MediaWatch: August 1996
Table of Contents:
Don't Touch Welfare!
Conservatives view welfare reform as a victory -- both for those trapped in the system and for taxpayers tired of paying for lifetime recipients. But after President Clinton agreed to sign the bill, the networks came at it from the left, focusing on those who supposedly would be hurt, thus helping Clinton put himself in the middle of the political spectrum.
NBC's Lisa Myers began a July 31 Nightly News segment: "For six years now Cindy McDonald and her three children have struggled to make their $400 welfare check and $300 in food stamps last until the end of the month. She says she can never treat her kids to candy or soda, they're expensive luxuries and has no car to take them anywhere. The phrase `welfare reform' infuriates her." She whined: "If they strip me from what little I have right now, then I don't know how my kids are going to eat." Myers did point out that McDonald actually has two years to find a job, but concluded: "Exactly how McDonald and others will cope with the change is uncertain. Even supporters of the bill privately admit that this is a gamble, that some will lose.''
On the CBS Evening News, substitute anchor Paula Zahn announced: "Once the welfare bill becomes law, millions of Americans will find their lives starting to change in startling and unwelcome ways." Reporter John Blackstone looked at three recipients. First up, a woman who just had a baby: "[Martina] Gillis, a single mother of two, has been on welfare for three years. The new welfare reforms would force her to get a job, any job, but that would mean giving up, or at least postponing her dream, of graduating from college." Blackstone did ask her if it's the taxpayers' responsibility to pay for her mistake and then moved to a Mexican immigrant who cried about being cut off.
Third, leading into his conclusion, he put on a woman who "says she applied for welfare today so she can take care of her two daughters. Welfare reform may be aimed at the mothers. But the effects of this experiment, good or bad, will be felt equally by the children."
On the next day's CBS Evening News, Zahn warned: "The new, landmark welfare overhaul President Clinton promised to sign won't be law for a while yet, but there is already is a great deal of fear and anxiety all over the country over the impact it will have."
