MediaWatch: April 1993
Table of Contents:
Dan Rather's Greatest Liberal Hits
In 1988, Dan Rather repeatedly hammered then-Vice President George Bush about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. How did Rather treat Clinton in his first interview with him as President? During the special March 24 White House tour and interview on 48 Hours, Rather never questioned Clinton about false statements he has made: claiming that Republicans, not he, made gays in the military an issue during his first week in office; that he never asked Kimba Wood to be Attorney General; and that his stimulus package did not contain any pork-barrel projects.
Instead, he asked: "Mr. President, it's my unfortunate duty now to ask the tough questions you don't want to hear. Number one: do you have a favorite in the Oscar race for the Academy Awards?"
A review of Rather's opinions both on and off the air over the past few years suggests a reason for the disparity -- He agrees with Clinton: the 1980s were a decade of greed, Reagan's tax cuts were unfair, Soviet citizens weren't opposed to communism. He's been on the liberal frequency for a long time.
COMMUNISM. Rather embarrassingly misread the aspirations of the Soviet people: "Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy," he pronounced on the June 17, 1987 CBS Evening News. On May 27, 1988, Rather insisted: "The reality is that even if the communist state were to protect individual rights aggressively, many of its people are not prepared to tolerate diversity...It points to a basic problem within society: schooled in intolerance for so long, many Soviets equate non-conformity with treason."
Like many in the Western media, Rather never blamed the abysmal economic conditions in communist countries on communism. On the May 16, 1989 Evening News Rather said, "It is the size of China that's such a barrier for economic reform. That, and cultural traditions bred through the centuries." The next night, he cited "one big problem that underlies everything else here in China [is] a population of more than a billion...Today's communist rulers know there's no way to meet the rising expectations of a billion Chinese until and unless the population time bomb is somehow defused."
HEROES. Rather had a long-distance love affair with Gorbachev. He gave this glowing assessment of the last Soviet dictator in a speech quoted in the May 10, 1990 Seattle Times: "He has, as many great leaders have, impressive eyes...There's a kind of laser- beam stare, a forced quality, you get from Gorbachev that does not come across as something peaceful within himself. It's the look of a kind of human volcano, or he'd probably like to describe it as a human nuclear energy plant."
When Gorbachev met Pope John Paul II in 1989, Rather seemed confused as to which one was the holy man. On November 29 he mused: "This week's meeting of Pope John Paul and Mikhail Gorbachev brings together two traditional enemies, both of whom have shown, time and again, that they can rise above the hatreds of history...The meeting, said one priest in Rome, is like the lion lying down with the lamb, but in this case, he said, it's hard to tell who's the lion and who's the lamb."
Rather's crush on Gorby was dwarfed by his worship of Nelson Mandela. His name, Rather said upon Mandela's release from jail in February 1990, "has an almost mystical quality." On the June 27 Arsenio Hall Show, Rather lapsed into revolutionary rapture while paying tribute to the man who embraced terrorism.
"The power of Nelson Mandela is the power of the idea and the ideal. Nelson Mandela knows what he's literally willing to die for, and that carries with it tremendous power, and it radiates from him as it did from Martin Luther King, as it does from Mother Teresa, as it did from Golda Meir. There's tremendous power in that, and when we say accurately I think, that Nelson Mandela is a worldwide hero -- people of all races and nationalities look up to him -- think that's why."
Rather lapsed into slang, continuing: "You talk about a bad boy. Nelson Mandela had a reputation all of his life of being a bad boy. A lot of people tried to get the world to believe that this man was a radical, terrorist, killer, psychological killer -- all bullbleep, because they feared him. Because he knew what he believed in and was prepared to die for."
As the Democrats' convention began last July 13, Rather joined the Jesse Jackson fan club. "Jesse Jackson is one American politician who consistently speaks for the poor and downtrodden. One of the few national leaders openly advocating aid to the cities."
TAXES. When Rather mentions a capital gains tax cut, rest assured the words "for the wealthy" aren't far behind. On September 28, 1989, Rather hit a triple by using the phrase "for the wealthy" as a suffix for the capital gains cut three times: "A political showdown vote in the U.S. House of Representatives today on economics. A vote to support President Bush's idea to cut the capital gains tax for the wealthy. Sixty-four Democrats bucked their own House leaders, abandoned them, and joined the Republicans to support the measure. Mr. Bush says that cutting the capital gains tax for the wealthy will boost the economy and create jobs. Opponents don't believe that, and they call it simply a tax giveaway for the wealthy."
Rather's not only against tax cuts just for the wealthy, but for everybody. He reported the rejection of new taxes as a defeat for Louisiana on the May 2, 1989 Evening News. "A new jolt today to the Louisiana state economy...Saturday, voters of Louisiana rejected Governor Roemer's tax-overhaul package. Today, as CBS News correspondent Peter Van Sant reports, the people of Louisiana found out what that could cost them."
REAGAN LEGACY. Whenever a liberal "study" was released that made the Reagan years look bad, it made Dan Rather's broadcasts. On March 1, 1989, Rather introduced a Susan Spencer story on health threats posed to poor kids by asserting "children are already suffering from cutbacks during the Reagan Administration."
Liberal reports were spun to make the facts look worse even than the activist group claimed. When the little-known left-wing Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) released a "study" on child hunger CBS made the FRAC study the number one story on the March 26, 1991 Evening News. Rather began: "A startling number of American children are in danger of starving...Good evening. One out of eight American children is going hungry tonight." Starving? Not only did FRAC not claim their "hungry" children were hungry every night -- just at least once a year -- the study didn't even focus on starvation or clinical malnutrition. Rather exaggerated.
