MediaWatch: April 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: April 1994
- A World Destroyed by Capitalism in Need of Higher Taxes, More Government
- NewsBites: Embarrassing Eleanor
- Revolving Door: Baer To the Rescue
- No Such Media Concern During Iran-Contra, Wedtech, Sununugate...
- America, Full of Hatemongers
- Good Money After Bad
- Times Says Post Suspended Reporter
- Janet Cooke Award: All Four Networks, Newsweek Distort Studies of Hunger in America
No Such Media Concern During Iran-Contra, Wedtech, Sununugate...
The Whitewater Wimp Factor
Presidents Reagan and Bush had to live through numerous media- driven scandals that distracted each from pursuing their agenda. Then the Whitewater scandal erupted on President Clinton. The media reaction? A sudden concern for overdoing it and its detrimental impact upon Clinton's policies.
"The press is on a rampage," complained U.S. News Editor-in-Chief Mort Zuckerman in his April 11 issue: "We cannot afford a failed presidency, especially if it is falsely damaged by innuendo, speculation and hyperinflated interpretation of events a decade or more ago."
A month earlier, on March 11, Boston Globe Washington Bureau Chief David Shribman called Whitewater "a cheap dime-store novel transformed into a Washington page-turner" by an inept White House staff and the Vince Foster suicide. The next day, Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz wrote a front-page story titled "Media Awash in Whitewater, Some Critics Warn," noting the disapproval of old CBS hands Walter Cronkite ("definitely overheated") and Marvin Kalb ("There is a rushing to judgment that is unprofessional and distasteful"). On CNBC's Talk Live March 30, NBC's Bryant Gumbel described Whitewater coverage as "too much, off-target."
In a March 28 CNN Inside Politics story, Bruce Morton claimed "the trouble with Whitewater may be that there is less there there: no crime, as far as is known, no broken promise to the voters, either."
He blamed the story on media competition and, though the biggest revelations came from The New York Times and The Washington Times, on "gossip. Poorly sourced stories that start out in the supermarket tabloids or on tabloid TV on Monday are in the mainstream press and the network newscasts by Tuesday. Gossip's a lot easier to write than tough, investigative pieces or stories about the health care debate."
Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein asked in the March 21 issue: "The time for Watergate comparisons may yet come, but what if it doesn't? Do we, the righteous guardians of the truth, admit that we blew this all out of proportion -- or do we continue to puff motes into dust storms in order to justify our investment? The Clintons have earned their isolation. But they deserve a more sober hearing than this lunatic cauldron."
Many reporters agree. The April 4 Time ran a chart showing 75 articles in a month in major outlets used both "feeding frenzy" and "Whitewater." But a Center for Media and Public Affairs analysis found that from March 1 to 20, the Big Three networks aired 86 Whitewater stories, or 4.3 per night, compared to 12.9 per night at the beginning of Iran-Contra in 1986, and 13.4 nightly during the eruption of Watergate in the spring of '73.
