MediaWatch: August 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: August 1994
- Reporters Hold Anti-Clinton Ads to Higher Standard of Disclosure, Accuracy
- NewsBites: Health Plan or Else
- Revolving Door: The Times Agenda
- Networks Fail to Investigate Allegations While Dismissing Revelations
- Too Tough-On-Crime Lawman
- The Numbers Game
- So Much for the Truth Squad
- Janet Cooke Award: ABC's Tom Foreman Finds the Majority of Ad "Inaccuracy" and "Scare Tactics" on the Right
The Numbers Game
Newsweek Senior Editor Jerry Adler in the July 25 issue examined how statistics used by the media can be twisted and shaded by interest groups to advance their agenda. Adler ticked off a list of inflated stats on battered women and the homeless.
Adler reviewed a 1991 Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) study which claimed 11.5 million children under the age of 12 "were either hungry or `at risk' of hunger -- an astonishing one child out of four."
Adler explained: "The `at risk' category is often a fruitful one for social action groups seeking to magnify a problem. In this study children were said to be at risk if their parents answered yes to any one of eight questions. One was this: in the last 12 months, `Did you ever rely on a limited number of foods to feed your children because you were running out of money to buy food for a meal?' Not being able to afford what you might otherwise buy (even once a year) is a pretty tautological definition of poverty." Unfortunately, Newsweek editors have failed to reflect Adler's skepticism toward the FRAC study. Newsweek dutifully reported FRAC's faulty child hunger findings in its April 1, 1991 issue and again in an article by Laura Shapiro in the March 14, 1994 edition.
Healthy Questions
When Hillary Rodham Clinton appears on morning shows, the questions are usually fawning. However, on the July 19 Good Morning America devoted entirely to the Clinton health plan, co-host Charles Gibson questioned the assumptions behind the First Lady's plan. He observed: "Your entire system is based on savings in Medicare and Medicaid, which in the past has proved problematical. Secondly, it's based on the concept you can contain costs in health care to no greater than the Consumer Price Index...No nation in the world has been able to do that." When Mrs. Clinton answered that costs were slowing, Gibson retorted "if market mechanisms are doing it, then why do we need reform?"
Gibson challenged the cost projections. "Even if you're able...to simply cut the inflation in health care costs in half, the estimates are you're putting upwards of $600 billion on the deficit over ten years." After Mrs. Clinton told businessmen how many benefits they would receive, Gibson asked: "Your plan contemplates subsidies for poor people, people above the poverty line, subsides for small business, subsidies for early retirees, subsidies for any big business that pays more than 7.9 percent in their payroll in health costs....even the chairman of the Finance Committee in the Senate said this is a fantasy, that we can hold costs down and pay for all this."
Mrs. Clinton appeared for two hours, but while Gibson promised the show would air "opposing voices in the health care debate for extended discussions," when it came time for the Republican view on July 27, Rep. Newt Gingrich got only 45 minutes.
