligence estimates have said the
DF-31 warhead size will be smaller, closer to the 100- to 200-kiloton
range that is similar to compact U.S. nuclear warheads.
China's two dozen CSS-4 long-range ICBMs
each carry a five-megaton warhead and the CIA reported last year that at
least 13 of those missiles were targeted on U.S. cities.
Officials said they were viewing the signs
of an impending missile test with caution because an earlier test firing
set for December was scrapped, possibly to wait for warmer weather.
The 5,000-mile-range missile will be able
to hit targets in parts of the western United States.
According to a report released last month
by a special House panel investigating Chinese espionage, the DF-31 is
likely to be the first missile in the People's Liberation Army (PLA)
arsenal to incorporate stolen U.S. warhead design technology, including
either the advanced W-88 warhead, or the older W-70 warhead used on
short-range Lance missiles.
"The DF-31 ICBM and the PRC's other
new generation mobile ICBMs will require smaller, more compact
warheads," said the report by a committee headed by Rep. Christopher
Cox, California Republican. "The stolen U.S. information on the W-70
or W-88 Trident D-5 will be useful for this purpose." The D-5 is the
most advanced U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missile.
The report said the DF-31 could be ready
for operational deployment by 2002 if tests are successful. It said the
DF-31, one of three new mobile ICBMs the Chinese are developing, could be
tested this year....
END Excerpt
Contrast Gertz's
revelation with how CBS News assured us there's nothing to worry about.
Back on the May 27 CBS Evening News reporter Eric Engberg dismissed the
Cox Report as full of exaggerated fears:
"As the release of the Cox Report again
demonstrated Washington's love of a good spy story, the consensus
gelled: Chinese agents have stolen something. But after that many of the
report's scary findings are open to question.
"Were actual weapons plans among the
purloined secrets? The report takes the worst case view: Probably. But a
blue ribbon panel of outside experts advising the CIA looked at the same
question and decided there is just no way to know. The same group
concluded the Chinese spying 'has not resulted in any apparent
modernization of their deployed strategic force or any new nuclear weapons
deployment.'...
"The Cox Report says China uncovered the
secrets of seven U.S. nuclear warheads, but the intelligence evidence is
unclear. It may be as low as four, two of which are obsolete. Amidst all
the voices raised in alarm there is a bottom line: Unlike many of the
things in the Cox Report there's no argument here. Number of strategic
nuclear weapons? U.S.: six thousand, China: less than two dozen."
Maybe when a missile lands in Los Angeles the
networks will decide this might be an important issue to explore instead
of dismissing or ignoring. --
Brent Baker
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