MediaWatch: April 1992
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: April 1992
- House Bank: Networks Miss Plenty
- NewsBites: A Book Gone Wrong
- Revolving Door: Fox Guarding the Democratic Coop
- TV, Magazines Avoid Covering Clinton Finances
- Reporters Take Cue from Left-Wing Class War Specialists
- Look Who's Advising PBS
- Thomas Trashed Again
- The Watchdog Yawns
- Janet Cooke Award: CBS on CBO: Numbers Fumblers
The Watchdog Yawns
THE WATCHDOG YAWNS. Imagine the media defending Ronald Reagan for keeping the Iran-Contra diversion secret for two years. Ridiculous? Then consider the spectacle of the media defending Speaker Tom Foley, who hid the post office scandal from reporters for months.
Take, for example, Today show co-host Katie Couric interviewing House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich on March 16: "You've charged that the Speaker sat on the report for ten months linking drug sales to the post office. Yet he says he immediately called in postal inspectors. Postal inspectors did come in and there are indictments pending against the employees. So isn't this a cheap shot?" Cheap shot? Foley not only hid the scandal from the press, he hid it from everyone, including his fellow House Democrats.
On March 17, New York Times reporter Clifford Krauss took it upon himself to defend the good name of Werner Brandt, one of Speaker Foley's long-time top aides. "Now Mr. Gingrich hurls an attack a day on national television and the House floor with little regard for such niceties as evidence....he suggested without offering any evidence that Werner W. Brandt, the newly appointed acting sergeant-at-arms, 'may have been involved in actions stopping the Capitol police from investigating cocaine selling in the post office.'" In effect, Krauss told the reader Gingrich's charge was baseless, but Krauss did not tell readers that Foley admitted that Brandt was in on keeping the Post Office scandal from the public. Investigating Brandt's role is the media's job, and nobody's doing it.
Some reporters simply yawned at the possibility of House corruption. On Inside Washington March 14, National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg dismissed the imbroglio: "It has no merit as a really good scandal. There's no public money involved...It was a lousily run bank and that's stupid and probably someone should pay for it, but it is not that major." Such dismissals came before any of the offenders or their records had been disclosed; before the special counsel investigated possible crimes; before any of the indicted House post office employees go to trial; in short, before the full story is known.
