MediaWatch: April 1996
Table of Contents:
Revolving Door: Oklahoma Bill's Hate Radio
After a year away to deal with heart trouble, Bill Moyers, a former Press Secretary to President Lyndon Johnson, returned to NBC on April 12 to host a Dateline NBC special "Oklahoma City: One Year Later." The day of the show, the New York Post quoted Moyers as insisting that he went to Oklahoma City "with nothing but a desire to find out what was happening. There was no agenda."
In reality, Moyers implied conservative rhetoric led to the bombing. But instead of having the integrity to name names or cite statements, Moyers offered an hour filled with vague generalities which held culpable "hate radio" and "the rhetoric of politics this season." Dateline featured this exchange with service station owner Bud Welch, whose daughter was killed:
Welch: "I thought, the first few months, that there was probably going to be more unity in the country, politically." Moyers: "That this tragedy would bring us together?" Welch: "Yes, that this tragedy would bring it together, but we're seeing through the elections that's going on right now, the same negative thoughts, the militia groups, the hate radio." Moyers: "And you think that contributed to the tragedy, the bombing here?" Welch: "Absolutely, without a doubt. Because it justifies a lot of the angry feelings that people have."
As Welch listened to G. Gordon Liddy on his car radio, Moyers charged: "The airwaves are still saturated with militant rhetoric. Day and night you can hear a stream of rage and insult directed with unremitting hostility at government and others. It rubs like salt in deep wounds and some of the families are trying to counter it."
Then, as viewers saw several victims being interviewed by KTOK's Carole Arnold, Moyers explained: "Emerging from their private grief, they appeal for an end of hateful talk and political invective. Their experience is their message. What a society sows, it reaps....This local station has given the families a forum, but it also carries several hours of talk every day that they find inflammatory." The station does not carry Liddy, so the broadside against "hate" and "inflammatory" talk goes undefined. Welch proceded to tell Arnold: "Of course I think the media need to be involved a little bit in a little bit of control of the hate radio going on. I'm very disturbed about that. I mean where's the responsibility?"
Having impugned talk radio, Moyers turned to the government shutdown: "Just as federal workers were coming out of shock from the bombing, there was another blow, this time from Washington." He asked a HUD supervisor who survived the blast: "It's been a tough year for you federal workers here. The bombing, the furlough, you lost pay for a while. You continue to be demonized in the rhetoric of politics this season. What does that do to your idea of yourself?"
Finally, Moyers concluded the hour with this seeming indictment of House Speaker Newt Gingrich as co-conspirator: "It will never be the same. The bombers saw to that. The tears and grief, the pain and the sorrow were all intended. Terrorism is the politics of murder. We should have seen it coming. Hate was in the air. Government had been vilified, found guilty and sentenced to die. It didn't matter who was in the way. There are lessons for us here, something to take away from the wreckage of that day, if we're listening, one year later."
