MediaWatch: April 1994

NewsBites: Embarrassing Eleanor 

The White House hoped for a puff piece on Hillary Clinton and Eleanor Clift came through. "I guess the only thing I see comparable [between Whitewater and Watergate] is that a lot of people want to launch careers based on finding something," Clift asked in the interview for the March 21 Newsweek. "How angry are you about the way this has mushroomed from a little land scandal into an allegation that you and your husband are corrupt?"

Clift also fed excuses to Mrs. Clinton: "My theory is that you have a thing about privacy....The attacks against you are really about more than Whitewater. They really go to the role that you're taking on and whether you can be the spouse of a president and a policymaker....Edward Bennett Williams used to say that Washington likes to burn a witch every three months." In an April 4 Washington Post story on Clift's Clinton apologist reputation, an anonymous Newsweek staffer told reporter Howard Kurtz: "I think she takes it too far...A lot of people find it embarrassing."

The Two Faces of Eleanor
On the February 18 C-SPAN Journalists Roundtable, Eleanor Clift tried to explain why Anita Hill was big news but Paula Jones, who claims that Bill Clinton sexually harassed her in 1991, is unnewsworthy -- timing. Clift said of Jones and alleged mistress Sally Perdue: "This rather reeks of exploitation, if these women had, you know, serious concerns, why didn't they speak out then? Why didn't they come forward earlier? There is no way to check whether they are credible, and it seems to me that a responsible press doesn't automatically just put people on the front page because they've made a charge."

Compare this to her defense of Hill: "She, in fact, was reluctant to come forward as she was encouraged to do, so when the information was leaked on the Hill...she then did not deny it. She also came forward at a time when the confirmation of the person that she was making these allegations against, Judge Thomas, was still in question. It seems to me that the discussions about Bill Clinton's past sexual life came up in the campaign. "

Makes Me Wanna Puke
Bryant Gumbel never fails to claim that racism pervades American society. On the March 22 Today, Gumbel talked to Nathan McCall, a Washington Post reporter who served time in prison for attempted murder, to discuss his new book Makes Me Wanna Holler. McCall said he wrote his book because news accounts "fail to get behind the stories, the incidents, and deal with some of the larger social issues that lead to that kind of behavior." Gumbel added: "It's too easy to put a black face on the problems of crime, of drugs, of poverty, and just say it's a lost cause and walk away from it."

Rather than ask McCall how he turned away from crime, Gumbel focused on blame: "Those who say, `just lock them up, throw away the key, incarcerate them, warehouse them,' whatever, do you think they are even conscious of just how racist this country is?" Gumbel also asked: "It's been written that being black in America is like being witness at your own lynching. Why, why didn't your experiences make you more resentful than you are today?"

Joan's Love Canal
The 1978 media hysteria over Love Canal showed the danger of reporting "disasters" without evidence. Good Morning America's Joan Lunden revived the allegations on March 18 in a one-sided interview with two former residents. Lunden claimed: "The name Love Canal became synonymous with environmental disasters. Love Canal was a quiet, upscale suburb of Buffalo, New York until the poison below the ground began to seep out. The Hooker Chemical Company had dumped 20,000 tons of toxic waste under the land where homes were later built. Families were devastated by illness."

Lunden asked former resident Lois Gibbs: "Were any members of your family made ill by the buried waste?" Gibbs said her daughter developed leukemia. Lunden noted Occidental Petroleum would "have to pay off this 350 million dollars in cleanup costs," and asked the other resident: "You think that's enough?"

Michael Fumento's book Science Under Siege explained that in 1953 Hooker "was joined in the [legal] dumping by federal government agencies." She didn't mention that, or note that Hooker sold the land in 1953, meaning Occidental must stand trial for a 41-year- old, then-legal activity. Concluded a 1981 study in Science: "Data from the New York Cancer Registry show no evidence for higher cancer rates associated with residence near the Love Canal toxic waste burial site." Fumento quoted a New York Times editorial of June 20, 1981: "It may turn out that the public suffered less from the chemicals there than from the hysteria generated by flimsy research irresponsibly handled."

NRDC's Teflon Reputation
On February 26, 1989, 60 Minutes promoted a study from the Natural Resources Defense Council concluding that Alar, a synthetic growth regulator used by apple farmers, posed an "intolerable risk" of causing cancer in children. CBS reporter Ed Bradley called Alar "The most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply." Five years later, the Alar scare has been scientifically debunked by, among others, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Elizabeth Whelan of the American Council on Science and Health noted: "Distinguished physicians, scientists and regulatory groups have determined that there was never any risk," and suggested "Perhaps, then, both consumers and the media will be more cautious before believing the next `cancer of the week' scare."

Perhaps not. On the March 14 NBC Nightly News, Robert Hager, undaunted by the Alar hoax, began his report: "Today a report from the highly respected environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, says most towns and cities are depending on crumbling water systems built shortly after World War I, and using technology from the Victorian Era." Start boiling the water.

Victims of Progress?
Add U.S. News & World Report contributing editor Emily MacFarquhar to the list of those disappointed by the end of the Cold War. In a March 28 cover story, "The War Against Women," she reminisced about the good old days for women: "The collapse of communism, unlamented almost everywhere, has hurt women in unexpected ways. Gender equality was always more rhetorical than real under Marxism, but women have been hard hit by the implosion of old command economies, the end of guaranteed employment and the unraveling of the social safety net." Under the heading "Victims of democracy," MacFarquhar noted: "The new democratically elected assemblies of Eastern Europe have far fewer women members than their puppet predecessors did." This war, it seems, is best ended by a return to the liberation of command economies and puppet governments.

AIDS Alarm
When the media announced an alarming new increase in reported cases of heterosexual AIDS, they left out the "why." The March 21 Newsweek reported: "The government has news for anyone who still thinks AIDS is a gay disease. Last year, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), gay men accounted for fewer than half of the nation's new AIDS cases -- and heterosexual cases rose more sharply than did any other category." The March 21 Time stated: "The number of new AIDS cases surged unexpectedly last year, more than doubling, owing to a jump in infections among heterosexuals."

In an unpublished letter to The New York Times, Michael Fumento, author of The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, explained the new definition "changed everything. First, it added three new indicator diseases that, when accompanied by HIV, will prompt an AIDS diagnosis. Those diseases -- pulmonary tuberculosis, recurrent pneumonia, and invasive cervical cancer -- tend to be found far more often in non-homosexuals than in homosexuals. Cervical cancer, of course, is strictly a disease of women. The other part of the new definition, which classifies a person as having AIDS if the level of a certain white cell in their blood falls below a certain level, disproportionately expanded non- homosexual cases." But in the March 11 New York Times, Lawrence Altman reported: "The new definition does not affect the rate of increase by heterosexual transmission." In fact, Fumento's subsequent letter noted, "Because of the addition of these new indicator diseases, it was a foregone conclusion that the portions of the epidemic made up of non-homosexuals would increase."

Unsatisfactory Job
Peter Jennings traveled to Detroit to broadcast ABC's World News Tonight from the March 14-15 "jobs summit." Jennings went to an auto plant to show the effects of technology: "Everyday machines are becoming so efficient that fewer workers are needed to do a great many jobs. Just take a look at this assembly line at Cadillac. Imagine the effect when it gets to your work place, if it hasn't already." Jennings ignored that during the '80s, when personal computers and faxes revolutionized the workplace, 20 million jobs were created.

Jennings also charged: "Good jobs began disappearing to automation or to competition overseas in the 1970s. Make more with less became the new business slogan. Hundreds of thousands of higher wage workers were pushed into the low-wage service sector." But as Robert Samuelson noted in the March 14 Newsweek, "since 1900, our incomes have quadrupled....Higher living standards are the fruit of higher productivity."

Rodney's Special
In a 30-minute Feb. 23 special, CNN's Bernard Shaw introduced us to America's newest sweetheart: "He hurts inside. He's changed outside. Slimmed down, his 210 pounds resembling those of a pro football wide receiver. He leads his family with serious focus...The past for him has drawn an unwanted spotlight of troubles." Olympic champion Dan Jansen? No, Rodney King. After leading police on a high speed chase in March 1991, and failing to cooperate with the arresting officers, King was violently subdued. Two passengers in King's car, also black, surrendered and were not harmed. Still, Shaw reported: "Rodney King says his nightmare -- the beating -- was an awakening to the world of racism." Shaw noted King, the focused family man, has since been arrested at least twice for drunken driving, again "after his wife called police to say she had been injured in a domestic dispute and feared for her life," and for "the alley incident with Hollywood vice police, who claimed King tried to run them down after allegedly picking up a transvestite male prostitute." None of this deterred Shaw, whose tribute began with a walk on the beach where, "He searches for solitude because Rodney King is trying to find Rodney King," and went on to show King frolicking with his family. Shaw concluded with King reading a poem he'd written about "his culture," entitled "Special People."

The Misery Dairy Farm
Tom Brokaw opened the March 28 Nightly News with the plug: "TV talk shows bring in big money for milking human misery." But what about his own show? Before that story, a graphic teasing the lead story on South Africa read "Carnage!" Brokaw began: "In South Africa tonight, the price of democracy is running high and bloody," showing riots, gunfire and corpses. The next two stories focused on destruction from weekend tornadoes, one from an Alabama town where "two out of three people are now either hurt or dead."

Then, two stories on two students killed during a Los Angeles carjacking, including a 13-second soundbite of the dead students' faculty adviser bursting into tears. The eighth report showed what Brokaw described as "graphic pictures that are just surfacing of that political assassination in Mexico." No "milking human misery" here. 

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