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
NBC's Hatchet Job
BASHING BOYDEN
For a glaring example of bias on the "civil rights" debate, check out the October 24 NBC Nightly News. Tom Brokaw reported that George Bush rejected Sen. John Danforth's compromise by "making a variety of claims many thought were more political than factual."
On to Andrea Mitchell: "When the President tried to persuade Republican Senators to support his civil rights bill yesterday, this two-page White House memo was on the table....The only problem --most of its claims are dead wrong."
Without giving Bush legal counsel Boyden Gray any airtime, Mitchell declared Gray was wrong to argue that the compromise would allow damage suits for unintentional discrimination, and that it could force trucking companies to hire drivers with drunk driving convictions.
But in the The American Spectator, former Reagan official Terry Eastland argued the Danforth bill defined "business necessity" so narrowly "that employers would have had to hire people capable of doing only the job at issue -- and little more. Thus, it was fair enough for the Bush Administration to say that under the Danforth bill, a trucking company would have to hire dock workers with drunk-driving convictions, even if it wanted dock workers who could be promoted as drivers."
On November 4, Legal Times reporter Stuart Taylor Jr. wrote: "News coverage of the civil rights battle has been marred by glaring inaccuracies as well as tendentious oversimplifications. One example: Andrea Mitchell's flagrantly biased report" on the 24th. Taylor found all of Gray's points were "arguably correct and within the realm of fair advocacy, if perhaps a bit overdrawn."
