MediaWatch: April 1991
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: April 1991
- Gumbel's Morning Gospel
- NewsBites: Telling McGrory's Story
- Revolving Door: Two Times A Nader
- CBS Claims Millions of Kids Almost Starving
- Address Dismisses Conservatives, Iraq War Victory
- Joining Stahl's Quest for More Money
- ABC News on Lee Atwater
- Janet Cooke Award: CBS: Faking the Nation
ABC News on Lee Atwater
ATTACK VIDEO
Early in the morning of March 29, former Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater lost his battle with cancer. CBS, CNN and NBC ran obituaries which included criticism of his campaign tactics. But all three also included heartfelt tributes from both Republican and Democratic colleagues. "He loved the battle of political campaigns. He was a fine and joyful player," concluded Bruce Morton on the CBS Evening News.
In contrast, ABC stuck to the negative. Atwater used Horton to symbolize Dukakis' lenience on criminals, but on Good Morning America, John Martin characterized it as "a sustained personal attack" by "the attack dog of American politics."
From Bill Moyers' 1964 atom bomb ad against Barry Goldwater to characterizing Bush as a "wimp," modern politics has seen plenty of negative campaigning. Atwater was one of the best, but ABC portrayed him as a uniquely detrimental player. On World News Tonight, Peter Jennings charged: "Mr. Atwater, as Bush's campaign manager, brought a new intensity to negative campaigning." Martin proceeded to assert: "He had a vicious streak. He hurt people." Accompanying footage showed a 1988 ad picturing Horton's face, an ad with which neither Atwater nor the Bush campaign was connected.
Expanding Atwater's apologies for specific actions into a general repudiation of his life, Martin concluded: "In the end, Lee Atwater will be remembered as the man who made meanness work in modern politics, yet also as someone who saw before he died that there was much more to life than winning."
ABC doesn't treat everyone so poorly. When Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko died in 1989, ABC did not describe him as vicious or as hurting people. He was "the great survivor of Soviet politics."
