MediaWatch: April 1993
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: Gumbel's Blame Game
Gumbel's Blame Game. Bryant Gumbel doesn't miss a beat blaming Ronald Reagan for anything. On the March 26 Today, co-host Gumbel talked with Tom Brokaw about illegal immigration, asking: "Is the problem that the laws are basically ineffective, or the laws can't be carried out because this bureau, like every other, is understaffed, underfunded, a victim of the Reagan cutbacks?" Less than a week later, on March 31, Gumbel asked Dr. Richard Corlin of the American Medical Association: "In the greedy excesses of the Reagan years, the mean income of the average physician nearly doubled, from $88,000 to $170,000. Was that warranted?"
Zahn's Zinger a Zero. CBS This Morning anchor Paula Zahn showed a surprising lack of understanding about the plight of the minority party in Congress. In a March 19 interview with Rep. Richard Armey (R-TX) about debate in the House of Representatives on the Clinton budget, Zahn asked "Were you silenced in this debate?" Armey replied "We had one or two members that went to the Rules Committee and were denied access to the process. This is routine, it happens on every bill that comes to the floor." Zahn jumped on that statement: "The Democrats would say, would argue that happens for them as well. That they can't offer the amendments they want to offer."
As every congressional observer knows, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives controls the House Rules Committee, which sets the rules about debate and amendments for every bill that comes to the House floor. The Republicans have no such power.
RFK Revamped. The media's Kennedy worship continues. On the March 9 CBS This Morning Paula Zahn listed several of Robert Kennedy's many political accomplishments: RFK's career moved "like a meteor...serving as a Senate lawyer in the '50s, Bobby was at his brother's side running JFK's presidential campaign in 1960... Robert Kennedy served a Attorney General and fought several hard fights over civil rights in the early '60s." She neglected to mention that as a "Senate lawyer" he worked for one of the liberals' favorite demons, Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Later, when extolling his civil rights record as Attorney General, she neglected to mention that he also ordered Martin Luther King's phone lines tapped.
The piece coincided with the kick-off of a series of conferences commemorating Kennedy's life. Zahn interviewed Robert Kennedy's oldest child, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, and asked her such tough questions as: "One of the things that people who have long admired your father often talk about is....his great compassion and sensitivity towards people who had less. Your father had a privileged upbringing. Where did that sensitivity come from?"
Simon Split. Scott Simon's weekly commentaries on the Saturday Today continue to hew to the left-wing line. On March 20, Simon opined on Reagan's El Salvador policy: "How could American officials not know about the army to which they gave such expensive weapons, weapons that were turned on Salvadoran civilians?" He accepted the controversial results of the recent United Nations report blaming government soldiers for almost all the killing without question, and concluded: "The army we supported tried to win the hearts of its nation with cruelty and steel. But each life taken by torture, by murder, or massacre gave the rebels new life for their cause."
But Simon grilled liberal Calif. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in a March 13 interview on the impact of military base closings. He noted, "Many Representatives and Senators who have called for reductions in the defense budget over the years are now saying `not in my backyard.'" He asked the self-proclaimed `peace activist': "While you and other political progressives spent all those years saying that the U.S. military budget must be cut, did you really think it could be done without costing jobs in your state?"
Stimulus Support. U.S. News & World Report Senior Writer Susan Dentzer extolled the virtues of the Clinton stimulus package in her March 15 "On the Economy" column: "Amid a broader economic plan that has its share of flaws, Clinton's well-crafted stimulus is a piece worth keeping." Her reasoning? "The reason to pass a stimulus package is to chart a smoother course for the economy, boosting it toward full employment that much faster." To any skeptics, she scoffed "It's no Depression-style program of hiring workers to paint murals at the post office" and stated "The sorts of spending the President has picked -- for example on education or on long-planned highway projects -- tend to create lots of jobs, many of which carry high wages and benefits."
In contrast to Dentzer's ebullience, Donald Lambro of The Washington Times observed that jobs created "would cost an average of $89,013 per job. Compare that with the 365,000 jobs the private sector created in February alone without any spending stimulus." As for "high wages and benefits," Detroit News columnist Tony Snow noted: "As part of his `Summer of Opportunity' proposals...the President seeks $4 billion in additional unemployment insurance" and "wants another $1.5 billion, more `summer money' to cover delinquent student loans." At least post office murals are more visible than the $28 million allocated to reduce the District of Columbia's deficit.
Credible King? On March 9, Rodney King admitted under cross- examination that he didn't really remember whether the police had used racial slurs while beating him. If he couldn't remember this widely reported allegation, what about the credibility of the rest of his testimony? CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith asked lawyer F. Lee Bailey on March 10: "Sounds like [King's] first day went with a certain degree of credibility. What is your fear for him now as cross-examination really gets under way?" In the same interview Smith underlined this point, asking "You've got the videotape. You've got a seemingly credible victim on the stand in Rodney King. What do you have left to fight this if you're representing the policemen?"
The next day, co-host Paula Zahn also downplayed the discrepancy in King's testimony. Zahn asked defense attorney Ira Salzman: "Mr. King also testified that the officers had used racial slurs. I know under cross-examination that story changed a bit, but don't you think the jurors will have some sort of empathy with Mr. King's statements?" Changed a bit?
White Men Can't Edit. Newsweek's March 29 cover story on "White Male Paranoia" wasn't "news," but a rambling liberal editorial chock full of cobwebbed cliches. Newsweek's David Gates wrote: "White guys should have realized things were starting to slip at the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings, when Anita Hill testified about being sexually harassed and the white male senators looked like a bunch of oinkers who just didn't get it."
Gates made overgeneralizations about white men: "He hates the word womyn, and anything with the suffix-centrist. He worries that he's becoming a fascist. He has been thinking about buying a gun." Gates concluded: "Generations of white males judged women and minorities not by what they did but by what they were. Turnabout is fair play. White men are now beginning to say: only fair play is fair play. It figures that they'd think of that now."
Name That Budget Cut. Network reporters regularly blame woes on budget cuts, but can they back up their assertions with facts? On March 13, CNN's Jim Hill reported on California-based churches increasing their efforts to assist the needy. Hill praised the efforts of churches to assist the "poverty stricken," with programs such as free condom distribution. Hill cited the need of expanding church based social service projects to "make up for governmet cutbacks."
Hill added: "As problems like gang violence continue to rise and government budgets continue to fall churches of all faiths continue to try and fill the void." Hill failed to cite any figures. Maybe that's because, according to a Cato Institute report, during the Reagan years, "aid to poor people living in cities increased."
False Start. Apparently $2.5 trillion is not enough for CBS News reporter Terence Smith. That's how much the government has spent on the "War on Poverty" since the late 1960s. Yet, on the February 28 Sunday Morning, Smith advocated more spending as the only solution for America's inner cities. Promoting a Milton Eisenhower Foundation follow-up to the 1968 Kerner Commission, Smith suggested we should spend another $300 billion on urban programs over the next ten years.
"Funding is the key, the report says. And funding on a scale to the dimension of the problem," Smith said. As an example of success, he noted: "The report cites Head Start as a model, as the nation's most successful program to help the inner cities." However, "Head Start has never been fully funded, and only a quarter of all the eligible lower income children are enrolled," he complained. Despite increases in crime, welfare dependency and other signs of social decay in inner cities, Smith failed to mention any solution other than more money, asserting: "Head Start is not enough. The report stresses that to be effective, similar support systems need to be extended to schoolchildren, teenagers, and young adults."
Flattering Fidel. Diane Sawyer traveled to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro for the March 4 Prime Time Live, but only once did Sawyer raise the issue of human rights abuses and political prisoners. Upon the dictator's denial, she dropped the matter completely. The remainder of the interview had the coziness of a People profile: "He grew up a first-rate baseball player. Married once. Divorce once. But was mainly driven by his burning desire to crush Cuba's American-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista. It began with a daredevil attack on the military barracks. Jail. His exile. Then a death-defying two-year fight in the mountains of the Sierra Maestre. He and his small band of soldiers endured and won only because of Castro's invincible certainty of their destiny."
Sawyer even praised Castro's leadership: "Even critics praise Cuba's health care, education, scientific research....Cubans say privately he is still a hero, even as a lot of his people dream of a free economy and country....And what about those recent elections? A lot of new young faces were brought into the Party."
How I Learned to Love Taxes. On the March 14 Good Morning America Sunday, Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter displayed his liberal attitudes in a satirical commentary: "Every time the Democrats get ready to defend President Clinton's budget, they always start by saying `Of course, no one likes taxes.' Even when they're about to raise them again, it's always `Of course, no one actually likes taxes.' Well, I'm a little different, I guess. I like taxes. That's right, I like them.
"This tax on millionaires? I say soaking them isn't enough. Dunk them! Energy tax? Great idea! Cuts consumption and we all have more to live on. The cigarette tax is the best one of all. It's like taxing death! But millionaires, smokers and gas guzzlers aren't the only ones who should get slapped around a little. There are a lot of other highly taxable Americans. They tax our patience. Let's tax their income." He proceeded to urge tax hikes on these irritating people and things: lawyers, bad husbands, infomercials, hotels that overcharge for phone calls and models who don't gain weight, among others.
We nominate a certain Newsweek media critic who likes tax hikes.
