MediaWatch: April 1996
Table of Contents:
Newsbites: First Pitch Glitch
NBC's Tom Brokaw swung and missed when he tried to cover for the President. During the traditional first pitch thrown by the President on baseball's Opening Day, Bill Clinton was roundly booed by many in attendance at the April 2 Orioles game. Brokaw delivered the play-by-play:
"President Clinton taking the mound for the ceremonial first pitch. All the way from the pitcher's rubber, it was a little on the high side, and watching from the stands and not booing like most of the rest of the crowd -- Pat Buchanan. By the way the boos, like the first pitch, are traditional whoever the President.
Dan Rather didn't even mention the boos on the same night's CBS Evening News. Viewers only heard cheering at Clinton's lob. But on that day's CNN Inside Politics Bruce Morton replayed five recent Opening Day first pitches, one from Ronald Reagan, three from George Bush, and a previous Clinton throw. In all five, including Clinton's earlier pitch, the President was cheered.
The Nadir of Coverage
GOP presidential candidates like Pat
Buchanan and Phil Gramm were not only labeled as conservative
but as "hard right," "extreme," and "hard-line." Then it would
only make sense that someone to the left of Bill Clinton would
be considered, at the very least, a liberal. But in the midst
of Ralph Nader's campaign for President on the Green Party
ballot, reporters referred to the outspoken leftist as not "hard left"
or "far left" but as merely a "consumer advocate" or "consumer
activist."
Since the media started paying attention to the Nader candidacy, reporters have failed to mention liberal in the same sentence as Nader. NBC's Gwen Ifill referred to him as "the consumer activist" on the March 24 Nightly News. On The World Today the same night, CNN's Martin Savidge reported: "Consumer advocate Ralph Nader says he'll be on California's presidential ballot this fall." In a search of Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today, only U.S. News mentioned the "L" word: the March 25 issue called Nader a "liberal alternative to Clinton."
What's "Risky and Radical"?
On the March 12 CBS Evening
News, Dan Rather warned of coming Social Security reform
proposals: "The stock market could play a big role in major
changes in Social Security. A bipartisan commission is due out
soon to officially propose some radical changes in the whole Social
Security system that would include privatizing Social Security,
allowing some of your Social Security contributions to be
invested in the stock market. Now, this may or may not prove to
be a good idea, but it could be risky business."
CBS reporter Bob Schieffer, who also called the plan "radical change," stated on the March 26 CBS This Morning that "even more radical, [is] a plan favored by some commission members to allow taxpayers to invest, any way they want, almost half of what they now pay in Social Security taxes." How does the media's take on Social Security reform stack up against other large-scale changes proposed in Washington?
Database searches reveal that not once did a network reporter refer to the Clinton health care plan as "radical." The plan Hillary Clinton and Ira Magaziner cooked up amounted to a government take-over of one-seventh of the economy. That's not radical -- but allowing people to invest their own retirement money is.
Cartooning Contrasts.
During this year's Lenten season,
when Christians examine their faith and commitment to God, the
Los Angeles Times decided to show its own hostility to
religion. In the March 28 issue the paper ran an editorial
cartoon with the image of Bob Dole crucified. The crown of thorns on his
forehead read "Christian Coalition."
Three days later, the paper spiked Johnny Hart's Palm Sunday B.C. comic strip, featuring the character Wiley writing a poem honoring Christ's death for man's sins. Los Angeles Times spokeswoman Ariel Remler told The Washington Times that "lately he's [Hart] been running cartoons with religious overtones." Then in an April 2 statement quoted in The Washington Times, Remler announced that the paper would spike the strip on all three days of the Easter weekend. After receiving hundreds of protest calls, the paper reversed itself, announcing it would run the Friday and Saturday strips.
Two years ago, the Times played a similar game, spiking Hart's "inappropriate" Easter Sunday strip with a resurrection theme, but then ran in June a series of Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury strips featuring John Boswell's controversial claim that the Catholic Church sanctioned same-sex marriages in the middle ages.
No Liberal Lobbies.
In March, the House of
Representatives voted on repealing the assault weapons ban and
outlawing partial-birth abortion. But the media found a narrow
"lobby" on only one side of these issues. During the gun debate
in late March, the networks employed the term "gun lobby" over six
times on the morning and evening news to denote those who
opposed the ban. Most happened on CBS, like the March 21 CBS
Evening News piece where Bob Schieffer announced: "With
Republicans knowing they lack the votes to override a veto and
with little enthusiasm for any of this in the Senate, the House
effort may turn out to be little more than a publicity stunt
to impress the gun lobby."
In the liberal lexicon of Washington, an industry is termed a "lobby" when it pushes narrow interest for its own gain. But those who opposed the partial birth abortion ban were pushing a narrow, extreme interest to satisfy their own backers. Yet not once during the congressional wrangling over partial birth abortions did anyone on the networks use the term "abortion lobby."
Gender Chasm!
Like they do every presidential election
year, reporters are raising the so-called gender gap, claiming
that Republicans have problems attracting women. On the March
25 NBC Nightly News, essayist Anne Taylor Fleming stated:
"Polls show a huge gender gap brewing. Women, like these we
gathered, are more upset than men by budget cuts and family issues that
they feel are being ignored." So do Democrats have a problem
attracting men? Yes, but this didn't interest ABC and NBC.
On Good Morning America Sunday March 24, ABC's Jack Smith recalled the budget fight: "Where men saw deficit reduction, women worried about what the cuts were doing." In the ensuing discussion, co-host Willow Bay asserted: "If you're still making 70 cents to that male dollar, you're probably more reluctant to see cuts in social spending -- your safety net."
While some attributed the gap to social spending, others cited the GOP's pro-life stance. NBC's Lisa Myers began her report on the March 5 Nightly News: "Republicans have a problem with women....And today, polls show women leaning even more heavily in favor of Democrats. The big reason: Pat Buchanan." Myers spoke to Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe and stated: "Snowe says even though Buchanan won't be the nominee, his polarizing anti-abortion rhetoric has done lasting damage." Myers concluded that Clinton's lead over Dole with women is "not a gender gap, [it's] a chasm."
If reporters believe the gap is due to abortion, they need to examine the polls. A May 1995 Tarrance Group poll found that 47 percent of women (compared to 44 percent of men) believe that abortion should be "illegal and prohibited under all circumstances" or "illegal except in cases such as rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother."
Green Gary
Guilt by association is still a handy media
tool. The March 21 Washington Post headline read: "Industry
Funds Global Warming Skeptics." Reporter Gary Lee began: "A
Washington environmental group charged yesterday that three
researchers who are outspoken critics of the scientific
evidence for global warming have received hundreds of thousands
of dollars from the petroleum and coal industries, and that
this funding has influenced their views."
Lee described his source, Ozone Action, only as "an environmental group that lobbies on the issues of air quality and global climate change." Lee didn't use the word liberal or note they've even criticized Vice President Gore for being too soft on the environment. While Lee did call the researchers for comment, and quoted Patrick Michaels calling the charges "ludicrous," Lee excluded one obvious point: liberal environmental groups also take in hundreds of thousands of dollars from oil companies. The Capital Research Center noted that Exxon gave the National Audubon Society $112,500 in 1991 alone. The Post didn't do that man-pays-for-dog-to-bite-him story.
Gannett Fires Like America.
The Gannett-owned Burlington
[Vt.] Free Press fired Paul Teetor for reporting a story
accurately, another victim of political correctness. But now
he's been vindicated. In August 1993, Teetor angered black
activists by reporting that a white woman was escorted from a community
forum on racism after she tried to address it. A black city
official, Rodney Patterson, told her the microphone they had
set up for comments was for people "of color" only, not whites.
After the story appeared, black activists demanded Teetor be
fired for publishing an inaccurate story, even though a
videotape confirmed Teetor's account. The Free Press canned him
and ran a piece whitewashing Teetor's account of the meeting
in accordance with the activists' demand.
Teetor filed a lawsuit against the paper. According to the March 29 Washington Post, the paper settled in his favor for an undisclosed sum. At trial, Teetor's lawyer alleged the real reason for the firing was the Gannett chain's "All-American Contest" where papers are evaluated and scored on how many minorities the paper hires and how positively minorities are depicted in news stories. Free Press editors were worried how the town meeting story would affect their scores because the contest results could be a factor in their own job promotions.
Fighting Forbes
The day before Steve Forbes ended his
presidential bid, CBS reporter Phil Jones declared on the
Evening News: "He struck fear in the hearts of his opponents by
launching what may turn out to be the most massive, negative
TV attack campaign in the history of American politics." Jones
failed to mention the role CBS played in promoting negative politics.
The network provided opponents with a free negative ad when it
ran Eric Engberg's February 8 hit piece on the Forbes flat tax.
Engberg referred to Forbes' "number one wackiest flat tax pro-
mise." No wonder the Center for Media and Public Affairs found
that with 87 percent derogatory comments, Engberg was the most
negative reporter during the primaries.
Goldberg Survives, for Now.
Speaking of Eric Engberg,
CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg returned to the air April 9 with
an Evening News "Eye on America" segment on rising youth crime
caused by a deficit of values. Goldberg had been off the air
since his February 13 Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing Engberg's story
"set new standards for bias" and the liberal bias charge is
"blatantly true."
The CBS Evening News had been airing "Bernard Goldberg's America," but CBS News President Andrew Heyward dumped the feature and has assigned him to the "Eye on America" beat. Goldberg's eight-week shunning and loss of his signature piece, however, may not be his only punishments. The Washington Post's John Carmody reported March 22: "Heyward would not comment on Goldberg's future when his contract expires at the end of the year." So much for promoting free speech.
