MediaWatch: August 1990
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: August 1990
- Pro-Abortion Bias Detailed by L.A. Times
- NewsBites: The Untouchables
- Revolving Door: Gannett's Big Gun
- Reporters Bemoan Loss of Court's Liberal Activist
- Bashing Buthelezi, Mouthing Mandela
- Reporters Agree on Pro-Abortion Bias
- Reporters Discuss "Subversive Mission"
- Janet Cooke Award: A and E: Woman in War
Revolving Door: Gannett's Big Gun
Gannett's Big Gun. Syndicated columnist Carl Rowan joined the Board of Directors of the Gannett Company, owner of USA Today and several major TV stations, in late June. In the 1960s Rowan served Kennedy and John-son as Ambassador to Finland and Director of the U.S. Information Agency.
Presidential Selection. Ted Turner has picked Tom Johnson, a close aide to President Lyndon Johnson, to replace Burt Reinhardt as President of the Cable News Network. Currently Vice Chairman of the Times Mirror Company, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and Newsday, Johnson reported to Atlanta in early August. Johnson began his White House career in 1966 as an Assistant Press Secretary under Bill Moyers. He was promoted to Deputy Press Secretary in 1967 and then to Special Assistant to the President in 1968. When the President left office in 1969, Johnson followed him to Texas as his Executive Assistant. Johnson soon left politics for journalism, becoming Executive Editor and subsequently Publisher of the Dallas Times Herald. Starting in 1977 he held various Times Mirror executive posts, most notably, Publisher of the Times from 1981 to 1989.
Capitol Hill to Capital Cities. A couple of months ago former Nixon aide Eugene Cowan retired from his post as Vice President in Washington for ABC/Capital Cities. Mark MacCarthy, his deputy and a former communications policy aide to liberal Democratic Congressman John Dingell, filled the open slot. Now ABC has hired a replacement for MacCarthy. Charlene Vanlier, general counsel to the Republican leader of the U.S. House since 1988, is ABC's new Washington counsel. Roll Call reported she previously held minority counsel positions with the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Camelot and the Court. Fred Graham covered legal affairs for The New York Times from 1965 until he jumped to CBS News in 1972. During the next decade and a half his distinctive Southern accent became a fixture on the CBS Evening News. In his new book, Happy Talk: Confessions of a TV Newsman, Graham revealed what he did before taking up journalism. He spent two years simultaneously writing speeches for two liberal Democrats: Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, a man Graham described as "a Harvard liberal," and in "an unusual, if not unique relationship," drafted addresses for Kennedy-nominated Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.
Newsletters to Newspapers. Patrick McGuigan, Editor of the Free Congress Foundation's Family, Law, and Democracy Report, in addition to Initiative & Referendum Report and Judicial Notices, which merged in 1988, is returning home to the Sooner state this summer as Chief Editorial Writer for the Daily Oklahoman. For several years he's been the unofficial conservative point man on judicial appointments. This Spring he co-authored Ninth Justice, the Fight for Bork...Joseph Farah, Editor of between the lines (btl), a conservative media watchdog, just named Sacramento Union Editor. Farah, Executive News Editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in the mid-1980s, still runs btl.
