MediaWatch: April 1998
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: April 1998
- Five Clinton Practices Ignored by TV News
- NewsBites: Belated Flowers
- Jonesboro Ambush: Who's to Blame?
- The Ron and Nolanda Story Continues...
- ABC on the Budget-Busting Transportation Bill
The Ron and Nolanda Story Continues...
Nolanda Hill, a long-time business associate of late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown testified that, under the direction of Hillary Clinton, the administration sold seats on trade missions to big donors. Instead of running with the non-sex scandal story, ABC’s and NBC’s evening shows skipped Hill’s charges as CBS aired one story and then dropped the subject. But that’s still more coverage than Hill attracted last year when she said that Brown took payoffs.
Reporting on an affidavit released March 23 and her court testimony that day, at the top of FNC’s evening Fox Report, reporter Carl Cameron explained: "Hill said Brown told her that the scheme was First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s idea to raise money for the 1996 campaign." On the CBS Evening News Bob Schieffer missed the Hillary connection, but added that "when a conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, became suspicious and filed suit to get government documents about the trips, she said Brown told her former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and presidential aide John Podesta urged him to hold back the documents until after the 1996 elections and to devise ‘a way not to comply with the court’s orders.’"
While CNN’s The World Today squeezed in a story, Inside Politics skipped the development. The next day ABC’s Good Morning America devoted a 17-second item to Hill’s allegations, but that was it for ABC: nothing on World News Tonight. NBC ignored the tale of corruption entirely on Nightly News and Today
Last June ABC’s Prime Time Live featured a story by Brian Ross in which Hill told how she paid Brown hundreds of thousands of dollars for his interest in her businesses, for which he had paid nothing, and other shady financial dealings. Not only did CBS, CNN and NBC fail to report the bombshell allegations, but even ABC’s other shows refused to pass on their own network’s exclusive.
