MediaWatch: August 1996
Table of Contents:
Networks Try to Create "Houston II"
The shadow of Houston has stubbornly remained a part of the media image of the Republican Party. The Texas town's 1992 convention quickly became a "feast of hate and fear" in the media lexicon, as the networks heaped 70 statements or questions about the appropriateness of the alleged overly negative tone of the Republicans, compared to zero mentions for the Democrats in New York's Madison Square Garden.
The 1996 convention in San Diego offered reporters the promise of another Houston, a mirror image of the punitive, extremist fiasco reporters created out of the last convention. But the moderated tone the Republicans sought to project gave reporters few opportunities to create new controversy.
But the biased pattern of past conventions did repeat itself, if not to the same degree as four years ago. In short, during the San Diego convention:
(1) Republican delegates, speakers, and candidates were described as conservative more than three times as often as moderate, but also as extreme more often than as moderate;
(2) Reporters and anchors posed more than seven times as many questions from the liberal agenda than from a conservative agenda; and
(3) controversies, especially the intra-party tussle over abortion, of Republican exclusivity and "intolerance," far outnumbered the coverage of controversies and the exclusion of pro-life speakers at the Democrats' 1992 convention.
During the convention, a team of MediaWatch analysts in both San Diego and Alexandria, Virginia watched live prime time coverage offered by the five networks. The information appeared in a special daily Media Reality Check '96 newsletter. This year's study follows the methodology of convention studies in 1984, 1988, and 1992, and covered all ABC, CBS, and NBC prime time coverage, as well as the combined PBS/NBC coverage and CNN from 8 pm to 11pm Eastern time. In the September issue, MediaWatch will publish a comparison of the San Diego coverage with coverage of the Democrats in Chicago.
Network reporters followed the usual pattern of convention labeling, with 46 conservative (with 16 references to extreme conservatism) to 13 moderate labels. NBC had only two conservative labels and four moderate tags. CBS, with nine references to conservatives and five labels for moderates, also came close to balancing the labels. ABC(10-0), CNN (16-2), and PBS (9-2) underlined the conservative nature of the party. PBS led in the use of extreme labels with six, followed by CNN (4), CBS (3), ABC (2) and NBC (1).
The amount of labeling declined every night: from 29 on Monday to 14 on Tuesday, 11 on Wednesday, and five on Thursday. The label count did not include mentions of the party's attempts to woo "moderate voters," and also excluded historical references (for example, a reference to a "more moderate" Richard Nixon in the 1950s). Some examples of references to extremism:
Margaret Warner asked Newt Gingrich on PBS Monday night: "The Dole campaign officials do say that partly this convention is designed to undo the damage done to the Republican image by you and the Republican Congress, which fairly or unfairly, the voters seem to see as extreme. You've heard all the words. Do you think that's true and does it make you feel repudiated at all?"
On Tuesday night, CBS reporter Lesley Stahl explained the night about to unfold: "The whole purpose of tonight's convention, the whole program is to diminish the images of this party as extreme because that's what's turning the women off. Four years ago, the main speaker at the convention, the Republican convention, was Pat Buchanan. He was yelling, his pitchforks were raised. Tonight it will be Colin Powell, he will appeal to civility. On the platform, women find that extreme. It's turning them off." (The study did not incorporate evening news statements, like this one from Dan Rather to Jack Kemp on Monday's CBS Evening News: "Even some Republicans describe the current platform as quote, `harsh, extreme,' even `radical.' Do you see it that way?")
NBC's Tim Russert echoed Stahl the same night: "Key words: mean-spirited and extremist. They want to avoid those labels. They have thus far after two days and that's why you're not going to see Newt Gingrich in prime time tonight...I think the speech by Senator Hutchison of Texas is dangerous, Tom, because she uses words that could be interpreted by some people as mean."
Also on Tuesday came this explanation from CBS veteran Bob Schieffer: "The Dole campaign had a very delicate assignment as they see it. They want to get the word out to mainstream America that Senator Dole's thinking is more in line with that thinking, than perhaps even some of these very conservative delegates in this hall."
References to Republican moderates often came with a skeptical tone. On Tuesday night, CBS reporter Ed Bradley asked a Buchanan delegate: "There's been an effort to paint a moderate face to this convention. How does this sit with you?"
When network reporters and analysts weren't dwelling on media images or tactical gambits, their questions on the issues came more than seven times as often from the liberal agenda as they did from the conservative agenda: 51 questions were asked from the left, to just six from the right. ABC asked only three liberal agenda questions and no conservative ones in four nights. CBS came closest to balancing agenda questions (8-3), while NBC (10-1), CNN (10-1), and PBS (20-1) stuck almost completely to agenda questions from the left:
A number of the questions from the left poured skepticism on the Dole tax cut plan. NBC's Maria Shriver asked New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman on Tuesday: "Bill Clinton has said that Bob Dole's proposal for the economy would end up crippling the economy, balloon the deficit. Why is he wrong?" She added: "Governor, are you not all concerned about what happens to the federal deficit, which is a major, major concern for most of the delegates at this convention, based on the polling that we've done, if Bob Dole is able to put into effect his 15 percent tax cut?"
On Monday night, Tom Brokaw asked Gov. Pete Wilson: "But why should the children of illegal immigrants be penalized, as the language in the platform indicates they will be, especially those who become citizens if they're born here, even if they're born to illegal immigrants?"
On CNN, Bob Franken asked conservative evangelist Jerry Falwell Monday night about HIV-positive Republican activist Mary Fisher's speech: "Many of the AIDS activists would claim that part of the problem they have is the attitude toward AIDS victims among fundamentalists, among conservatives like yourself. How do you respond to that?" He added: "But you are aware that many in the gay community feel that it is hostility from people like your followers that contributes to the problems they have."
On Wednesday night, after paralyzed former police officer Steve McDonald addressed the delegates, Franken pointedly interviewed National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre: "I'm going to ask you is here you have a policeman who was shot in the line of duty with weapons and...the criticism of your organization is that it's because of you those weapons are so readily available....Here we have a policeman who was shot by weapons that might not have been out there, the critics say, were it not for the NRA."
There were a few examples of conservative agenda questions, like Bob Schieffer's Tuesday question to Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison: "You talked a lot about Bill Clinton's broken promises. What promise do you think -- I know Republicans are trying to bring women into the big tent -- what promise has he made or broken, in your view, that has hurt women the most?"
That night, Dan Rather asked Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson: "Now the main speaker tonight, as was the case for the main speaker last night, is pro-choice. How mad does that make you?"
Peter Jennings suggested in the August 12 San Diego Union-Tribune: "Whenever a political party goes out of its way to restrain, isolate, or box in other voices -- and both parties do it -- then you almost invariably attract the attention of journalists." But Jennings and the rest of ABC, as well as CBS, in 1992 ignored the Democrats' decision to refuse Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey an opportunity to state his pro-life views from the Madison Square Garden convention podium. NBC interviewed Casey once. CNN also interviewed him once, and mentioned the controversy on four other occasions.
In San Diego, the networks drove home the controversy within the Republican Party over abortion: reporters, anchors, and analysts referred to the party's split over the issue -- including platform disagreements and Gov. Pete Wilson's "disinvitation" to speak -- on 55 occasions. The emphasis on the abortion controversy was mostly contained to the first two nights -- 21 mentions on Monday night, 25 on Tuesday, and then only eight on Wednesday night and one on Thursday. CNN (with 18 mentions) dwelled on the controversy the most, followed by PBS (13), CBS (12), ABC (8), and NBC (4).
On Monday night, NBC's Tom Brokaw stressed: "But so far the indication is that these people, who want to encourage a more tolerant, moderate attitude toward abortion have been denied the right to speak. Their Republican credentials are impeccable, and they're going everywhere and complaining that they're not going to be allowed in this hall." Minutes later, he added: "What you will not see at this podium -- the Governor of the host state, Pete Wilson. He's not going to be allowed to speak because he has some views on abortion that the Dole campaign would not rather have expressed here, and also William Weld, the Governor of Massachusetts."
On Tuesday, CNN's Bernard Shaw suggested: "Bob Dole did not get the tolerance lanugage he wanted in the abortion plank which came out of this platform committee earlier in the week. He didn't get a few other things. The conservatives have ironclad control over this convention, but he did get the opportunity to have some people who are pro-choice speak before this convention tonight, one of them Susan Molinari."
CBS reporter Lesley Stahl took on the controversy from the pro-life side of the fence on Wednesday before labeling it extreme: "We're hearing a lot of grousing about the repackaging of the party...In gagging opponents of abortion, affirmative action, those kinds of issues, Bob Dole may be turning off the very people he needs to leave the convention gung-ho. They say putting three pro-choice women on last night was too much. But Bob Dole has a dilemma: In order to win, he does have to change the perception of this party as too extreme."
(The study did not include evening news statements, like Peter Jennings' oration on the Tuesday World News Tonight: "The right to abortion has never been an overwhelming issue for women at election time. But this fight within the Republican Party has many Republican women questioning how far this party is willing to go to limit their rights.")
The convention week focus on abortion was only a small part of the network attention this year to the GOP abortion plank. Just during the Sunday morning interview shows on August 11, the networks asked 27 questions about exclusion of pro-abortion Republicans. Eleven questions were posed on CNN's Late Edition, compared to nine on NBC's Meet the Press, four on ABC's This Week with David Brinkley, and three on CBS's Face the Nation.
From April 30, when four "moderate" governors declared they would challenge the party's pro-life plank, to August 9, ABC, CBS, and NBC preferred beating on the Republican side of the story by 60 to 1. The networks aired 30 full stories on the evening newscasts, compared to only one ABC story on the Democrats. The morning shows aired 30 full stories or interview segments on the GOP debate, to nothing about the Democrats. (That doesn't include five anchor briefs on the evening shows and 34 on the morning shows).
CNN's evening newscast The World Today aired seven full stories and ten anchor briefs on the GOP pro-life plank, to only one anchor brief on the Democrats. CNN's Inside Politics, a show favored by political junkies, aired 38 full stories or interview segments on the GOP to two segments on the Democrats. The Democrats held platform hearings on July 10 and 11, and finished on August 5 -- with almost no media attention.
