GMA's Love-In for Hillary; CBS Let Cox Call Wen Ho Lee a Scapegoat
1) Network reporters again
cited Hillary Clinton's "candor," "candid interview"
and "frank talk." Only FNC's Jim Angle bothered to point out:
"The First Lady is now admitting a history of infidelity by Mr.
Clinton," which both had long denied.
2) Talk's Tina Brown boasted
about her "very intimate and warm portrait of Mrs. Clinton." So
was the Monday GMA interview as she claimed the Clintons' passion
"for making life better for other people...has brought them together
with...a spiritual intensity."
3) FNC's Carl Cameron noted
delays in sentencing hearings for Huang and Trie. CBS followed up on its
60 Minutes interview with Wen Ho Lee by allowing Congressman Chris Cox to
suggest the Clinton administration is making Lee a scapegoat.
4) "Time out!"
shouted CBS's Eric Engberg in a "Reality Check" polemic
countering Charlton Heston's interpretation of the Second Amendment.
>>>
"Kennedy Overkill: John John Was No 'Sun God,' Chappaquiddick Was
a Kopechne Tragedy," the cover story for August 6 Human Events, by
the MRC's Brent Baker, is now up on the MRC home page thanks to
Webmaster Sean Henry. The article begins: "The sudden death at too
early an age of the only son of an assassinated President is certainly a
major news story, but the television networks wouldn't leave it at a few
stories reviewing the good works of John F. Kennedy's Jr.'s life. Instead,
they used his July 16 death as a chance to launch a week-long tribute to
him as America's 'crown prince,' gushing about the wonderful
contributions of the entire Kennedy family, recreating the myth of
'Camelot' and praising the achievements of Sen. Ted Kennedy
(D.-Mass)."
You can obtain a copy of this latest Human
Events, "the national conservative weekly," by calling (800)
787-7557 and subscribing for $89.95 a year. The printed copy also features
a half page sidebar collection of quotes from media figures admiring the
Kennedy family. To read the article online, go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/oped/news/he19990806.html
<<<
Correction:
The August 2 CyberAlert quoted George Will as saying: "What made the
last government shutdown a really epical event..." The MRC's Tim
Graham since suggested that should have read an "epochal event."
1
Only FNC's Fox Report led Monday night with Hillary Clinton's
psychobabble comments, but all the networks ran full stories on the
fallout from the Talk magazine interview which broke Sunday. Once again,
no reporter dared suggest this was just her latest lie as they cited her
"candor," "candid interview" and "frank
talk." Only NBC's Andrea Mitchell even recalled her blaming of a
"vast right-wing conspiracy" last year but excused that and the
latest explanation as part of a "pattern of denial" by the First
Lady.
While CBS's John
Roberts noted how she "tacitly acknowledged that he'd had other
affairs," only FNC's Jim Angle bothered to point out the biggest
admission in the interview, if you buy it at all: "The First Lady is
now admitting a history of infidelity by Mr. Clinton, something that both
of them have sought so often to deny." Indeed, until last year he'd
said there was no affair with Gennifer Flowers and last year only conceded
one sexual encounter, so Hillary's latest comments clearly suggesting he
had an affair with Flowers mean either the she is lying now or both of
them have been lying for eight years.
(Monday morning on
Today NBC anchor Ann Curry announced: "The premier edition of Talk
magazine out this week features a long awaited interview with Hillary
Rodham Clinton in which the First Lady talks candidly about her marriage
and about her own plans for the future.")
Here's how the
broadcast networks and FNC handled the Hillary story on Monday night,
August 2. (I didn't get a chance to transcribe CNN but it offered
nothing unique.)
-- ABC's World News Tonight, like CBS and NBC,
led with the drought. On Hillary, John Cochran reviewed what she said in
the interview, adding: "Although Hillary Clinton never directly
blames childhood trauma for his infidelity, many people read her remarks
that way. In any case, experts on child abuse say that alone is unlikely
to cause marital infidelity."
Dr. Eliot Sorel, George Washington University:
"It is usually a cluster of factors that contribute to it. It is not
a single factor alone."
Cochran: "To those who accuse Mrs. Clinton
of giving a typical liberal's excuse for bad behavior, the White House
notes that she also says 'he's responsible for his own
behavior.'"
After a clip of Joe Lockhart, Cochran concluded:
"In Talk magazine Mrs. Clinton says she feels for the first time she
is making her own decisions. And her frank talk about her husband was one
of those decisions."
-- CBS Evening News. Newly ensconced White House
correspondent John Roberts ran through the highlights of her comments,
noting:
"Mrs. Clinton tacitly acknowledged that
he'd had other affairs. 'We did have a good stretch...years and years
of nothing -- I thought this was resolved 10 years ago...I thought he had
conquered it.' But she added, 'everybody has some dysfunction in their
families...You don't just walk way if you love someone.' Sources close
the First Lady say they were blindsided by her candor and that it may hurt
her in her New York Senate bid."
I guess if you
think this is the truth it's probably the first time you've heard it
from her so you feel "blindsided."
After a soundbite from Lucinda Franks, who
conducted the interview, Roberts concluded that the comments by Hillary
"may allow her say to say I've dealt with the issue, now let's
move on."
-- NBC Nightly News was anchored by Tom Brokaw in
Yellowstone National Park. Andrea Mitchell began her story with the
"scarred by abuse" line, allowing Lucinda Franks to assert:
"She views her husband's sexual transgressions not as a rejection
of her as much as a manifestation of problems and compulsions."
Mitchell added: "And not as she told the
Today show last year the result of some right wing conspiracy."
Mitchell didn't play a clip of that but moved
on to Joe Lockhart and how "a Clinton biographer sees what he calls a
pattern of denial on Mrs. Clinton's part." David Maraniss then
suggested: "From the time that Hillary Clinton first met Bill Clinton
25 years ago, she at various times has been searching for rationalizations
for his behavior."
Mitchell noted how Hillary did not disagree when
the interviewer referred to Bill Clinton's problem as an addiction,
concluding: "Tonight Mrs. Clinton faces her own gamble, a candid
interview that will either end questions about her marriage or invite even
more scrutiny."
-- FNC. The Fox Report carried a piece by James Rosen on Hillary, but
earlier on the 6pm ET/9pm PT Special Report with Brit Hume reporter Jim
Angle delivered a unique angle not heard elsewhere:
"The First Lady pointed to a Biblical
passage, saying: 'I was thinking of when Peter betrayed Jesus three
times and Jesus knew it but loved him anyway.' Many believe though that
it is politics, not religion, that prompted the interview."
Joyce Milton, author of biography of Hillary:
"Hillary has found out that people seem to like her a lot better once
they see her as a victim of a straying husband."
Angle: "Rather than someone who just hangs
around for political advantage as her detractors suggest. The other thing
that's remarkable about this Brit is that the First Lady is now
admitting a history of infidelity by Mr. Clinton, something that both of
them have sought so often to deny."
Later, in the
show's panel segment, the panelists joked about one of Hillary's
preposterous claims. Fred Barnes pointed out: "One of the things I
wondered about is, she said there were ten years in which he was faithful.
Now I don't know whether she meant ten consecutive years or ten
cumulative years, you know a year here and a year there."
Brit Hume chimed in: "It could be an hour
here, an hour there."
2
![talk0803.jpg (10073 bytes)](//cdn.mrc.org/archive/stillshots/1999/talk0803.jpg)
A Hillary love-in on Good Morning America. With Disney-owned Miramax an
investor in Talk magazine, Disney-owned ABC landed the exclusive interview
Monday morning with Talk magazine Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown and reporter
Lucinda Franks, who conducted the interview with the First Lady.
Brown boasted
about how "the piece is a very, very intimate and warm portrait of
Mrs. Clinton." Franks loved how the Clinton marriage "is quite
wonderful in its, you know, in its interdependence of conversation, of
ideas, of excitement, of chemistry, sexual chemistry."
Brown also gushed:
"What you feel is this is a couple who share the passion for the
world, for doing good for politics, for making life better for other
people. This is their great bond, and it really has brought them together
with almost a sort of spiritual intensity." Franks oozed: "And
you can see this, and people who are close to them see this kind of
chemistry. I mean, it's a real love."
I'm not making
this up. This emoting passed for a news interview on GMA.
Queried about
whether she asked about Kathleen Willey, Franks, who once actually won a
Pulitzer Prize for something, it's hard from this to imagine how,
wasn't interested in doing any actually reporting: "I felt that
that part of it was an invasion of her privacy. I felt, you know,
ethically, as a journalist, that this had been covered and covered."
Besides, it's all Barbra Streisand anyway as Bill is a victim of his
great bod: "He's a very handsome man and he looked like a Beatle
back in Yale, you can see pictures of him, I mean, he was gorgeous. You
had women, even stars, who tried to get what they could out of being close
to him, pretending they had an affair with him."
You really have to
see this "interview" to believe it, so the MRC's Sean Henry
has posted, in RealPlayer format, a four-minute or so excerpt of the
August 2 session for your gagging pleasure. Go to: http://www.mrc.org
For those without
RealPlayer or who want to follow along with text, here are more extensive
excerpts as taken down by MRC analyst Jessica Anderson:
Diane Sawyer
opened by asking: "Tina, she said she'd never do this. She said she
would not talk about these things, that the zone of privacy would stay
intact. Why did she talk?"
Tina Brown, Talk Editor-in-Chief: "A
combination, I think, of timing, respect for the journalist who asked her,
Lucinda, a feeling that, of frustration, perhaps, that the world just
didn't seem to get her after all these long months of being in the public
eye."
Sawyer soon
wondered: "Is it a favorable interview?"
Brown: "I think the piece is a very, very
intimate and warm portrait of Mrs. Clinton, in the sense that it really
brings her alive as a three-dimensional woman in ways that I don't think
anyone's been able to do before. In that sense, I think, you are left with
a positive impression, a positive impression because she lives and
breathes and is complicated for the first time."
Sawyer: "Alright Lucinda, let's talk about
some of the things that are making the headlines this morning. For those
of you at home who haven't read it yet, and that'll be many of you, since
it isn't on the stands until this week, let's show you this paragraph that
has intrigued people, perhaps, the most. When she's talking about a
framework for his behavior, here is what she said: 'He was so young,
barely four, when he was scarred by abuse that he can't even take it out
and look at it. There was a terrible conflict between his mother and his
grandmother. A psychologist once told me that for a boy being in the
middle of a conflict between two women is the worst possible situation.
There is always a desire to please each one.' What was she talking about?
What kind of abuse? Between his mother, grandmother? What was this?"
Lucinda Franks, contributing writer for Talk:
"Well you know, Diane, you can find this in Virginia Kelley's
autobiography. She has a very powerful episode that she talks about her
mother and she pulling, literally, pulling Bill apart, one person, one
woman had him by the legs and the person had him by the shoulders. They
fought over him for custody, they fought over his upbringing, he was
always trying to please one. When his mother disappeared, he would stay
with his grandmother with great structure and then unstructured with his
mother."
Sawyer: "And she seems to be saying, and
what does she seem to be saying about the psychology, the imprint of this
psychology?
Franks: "I think, you know, I think all of
this is probably speculation on her part, but I think this is the
narrative by which she has lived with this marriage, which is quite
wonderful in its, you know, in its interdependence of conversation, of
ideas, of excitement, of chemistry, sexual chemistry."
Now we get to the
really sappy part and where the RealPlayer clip on the MRC Web site
begins.
Sawyer: "I
noticed that you say that you used the word addiction, she doesn't correct
you at first, and then later on -- and we're going to put quote up here --
she says, 'That,' meaning addiction, 'is your word. I would say
"weakness."' And then at another point, 'You know in Christian
theology there are sins of weakness and sins of malice, and this was a sin
of weakness,' and you say that his friends are saying that after the
presidency he will get therapy and treatment for this."
Franks: "Yes, yes, this is the hope and the
belief. He has certainly had a lot of support, religious support, the
support from friends, to talk this out. He understands he has a problem,
he understands that he doesn't want to have this problem. Indeed there is
a great big stretch in which he didn't have the problem. I think he's
devoted to his wife, I think she is devoted to him, and I think they have
an incredible relationship, but I think that everyone tries to put a
stereotype on people's marriages, and you can't put a stereotype on some
marriages, including this one."
Sawyer: "I'm curious, Tina as an editor,
when you were reading through it, what was it, what was the single
revelation, I guess, that most surprised you about her?"
Brown: "I think the revelation of the piece,
really, is the depth and deeply powerful bond these two people have. At
the end of the piece, I really felt I understood the marriage of the
Clintons. I mean, there are many people in the last year or two, have been
so reductive about their marriage. There have been so many attempts to
cast aspersions on her, in a sense, for standing by him, but I think when
you read the piece you understand why this woman is in love with this man,
you understand that she really has such a deep level of shared interest,
of shared passions, not in a shallow way, in the sense that people very
often put her down as a sort of wanting to stay Mrs. Clinton because she
is in the power zone. I don't, when you read the piece, you don't feel
that at all. What you feel is this is a couple who share the passion for
the world, for doing good for politics, for making life better for other
people. This is their great bond, and it really has brought them together
with almost a sort of spiritual intensity."
Franks: "And you can see this, and people
who are close to them see this kind of chemistry. I mean, it's a real
love."
Let's pause here
so you can taker a breather. It gets even more preposterous as Franks soon
turned Bill Clinton into Elvis.
Sawyer:
"Well, you quote, it's amazing, her Chief of Staff saying the
physical passion has returned to the marriage. I don't know that a Chief
of Staff in history, as far as I know, has ever taken a stand on this
issue."
Franks: "Yes, yes. Well, I think what
happens, right, exactly....I think they see them in the corner, you know,
putting their arms around each other, smooching, you know, sharing,
whispering. It's a, his sexual dysfunction is something, I think, that she
has put in a, one part of the marriage in which she says, my God, with
this upbringing that this man could do what he does is remarkable."
Sawyer: "I noticed the New York tabloids
this morning are taking a poll on one part of your piece, whether people
believe one thing she said, and I'm going to run through these quotes
again: that 'You know we did have a very good stretch, years and years of
nothing,' meaning after Gennifer Flowers and before Monica Lewinsky. 'I
thought this was resolved 10 years ago. I thought he had conquered it; I
thought he understood it, but he didn't go deep enough or work hard
enough.' Did you talk to her about any specific women and specific
allegations? Kathleen Willey."
Franks: "I did not. I did not feel, I felt
that that part of it was an invasion of her privacy. I felt, you know,
ethically, as a journalist, that this had been covered and covered and
covered and covered, and I also feel that many of these encounters are,
began way back in Arkansas when women would throw themselves at him. Even
at Yale, I mean, he's a very handsome man, and he looked like a Beatle
back in Yale, you can see pictures of him, I mean, he was gorgeous. You
had women, even stars, who tried to get what they could out of being close
to him, pretending they had an affair with him, so a lot of this is, has
been taken with a grain of salt, I think."
The RealPlayer
clip ends here, but there's still more to read as they dispute a Drudge
item and laugh about Juanita Broaddrick.
Sawyer:
"Tina, as you know, Matt Drudge on the Internet this morning is
saying that, in fact, you were personally involved in making sure that any
mention of Juanita Broaddrick [Brown and Franks laugh], the woman who
claims some 20 years ago that he had raped her, that it was not mentioned
either in the questioning or in the piece."
Brown: "That's totally untrue, I don't know
where Drudge got that from, that is not true. No, Lucinda was able to ask
anything she wished, and I didn't regard Broaddrick."
Sawyer: "Did you agree in advance not to go
into specifics and not to press her on what she knew when?"
Franks: "Oh, no. Not at all, not at
all."
Brown: "No, I think that Lucinda really, you
know, talked to Mrs. Clinton and got Mrs. Clinton to discuss things that
no one else has been able to get her to discuss, and I think that she went
a very long way in doing so. I think she was enormously brave in doing so,
too, and I think that her decision to do so was a terrifically sort of,
you know, something to really be admired. I mean, she wanted to get this
over with and out. I think that she felt, when she felt that people didn't
get her, I think she knows that she's now entering a Senate race where
it's very important that people understand who she is, and this woman is
not a victim and doesn't want to be seen as a victim. She wanted to make
that clear, she wanted to say this is a marriage that's had its
difficulties, we've worked through it and we've worked it out, it's a
marriage I believe in."
Sawyer: "Well, one final quote I want to
show everybody, and it's number five for you in the control room. You
really put the Senate race in the context of the revival of the marriage,
in a way, and her way to get to firm ground so that she can stay alive
inside this marriage, and she says at one point, 'I want independence. I
want to be judged on my own merits. Now for the first time I am making my
own decisions. I can feel the difference. It's a great relief,' and you
quote people saying after eight months, basically, of not speaking to him,
what brought her back, after acting like someone had died, was this Senate
race."
Franks: "That's true, absolutely true."
Sawyer: "So this Senate race is linked to
the marriage."
Franks: "I saw this, I thought, in North
Africa, I thought she was very depressed. It was probably a number of
things: Kosovo, the Broaddrick allegations, it was just too much. I mean,
this woman had been attacked and attacked and attacked. Her husband had
been attacked and attacked, and it was her husband that really wanted her
to finally go out on her own, to seek public office like she had wanted to
for a very long time, so this was her chance. I would find it exciting if
I were her."
Sawyer: "Again, it's a fascinating
kaleidoscope as you see the world through her eyes, and do get, as we say,
just a glimpse behind the veil of this marriage. We thank you both for
coming in."
More like a
fascinating kaleidoscope of what happens when media figures are more
interested in improving the image of a political figure than reporting the
facts.
3
![lee0803.jpg (9210 bytes)](//cdn.mrc.org/archive/stillshots/1999/lee0803.jpg)
Monday night on the Chinagate front, FNC's Carl Cameron updated viewers
on delays in some sentencing hearings and CBS followed up on its exclusive
60 Minutes interview with Wen Ho Lee by allowing Congressman Chris Cox to
suggest the Clinton administration is making Lee a scapegoat.
-- On the August 2
Special Report with Brit Hume FNC's Carl Cameron reported that John
Huang's plea bargain and sentencing was delayed at the last minute by a
judge who wants to know if Huang should appear before Congress before
he's sentenced. Charlie Trie's scheduled plea bargain in two weeks,
Cameron added, has been delayed by the Justice Department in order to
further pursue his charge that top Democrats knew he was raising foreign
money. Cameron talked to Congressman Dan Burton and relayed: "Burton
says Huang and Trie are not being forced to testify against bigger fish
and are still being let off easy."
-- "There's an update tonight and a
fairness check in the story about stolen U.S. nuclear weapons secrets,
possibly going to communist China for twenty years or more," intoned
Dan Rather on Monday's CBS Evening News.
Sharyl Attkisson
then reviewed what 60 Minutes viewers saw the night before: "Wen Ho
lee admits to 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace that he moved classified material
to an unclassified computer, a common practice for convenience he says,
but as for spying:"
Wen Ho Lee: "The truth is I'm innocent. I
have not done anything wrong, at least what they have tried to accuse
me."
Attkisson: "Representative Chris Cox led
Congress's investigation into Chinese espionage and backs up Lee's
dismissal for security violations, but:"
Chris Cox: "It's a different matter,
however, to juxtapose him with some of the most serious crimes that have
ever been committed against our military secrets."
Attkisson: "He accuses Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson of playing up Lee's firing in the press. But Richardson
denies he made Lee a public scapegoat for the lab security programs."
Attkisson to Richardson: "What's your
response to watching him and hearing him last night?"
Bill Richardson: "Not much sympathy. This
man massively violated security and by doing so we terminated him."
Attkisson: "Lee, born in Taiwan, now a U.S.
citizen, says he views China as an enemy country."
Lee: "I feel they have a corrupt country, I
mean a corrupt government."
Attkisson: "And he's even taught his two
children to be wary of Chinese people."
Lee's son explained how he was taught to avoid
people from Mainland China.
A lesson the
Clinton fundraising team could have benefitted from.
Attkisson
concluded by reporting that Lee is expected to be indicted in a matter of
days for security violations, not espionage.
+++ See Wen Ho
Lee's face up close, as opposed to those fuzzy shots of him in his
driveway, in a still shot and RealPlayer video clip from this CBS story
which MRC Webmaster has put alongside this item in the posted version of
this CyberAlert. Go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/1999/cyb19990803.html#3
While on Chinagate,
last Friday Washington Post "In the Loop" columnist Al Kamen
pointed out that Johnny Chung has a Web site, complete with photos of him
with the Clintons and images of Hillary's thank you notes to him. Go to:
http://www.johnnychung.com
4
CBS News looked Monday night at what the Second Amendment means. Guess
which side they took?
On the August 2
CBS Evening News Eric Engberg observed: "It's an article of faith
gun ownership is a right sanctified by the founding fathers."
Charlton Heston, NRA President: "I believe
the Second Amendment is America's first freedom among the entire of that
magnificent Bill of Right."
Engberg countered: "Time out! There's one
rather important group that's never said the amendment protects the
right to own a gun: the U.S. Supreme Court. So convinced there is no such
right the court hasn't heard a Second Amendment case since
1939...."
Out of room today
to do any more on this lengthy piece of slanted reporting, but I hope to
do more on in it a future CyberAlert, though most times I promise to
revisit an issue I never find the time or room, so consider this a quest,
not a promise. --
Brent Baker
![](//cdn.mrc.org/archive/images/backtop.gif)
3
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