Media Watch: September 1995
Table of Contents:
To CBS: "Republican" Starr...
Nonpartisan Judge
CBS News has two standards in reporting: Republicans are partisan hacks while Democrats are public servants. They have regularly questioned Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's integrity since his appointment. Anchor Dan Rather suggested impropriety on the August 12, 1994 CBS Evening News: "New disclosures are fueling questions about whether or not Starr is an ambitious Republican partisan backed by ideologically motivated anti-Clinton activists and judges from the Reagan, Bush, and Nixon years."
In the piece that followed, Eric Engberg fleshed out his convoluted conspiracy: "The way Starr got the job, which bears the footprints of every Republican President from Nixon to Bush, is also becoming a hot issue. Independent counsels are chosen by a panel of three federal appeals court judges. By law, the panel is selected by Chief Justice Rehnquist, a Nixon appointee to the Supreme Court named Chief Justice by President Reagan. Rehnquist chose Judge David Sentelle of the D.C. Court of Appeals, a Reagan appointee to head the three judge panel. Sentelle is from North Carolina, where he was an active worker in the Republican organization run by Senator Jesse Helms, who is among Clinton's fiercest critics. Sentelle owes his job on the federal bench to Helms, who urged the White House to appoint him."
When a federal judge tossed out Starr's tax fraud indictment of a Dem-ocrat on September 5, CBS failed to note the judge's name, Henry Woods, or his partisan activities. Rather announced: "A legal setback late today for Kenneth Starr, the Republican independent counsel in the Whitewater case. A federal judge in Little Rock threw out Starr's indictment of Arkansas' Democratic Governor."
CBS ignored Woods' friendship with Mrs. Clinton, who "once wanted Hillary to run for Governor when Bill was undecided," according to a September 7 Wall Street Journal editorial. Woods has been "active in Democratic politics in Arkansas for more than 40 years, and developed particularly close relations with Mrs. Clinton when he appointed her to a citizen's committee in his long-running school desegregation case." The Washington Times noted that he was an overnight White House guest who monitored election returns last November.
