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
DoonesBury's Pet Perjurer
NADER'S BOMBER?
No one in the media believed convicted drug dealer Brett Kimberlin (also known as "The Speedway Bomber") when he told them that he sold marijuana to Dan Quayle in the '70s. Not NBC News, not even Nina Totenberg, who leaked Anita Hill's allegations. No one thought Kimberlin's story was worth telling, until, of course, Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" series handed the media a convenient "news hook."
Kimberlin is suing former Bureau of Prisons chief Michael Quinlan and former Justice Department spokesman Loye Miller for "violating his constitutional rights" by putting him in solitary confinement. But any airing of Kimberlin's case should include the full truth about his past. In their recent coverage, The Washington Post and The New York Times omitted some rather important facts about Kimberlin:
He was convicted of perjury in 1974 for lying about -- drugs.
He has a reputation for litigiousness. This is at least Kimberlin's fourth lawsuit. In fact, after being convicted of the Speedway, Indiana bombings, he sued the widow of one of his bombing victims for "violating his constitutional rights."
The high-powered law firm Arnold & Porter took the Kimberlin case last year on a referral from Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Litigation Group. If Nader's lawyers had filed suit for Kimberlin, it might have been exposed as a transparent political maneuver to hamper Quayle's efforts against excessive regulation. But partisan political intrigue, a theme so common in Washington reporting, excited nobody at the Times or the Post.
