MediaWatch: April 1991

NewsBites: Telling McGrory's Story

TELLING McGRORY'S STORY. In a profile of Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory, Christian Science Monitor reporter Cameron Barr revealed how one-sided liberal voices find their way into the news. In the March 4 article, McGrory recalled a White House reception at which presidential aide Richard Darman told her she had no influence because she was "so liberal, so predictable." McGrory told Barr: "At precisely that moment Ann Compton of ABC, one of the world's nicest women, came up to me and said, 'Oh Mary, I want to thank you. Because of you and what you wrote I wasn't just on ABC News tonight, I [had] the lead [story].' I said, 'Oooh, how interesting!'...I said, 'Just as a matter of interest, what [did you report]?' And she said, 'Oh, I just took what you wrote and put it on the air.'"

THE BRADY CRUNCH. On the March 8 CBS Evening News, reporter Ray Brady alerted viewers to another crisis, this time in unemployment compensation: "In the 1975 recession, three quarters of the nation's jobless got benefits. Now it's around 30 percent, less than half the earlier level."

But Brady's only expert, Isaac Shapiro of the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, told MediaWatch that the 75 percent figure was the highest since World War II. Shapiro's study concluded that the percentage of unemployed people receiving benefits averaged roughly 50 percent. Brady also cleverly rounded 37 percent, the actual present rate, down to get his dramatically lower "around 30 percent" figure.

TAX HACKS. Even though New Jersey voters regard Governor Jim Florio with such disdain that they almost threw out Senator Bill Bradley in the last election in protest, Time Associate Editor Priscilla Painton hasn't lost faith. Painton wrote March 4: "Every Governor in America last year could have recited the Jim Florio Rule of political survival: never mount an honest attack against a state deficit. The New Jersey Governor, who combined service cuts with the highest tax hike in the state's history, was all but tarred and feathered for his efforts. But now with at least 29 states facing potential deficits, Florio's approach is beginning to seem almost prescient."

OFFICE POLITICS. When five corporate executives testified in support of greater spending on social programs for children, The Washington Post made the executives' testimony a large story on its March 7 "Federal Page," followed by a supportive editorial on the next page. But neither story revealed the executives were affiliated with the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a moderate-to-liberal group of corporate executives. Nor did the Post tell readers that its own officers belonged to the group. CED's annual report lists outgoing Post Company President Richard Simmons as a trustee, and outgoing Chairman Katharine Graham as an honorary trustee.

MORE GREENHOUSE GASES. In December, MediaWatch awarded the Janet Cooke Award to PBS' Race to Save the Planet for its one-sided coverage of a range of environmental issues. We also noted that PBS had scuttled The Greenhouse Conspiracy, a documentary revealing scientific problems in the greenhouse model. After the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Richard Miniter criticized the PBS decision in a Christian Science Monitor op-ed, PBS President Bruce Christensen shot back in a letter to the editor on March 7. "PBS coverage of the issue of global warming has been both wide-ranging and responsible," Christensen declared, "Care has been taken in our news and science programs, such as The Infinite Voyage and Race to Save the Planet, to note that scientific debate exists about the issue...PBS does not allow political pressure, private interests, or public controversy to dictate decisions about what we broadcast."

The real question is: has Christensen seen Race to Save the Planet? In 10 hours of the series, not a single scientist was permitted to disagree with the producers' drastic conclusions. In fact, Miniter quoted our interview with Senior Producer Linda Harrar, who defended the absence of balance as an effort to avoid "confusing the public." If Race to Save the Planet is Christensen's idea of a debate, one can only imagine what future PBS documentaries might be like.

ARNETT'S ADMISSIONS. CNN's Peter Arnett returned from Baghdad as a veritable folk hero to the press, which vigorously defended his reporting. At a warm reception at the National Press Club on March 19, Arnett sneered: "I don't think the U.S. public really has a real concept of what the press does." But Arnett demonstrated he didn't have a real concept of the accuracy of what he reported.

In discussing the so-called baby milk factory at the Press Club Arnett admitted: "I didn't see any evidence of biological testing, but then I don't know what biological testing would look like." When questioned on ABC's Prime Time Live on March 21 about the possibility that the Iraqis were disguising a chemical plant, Arnett countered, "Why would they go to all the trouble of doing that? Was their nuclear weapons plant disguised as a bagel factory?"

Perhaps the Iraqis would go to that trouble because they knew they could rely on Arnett reporting it. At the Press Club, Arnett referred to the U.S. bombing of a "shelter, which I called civilian for a while, but which we just call shelter now, because we don't really know what it was." During the ABC interview, Arnett revealed his reporting was based upon suppositions, not actual knowledge: "I didn't go deep down. I really didn't have any equipment for digging. I just, to this day I can't really believe that was a command center."

QUOTA KILLERS. For the second time in less than a year, 60 Minutes has aired a stunning investigative report that challenged conventional liberal wisdom. On December 30, reporter Steve Kroft violated environmentalist taboos by becoming the first network correspondent to publicize the results of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Project (NAPAP). Now, on March 24, Morley Safer sliced and diced the "civil rights" bureaucracy with a story on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Safer reported the story of inner-city Chicago's Daniel Lamp Company, which the EEOC sued for discrimination even though the small factory's entire work force was black and Hispanic, except for owner Michael Welbel and his father. Safer interviewed Welbel's workers, who told him they had no complaints. Despite this, the EEOC demanded Welbel pay $148,000 immediately. Why? Because the EEOC charged that no blacks were working for Welbel at the time of their investigation. But 60 Minutes independently established that 11 blacks had worked for the company during the time of the EEOC investigation. One Hispanic social worker told Safer the most likely result of the EEOC lawsuit: more Hispanics and blacks out of work.

ELLEN FUMES. Former Wall Street Journal reporter Ellen Hume is upset over Senator Alan Cranston's fall from grace. "It was inconceivable to those of us who learned politics from him back in the 1970s that Cranston would end up in disgrace," Hume wrote in a March 3 Los Angeles Times op-ed piece about the California Democrat's role in the Keating Five scandal. "Back in the 1970s Cranston was one of the most progressive, highly-regarded members of the U.S. Senate," she recalled. Sure, he did favors for constituents, but "he balanced private favors with public initiatives."

What could trip up such a liberal? "In the high-rolling Reagan era, Cranston seems to have lost that balance." Hume saw Cranston as a victim of "an insidious, subtle corruption, the kind that sneaks up on well-meaning people by the inch rather than the mile." Hume ended by scolding her mentor: "Cranston, of all people, should have known better. If only he'd remembered why he'd gotten into politics in the first place -- to make a safer, better world for all of us -- Cranston might have been able to keep his balance." If only Reagan hadn't ruined him.

GUNNING FOR THE NRA. When CNN introduced the Special Assignment unit, it promised the extended format would allow for more in-depth examinations of the issues. Instead of providing an even-handed overview, Brian Barger's March 18 segment used music and slow- motion footage to dramatize the case for gun control. Barger declared 1990 the "year of the urban killing fields. A culture of violence fueling a crime rate out of control. More guns in private hands than ever before." For Barger, guns, not criminals, were the problem.

Barger focused on "assault weapons, those high-powered, rapid-fire guns made for the military, designed to kill the maximum number of people in the minimum amount of time." But Barger didn't understand the different between semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Soldiers use fully-automatic rifles and a civilian can't own one without a permit. Nevertheless, Barger continually referred to semi-automatics in emotionally charged terms such as "weapons of war."

Critics and supporters of gun control faced different receptions. While gun control advocate Rep. Lawrence Smith was allowed to attack the NRA without comment, Barger's interrogated NRA lobbyist James Baker: "The next time there is a massacre with an AK-47, what would you tell the mother of one of the kids that gets killed?"

POST PUFFS PORN. The Washington Post remains more concerned with defending the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) than fully explaining what upsets NEA critics. Two March 20 articles on the film Poison illustrate the point. Post arts reporter Kim Masters covered at length the views of NEA chief John Frohnmayer and Poison director Todd Haynes, but only ran two quotes from NEA critics, neither of which discussed the controversial content of the taxpayer-supported film.

Masters did next to nothing to explain the actual debate over the film's obscenity, reporting that the film, "which took top honors at a film festival sponsored by Robert Redford's Sundance Institute, includes a sequence depicting homosexuality in prison." That's putting it mildly. Variety must have seen another movie: "A mood of seething, violent homoeroticism permeates the proceedings as one prisoner stalks another in an episode spiked with multiple glimpses of rear-entry intercourse and one of genital fondling." Variety concluded the film "will be unpalatable to many mainstream viewers." The Post doesn't seem to value the public's "right to know" when taxpayers foot the bill for "tasteful" depictions of gay rape.

ABC: ANYONE BUT CHRISTIANS? A recent incident involving ABC and Doug Wead, a former aide to President Bush, raises questions regarding ABC's criteria for selecting guests. When Rebecca Hagelin, Wead's public relations agent, proposed having Wead discuss the war, she was confronted by Ruth Reis, a researcher for the network's bookers. Even though Wead's biography described him as "George Bush's religious guru," Reis insisted that Hagelin had misrepresented Wead by concealing that he was a "fundamentalist." Asked how Wead's religious beliefs were relevant, Reis explained that they "affect his political agenda." As Hagelin saw it, "Evidently, if you're a Bible-believing Christian it disqualifies you from being a guest." Hagelin was contacted by ABC and told not to talk with Reis again.

MediaWatch called Reis but she refused to comment, insisting that all inquiries be directed to Press Representative Arnot Walker. He didn't deny Reis' hostility toward Hagelin, but said Reis was "a researcher and not a booker," and blamed the confrontation on "war tension." Walker explained: "She's young. She doesn't understand why she's suddenly a target for a political group." Walker denied that a person's religious views had any impact on guest selection, so why did it matter so much to Reis?

CONSPIRACY OF PAIN. Liberals claim conservatives have wacky, conspiratorial ideas, but get a load of this. "Beauty is a conspiracy of pain forced upon women," began Time reporter Emily Mitchell's March 4 review of The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. "In the boardroom and in the bedroom, women are entrapped by a cult that is the equivalent of the iron maiden, a medieval torture instrument that impaled its captives on iron spikes." Time not only gave a whole page to the book, but failed to include one sentence of criticism. Mitchell explained: "The beauty myth of Wolf's title is reinforced, she argues, by a global industry worth billions that could be far better used for social purposes; for example, the money spent on cosmetics each year could finance 2,000 women's health clinics or pay for three times the amount of day care offered by the U.S. government." Perhaps Time's $2.50 cover price could be better spent feeding children in Bangladesh.

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