MediaWatch: December 1991

NewsBites: News Fools Tonight

NEWS FOOLS TONIGHT. Just how careful are reporters? A recent gaffe by ABC's World News Tonight offers a revealing insight. In a November 5 story, Peter Jennings reported that the Soviet Union was going to sell the corpse of Lenin to raise money. The next day USA Today ran the story, based on ABC's word.

But the story was fiction. It came from the November Forbes FYI, a supplement to Forbes magazine that specializes in parody. The FYI story included a humorous picture of people at a cocktail party beside a glass case with Lenin inside. The caption read, "The ultimate conversation piece, and minimal maintenance." ABC bought it and ran the story without calling the Soviet Embassy, Forbes or any other knowledgeable source. This puts ABC's "October Surprise" investigation in perspective.

TURNER VS. HITLER. Why, if CNN had existed before World War II, the world never would have known the terror of Hitler. At least that's what CNN President Ted Turner would like the world to believe. In a PBS Talking with David Frost interview on October 25, Turner criticized the U.S. government's use of censorship of the media during the Iraqi war. "We've only seen what the U.S. government wanted us to see, just like we did over there. We were manipulated just as much and controlled by the U.S. government and the U.S. armed forces, the whole media was, as we were by the Iraqis."

When David Frost responded, "But the Iraqis were the enemy," Turner replied: "Whose enemy? They were the enemy of the United States. But CNN has had, as the international global network, to step a little beyond that...I think, had CNN been there before [World War II], had it been there in 1930, had it been all over the world, Hitler would have never risen to power."

HELPFUL HAFEZ. CBS reporter Steve Kroft believes all Lebanon needed was a ruthless dictator. Reporting from Beirut on November 6, Kroft rhapsodized: "For the first time in fifteen years there is someone in charge, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. His picture and his soldiers are everywhere, invited in by the Lebanese to disarm them and to keep themselves from killing each other and to stop the kidnappings. So far it's worked."

Worked for whom? The human rights group Freedom House reports a different view of Syrian occupation of Lebanon in their 1990 edition of Freedom in the World: "Beirut, divided by Christian East and Muslim West, became the sight of intense artillery barrages and shelling...The city was destroyed, over 830 persons, mainly civilians, were killed and over 3,000 wounded. Well over a million persons fled Beirut during the fighting. Faced with a land blockade by Syrian troops, Christians fled the city nightly by boat under shell fire."

THE HOMELESS AND THE HOPELESS. The Census Bureau sent out 15,000 enumerators to count the homeless population and produced a count of 230,000. But network reporters are still ignoring the Census figure and passing on the less-scientific claims of homeless activists. On October 27, ABC reporter Sheilah Kast told World News Tonight viewers: "These are homeless children. There are at least half a million in this country, and a quarter of them don't go to school at all." On November 7, ABC anchor Peter Jennings relayed numbers from the National Coalition for the Homeless without even citing his source: "It is widely believed [veterans] may account for a third of the population of homeless men, at least 175,000 of them." That would mean 525,000 homeless men alone.

On Veterans Day, CNN World News anchor Bernard Shaw read the story like a press release: "As Americans observe Veterans Day, there was a sobering report from the National Coalition for the Homeless. Veterans of the United States military comprise a third, perhaps more, of all homeless men." Reporter Carl Rochelle continued with the press release: "The report, entitled Heroes Today, Homeless Tomorrow, says 150 to 250,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and up to a half million veterans are homeless at some time during the year." None of these stories mentioned the Census figures or explored how the homeless activists arrived at their numbers. For all viewers know, they made them up.

TAKE MY MONEY, PLEASE. Never one to back away from advocating more government intervention, Time magazine was in usual form for its November 25 cover story on rising health care costs. Reporter Janice Castro warned that health costs "flow from a surreal world where science has lost connection with reality...The prices, like the system that issues them, are out of control."

So, is the solution to increase market forces? Forget it. Castro suggested: "Establish a universal health care plan covering basic preventive treatment for all Americans who cannot pay for their own insurance...To help pay for it, Congress should eliminate the $53,400 income cap on the payroll tax that funds Social Security. While this would sharply increase payroll taxes for the wealthiest, such a change represents a more equitable way of apportioning the burden, which now falls more heavily on lower-income workers...Congress should then shift the entire federal Medicaid budget to the universal-health program, which would give it a generous $115 billion in its first year." America has a $350 billion deficit, so why not create another government spending sinkhole?

AUTO REVERSE. On October 28, both NBC and ABC reported on a press conference called by the Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen, two Ralph Nader groups. At the conference, the Nader groups denounced a Department of Transportation video which showed a small car getting mangled by a larger one in a head-on collision. The video had been used in advertising by the auto industry's Coalition for Vehicle Choice to dramatize its contention that higher mileage requirements would shrink the size of cars and lessen auto safety. The Nader groups charged that the government was conspiring with the auto industry to mislead the public into thinking small cars were more dangerous.

ABC's Ned Potter concluded: "Fuel economy will be a bruising battle in the Senate, with both sides saying the arguments are based more on politics than on facts." So is the reporting: a November 1 Wall Street Journal article cited eight examples of Naderite literature warning that small cars were less safe. While NBC and ABC reported on the press conference, neither mentioned the Naderites' flip-flop.

EDUCATION ALLOCATION. NBC's Fred Briggs believes in solving social problems the liberal way: throw money at them. "The White House balks at any federal bailout of poor school districts," Briggs claimed on the November 5 Nightly News. "It says it's up to the states, to the districts to do it. Critics say that's passing the buck." Holyoke, Massachusetts needs a tax increase, he reported. "Voters in Holyoke are being asked to raise taxes today, something they refused to do twice in the past year.... It's one of the poorest school districts in the state."

But others saw it differently. "School administrators stubbornly maintained special programs for poverty-stricken and disruptive students while cutting back programs for the majority of children," wrote Wall Street Journal reporter William Bulkeley on November 25. "Some voters are angry at school administrators they consider uncommunicative and wasteful."

Is more money the answer? No, according to a Winter 1990 Policy Review article by Patricia Summerside. She spotlighted South Dakota, ranked 51st in teacher salary and 43rd in spending per pupil. "South Dakota's 1988 ACT scores rank fifth among the 28 states that take the test. Its high school graduation rate ranks second."

KRAMER'S FRAMERS. Pro-lifers may be on the losing side at next year's Republican National Convention, Time's Michael Kramer wrote in the November 25 issue. "A majority of the 1988 GOP delegates were pro-choice," wrote Kramer, "they supported the pro-life position out of loyalty to Bush." But Ann Stone of Republicans for Choice "hopes this time they will vote their conscience." Kramer told MediaWatch that Stone provided the "majority" numbers. "She used two sources that sounded credible," he explained, "and I was on deadline. I took her word for it."

Stone told MediaWatch one of her sources was a Planned Parenthood exit poll, a highly questionable source. Surveys provided by NBC, CBS, and the Los Angeles Times do not support Kramer's theory. CBS asked, "Should federal money be appropriated to enable poor women to have abortions?" and 68 percent of delegates said "no." When asked "Do you personally believe abortion is wrong or not?," by NBC, 65 percent said "yes." Delegates split 50-50 when the Los Angeles Times questioned directly from the GOP platform: "Do you support a constitutional amendment which would ban abortions?" But delegates could have disagreed with that federal solution and still be considered anti-abortion.

POPULATION BOMB BUNK. Third World population growth isn't only an awful problem, it's America's fault for not paying for abortions. Or so reported Mike Wallace in a one-sided November 3 60 Minutes segment.

Dr. Sharon Camp of the Population Crisis Committee, who, except for another anti-population activist, had the whole segment to herself, blamed the "crisis" on the White House: "We know governments around the world want to slow population growth. It's a matter of getting together the political will. And the biggest obstacles are not here in Mexico City where they've got strong leadership, they're in Washington, they're in the White House.... He [President Bush] is not willing to rile up the hard right in order to deal with the world population problem."

And Wallace's reply? "Certainly not before election time. As we said earlier, nobody from the White House would respond to any of this." Wallace could easily have located an expert to rebut Camp's claims about the economic dangers of "overpopulation." Professor Julian Simon, for instance, has noted "The standard of living has risen along with the size of the earth's population since the beginning of time."

SUNUNU SOURCE ABUSE. How did Washington Post reporter Ann Devroy unravel White House Chief of Staff John Sununu? With lots of anonymous sources. Even Washington's City Paper, a free alternative weekly, ridiculed Devroy's reporting. Its editor, Jack Shafer, pointed out that a November 17 story contained 24 anonymous sources, but only two sources on the record.

Devroy also wrote front-page Sununu stories on November 30 and December 3, the day Sununu resigned. In these two stories, unnamed sources outnumbered on-the-record sources by 19 to 5. Shafer took the Post to task: "They have a lot of explaining to do.... Just because the stories arrive at the truth, that Sununu was about to resign, is no excuse for using so many blind sources. The skeptical reader begins to ask: is this journalist carrying out a hidden agenda?"

KOPPEL CALLS BACK. Ted Koppel, reacting to a story in last month's MediaWatch, did call Publisher L. Brent Bozell this month to discuss Nightline's investigation of the Anita Hill leaking controversy. During an October Nightline Bozell asked Koppel if he would devote as much time to the Hill investigation as he did to the "October Surprise" investigation. Koppel assured Bozell that Nightline was following the story, but could not do a program until he had gathered enough information to justify a report.

In the meantime, none of the networks' evening news broadcasts has followed up on the story as the Senate leak investigation flounders. In addition, the evening news broadcasts have aired 27 news stories on the "October Surprise" theory -- that the Reagan campaign delayed release of the Iranian hostages to win the 1980 election -- but none have followed up since the theory was unraveled in two magazine exposés published in November. None. Koppel did not retract his earlier reporting on the theory, but did devote the November 12 Nightline to the new revelations and interviewed one of the exposé writers, CNN's Steven Emerson, along with "October Surprise" theorist Gary Sick.

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