MediaWatch: December 1991
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: December 1991
- "Civil Rights"
- NewsBites: News Fools Tonight
- Revolving Door: To Kennedy's Defense
- Reporters Can't Resist Lumping Republicans With Nazis
- Middle Class Mythology
- DoonesBury's Pet Perjurer
- Abortion Manipulation
- NBC's Hatchet Job
- Janet Cooke Award: Philadelphia Inquirer or National Enquirer
"Civil Rights"
STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE
Do you know the full story about the "civil rights" bill? By championing racial preferences, the "civil rights" groups are campaigning against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Not only that, the "civil rights" bill would deprive defendants of one of the most basic civil rights: the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
If you didn't know that, it's because it wasn't on the network news. To determine the depth and slant of civil rights reporting, MediaWatch analysts reviewed every ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC evening news story on the civil rights bill from June 1989 through November of this year. The bill's technical substance wasn't the only thing that was down-played: so were conservative sources. In 131 stories, reporters tilted the debate to the left, airing 221 talking heads in support of the bill to only 128 in opposition, a margin of almost two to one. Twenty-two stories aired no opponents of the bill, compared to only six stories with no supporters.
In selecting expert sources, the networks preferred liberal activists and scholars over conservatives. Most often, opponents of the bill were Administration spokesmen and congressional Republicans. Liberal legal scholars or activists (such as Ralph Neas of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights) outnumbered conservative scholars or activists (such as Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice) by a margin of 65 to 7. Like their coverage of the environment, network reporters barely acknowledge that conservative activists and scholars exist.
Reporting on the bill relied on a liberal vocabulary. For example, NBC stated the Supreme Court had "weakened" and "eroded" civil rights, "abolished" minority gains, "rolled back civil rights law" and "turned back the clock." The liberal bill "focused on helping minorities," would "protect women," and restore "civil rights protections."
Much like their reporting of last year's budget deal, the networks focused mostly on the jockeying for political advantage. Reporters repeated that conservatives thought the bill would require employers to use quotas as a defense against lawsuits, but they ignored the legal underpinnings that caused the courts to revise civil rights law in the first place. Instead, reporters let "civil rights" leaders assert that the courts were "eroding" civil rights without argument. Among the concepts reporters ignored:
Wards Cove. One of the Supreme Court decisions that supporters of the "civil rights" bill intended to overturn was Wards Cove v. Atonio (1989). In that decision, the Court found that the Court's earlier ruling in Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) directly contradicted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which explicitly prohibits racial preferences. But none of the networks explained this, and no network reporter ever mentioned either Wards Cove or Griggs by name.
Instead, they presented the quota bill as the natural next step in minorities' progress, not as an unnatural reversal of the original text of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Accordingly, the standard network definition of the civil rights bill did not refer to the Civil Rights Act, but only that the bill "would make it easier for women and minorities to sue." The networks defined the bill in this "easier to sue/harder to sue" framework in 31 stories.
Burden of Proof. How many stories mentioned that the "civil rights" bill overturns one of the most basic civil rights -- the presumption of innocence until proven guilty? None. All the civil rights bills under consideration would have reversed Wards Cove by removing the burden of proof from the suing employee (the plaintiff) and placing it on the employer (the defendant).
CBS legal reporter Rita Braver devoted half of her June 5 report this year on how only "the Democrats' bill changes the balance of power in lawsuits." None of the networks focused on the civil rights erosion that would result, and both ABC and NBC only mentioned "burden of proof" once, as an afterthought. On June 3 of this year, Tom Brokaw casually (and incorrectly) reported: "The President prefers his version, which would put the burden of proof on employees." (NBC did allow one employer to complain: "You cannot write a law presupposing everyone's guilty.")
Unintentional Discrimination. How many times did reporters explain that the entire debate concerned not intentional bigotry, but unintentional discrimination? Twice. NBC's Andrea Mitchell referred to "job requirements that unintentionally discriminate against minorities and women;" and CBS reporter Wyatt Andrews mentioned that the Bush administration argued against "stacking the legal system against employers even where discrimination was unintentional."
Under the Griggs ruling, plaintiffs didn't have to charge intentional discrimination. Instead, the plaintiff only had to prove that some hiring test or qualification (like a skills test or a high school diploma) had the effect of creating a work force that is statistically out of sync with the racial makeup of the surrounding community. This theory, known as "disparate impact," went completely unexplained by the networks. Reporters might have asked: For all of the breast-beating about racism, why is the number one civil rights fight about unintentional discrimination?
Business Necessity. This was the concept behind most of the struggle for a compromise. But you wouldn't know that from watching the networks. ABC, CBS and NBC mentioned the concept -- in one story each. Under Griggs, employers could not use any hiring procedure that caused a statistical disparity in their work force, unless they proved a "business necessity" for the practice. A restrictive definition could force employers to hire drunk drivers to be drivers if they were minorities or women. [See sidebar article on right.]
The networks preferred nasty soundbites to substance. Take Rep. Pat Schroeder, who described the Supreme Court for ABC on June 24, 1989: "They're just down there ripping up everything, makin' confetti out of all the stuff that's been goin' on since the Civil War!" Reporters may decry the "code words" apparently used by Republicans, but the networks never went beyond crude symbolism to explain the technical details behind the conservative position on civil rights. When the networks blame someone for the trivialization of politics, they might start with themselves.
