MediaWatch: August 1991
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: August 1991
- Critics Love Tongues United
- NewsBites: Gumbel's Guns
- Revolving Door: Allen and Alar
- Networks Ignore Treaty Violations and Fawn Over Gorbachev
- Boston Globe Recycles Article From The Nation
- Still More Controversey Over P.O.V.
- Janet Cooke Award: Willie Horton Hysteria
Networks Ignore Treaty Violations and Fawn Over Gorbachev
FALLING OFF THE SUMMIT
The media's admiration for Mikhail Gorbachev overrode a serious look at arms control issues during the late July Moscow Summit. Amid the toasts to Gorbachev, the ongoing record of Soviet treaty violations was ignored.
Last year, the Soviets moved thousands of weapons east of the Ural Mountains so they wouldn't be counted in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty. After the INF treaty was signed, the Soviets were still passing banned intermediate-range missiles to their Warsaw Pact allies. But neither of these violations came up in broadcast network stories on the START treaty.
Only CNN interviewed any START critics, such as Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy. But on July 29, CNN "Special Assignment" reporter Mark Feldstein explained: "Gorbachev realized that his country couldn't afford to carry this huge military burden indefinitely. So he radically redefined the military's mission. His strategy: less guns, more butter. He changed the Soviet military posture from offensive to defensive." But the Heritage Foundation reported that the Soviets are still annually making 3,400 tanks (four times U.S. production) and 20,000 artillery pieces (ten times U.S. production).
The networks also pushed for aid to Gorbachev. Before the summit, on the July 16 CBS Evening News, Dan Rather dramatically asked: "Is it time to lend a hand or turn our backs?" Rather added the decision will "tell us a lot about ourselves." On cue, CBS News consultant Stephen Cohen chimed in: "Now that that moment has come, if we close our arms, if we push them away, it tells us something terribly profound about ourselves. It's something rather sad and historians will judge us terribly harsh if we're indifferent or unable to do now what should be done." As Cohen speechified, CBS ran close-ups of sad Russian peasants.
ABC just coasted along with Gorbachev's PR apparatus. On Nightline July 29, Peter Jennings recounted: "Suddenly, from about half the way across the square, I heard this 'Peter, Peter, come, I want you to meet some people'...it was clear to me that in touching these people...it was clear that he wanted us to see that here were people who on a one-to-one basis really felt positively about him."
Just how much these images had been manipulated became clear at the end of the July 31 Evening News, when Rather found out how the peasants really felt: "We came to this village called Spinoria, 40 kilometers outside Moscow, to measure as best we could the impact that Gorbachev has had on the lives of these Russian peasants....No one we talked to had anything positive to say about Gorbachev. They hold him responsible for their struggle."
