MediaWatch: December 1992

NewsBites: Clinton Tilt

Clinton Tilt. Add Washington Post Ombudsman Joann Byrd to the growing list of those conceding the media favored Bill Clinton over George Bush. Reviewing "73 days of the Post ending election day," Byrd discovered: "Of 813 pictures, headlines and news stories, 184 were negative either for or about Mr. Bush or, I thought, more negative than positive. (Also record that almost as many -- 175 -- were positives.) But against that, 195 elements were positive, or mostly so, for Gov. Clinton, and only 52 were negatives." That's more than four times as many negatives about Bush than Clinton.

In her November 8 column, Byrd also reported: "Of 138 elements about George Bush on the front page, 80 -- 58 percent -- were negatives. Mr. Clinton was the main focus of 61 pictures, headlines and stories on the front page, and only 17 -- 28 percent -- were negatives."

More Media Liberals. Another year's gone by and yet another poll of journalists has proven the profession is more liberal than the rest of society. A survey of 1,400 journalists across the country found 44 percent consider themselves Democrats, up from 38 percent in 1983 and 35 percent in 1971 as determined by similar surveys. In contrast, the Freedom Forum-sponsored poll by Indiana University professors David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit found the number of Republican reporters fell from 25 percent in 1971 to 16 percent this year. Another 34 percent call themselves independent. Compared to the general population, that makes journalists 5 to 10 percentage points more likely to be Democrats and 10 to 15 points less likely to be Republicans.

Weaver and Wilhoit found "minorities are much more likely to call themselves Democrats than are white journalists, especially blacks (70 percent), Asians (63 percent) and Hispanics (59 percent). There is a wide gender gap for political party identification, with women journalists (58 percent) being much more likely than men (38 percent) to prefer the Democratic Party."

Time's French Kisses. Time magazine still thinks public spending equals compassion, therefore socialism must be love. In the November 9 edition, Associate Editor Jill Smolowe's "Where Children Come First" compared France and the United States on social policy. Guess which won? "Instead of just talking about family values, France offers a wide range of programs from the cradle to the grave to promote a more stable, equitable, and caring society."

Then Smolowe shamed Americans for not loving their children the French way -- through confiscatory tax rates and big-spending, socialized government: "French workers pay 44 percent of each paycheck to ensure the wide range of family-related services... The French are more willing than Americans to put their money where their values are, largely because they have a heightened sense of their children as conservators of their family traditions and culture."

And to complete the article, Smolowe implied opposition to welfare spending is rooted in racism: "The American tendency to discredit such assistance as welfare handouts owes much to its ethnic diversity...Because the population in France and other European countries tends to be more racially and culturally homogeneous, there is less of an us-vs.-them mentality."

Everyone Knows... "Everyone knows the rich got richer in the 1980s. Now a new study shows how dramatic the change was," Dan Rather began a brief October 29 Evening News story. The next morning on Today, Margaret Larson promoted the same study, referring to the "non-partisan Economic Policy Institute" whose "independent study" revealed that during the 1980s "the top one-half of one percent of this nation's families received 55 percent of the total increase in wealth. The concentration of wealth is seen as the most extreme since 1929."

Though data from the Census Bureau clearly refute the EPI's findings, no such counterpoint was provided on either CBS or NBC. Deceptively, neither network properly identified their source. One of the Economic Policy Institute's founders, economist Robert Reich, advised Governor Clinton on economic policy during the election. Reich currently heads the Clinton transition's economic policy team, and is expected to be a key economic adviser in Clinton's administration. Jeff Faux, a founder and the current president of the Economic Policy Institute, acted as an advisor on economic policy to Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign.

Conscience for Justice? In the November 23 issue, Newsweek Senior Writer David A. Kaplan advised how to pick the next Attorney General. In "No More Hacks or Cronies," Kaplan told of when current Massachusetts Gov. William Weld worked at the Justice Department, he hung a picture of Robert F. Kennedy on his office wall. "For Weld (a Republican), RFK was the model A.G. -- committed to law, animated in temperament and able to manage the mammoth bureaucracy." Kaplan noted Meese disapproved: "It figures. Meese ran a Justice Department that was the Land of Hackdom -- little more than an agency to service the needs of President Reagan and, occasionally, of the A.G. himself. His four-year reign was the archetype of politics over conscience, ideology over law." Kaplan urged "Clinton, for a change, should pick an Attorney General who is above politics."

"I think it's odd for anyone to hold up Kennedy as a model." former Reagan Justice Department spokesman Terry Eastland told MediaWatch. Newsweek carried a picture of RFK captioned "Conscience of justice." But Kaplan failed to mention this is the same conscience that bugged Martin Luther King's hotel rooms.

Crying Over Colorado. The anti-gay rights referendum in Oregon generated a lot of media attention in the weeks before it lost. But a similar, little-noticed Colorado measure passed, much to the distress of NBC.

On the November 14 NBC Nightly News, Roger O'Neil reported from Denver: "Stunned and angered at voters who said no to homosexual rights laws here, gay rights activists are urging others to boycott Colorado...Business owners have reported that gay bashings have been on the rise since the vote...A place of hate, or a place of understanding? Tonight, that question is still being debated in Colorado." O'Neil's report highlighted the protest effort against the vote, and allowed five gay rights supporters, which included noted author and activist Armistead Maupin, two leaders of homosexual activist groups, and a member of the Denver Human Rights Division, to speak on camera. Despite the fact that the referendum passed the state with a surprising majority, O'Neil could not seem to find even one person who supported the vote.

Another AIDS Scare. The campaign to frighten the public about AIDS continues. When a new study of sexual activity funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health and Aging was released, CNN reacted with a mixture of misused statistics and hype.

"It's just a matter of time before AIDS becomes widespread among heterosexuals. That's the conclusion of the largest national sex survey in more than 40 years," anchor Susan Rook predicted on the November 12 World News. Reporter Brian Jenkins warned: "Most sexually active American adults may be turning their backs on warnings about the spread of AIDS." He continued: "Researchers questioned more than 10,000 Americans...The study found that among the 7 percent of adults who said they had multiple sex partners, only 17 percent used condoms all the time...Some people find those figures stunning."

On closer inspection, the study questioned 10,630 people. In that group, 7 percent said they had multiple sex partners, which whittles the group down to 744 people. Of that sexually hyperactive group, 83 percent said they didn't use condoms all the time. So Susan Rook based her frightening "just a matter of time" statement of an impending epidemic not on clinical evidence, but on the responses of 618 people in a telephone poll.

In a piece about AIDS and the media in the August 10 New Republic, Michael Fumento pointed to a declining rate of infection. "The number of reported AIDS cases this year is running 4.5 percent ahead of last year. Reported cases last year were a mere 5 percent higher than the year before. These encouraging figures have not been reported." Not "stunning" enough?

Sticking Up for Hiss. During the last week of October, Russian General Dmitri Volkogonov reported that he found no evidence that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. Newsweek crowed that "Alger Hiss is still on trial in America. Was he a spy, a member of a secret Communist cell who passed along confidential State Department reports to the Soviets? Or was he a statesman framed by the fanatical Right, a wanton sacrifice to the careers of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Rep. Richard Nixon?" On the October 31 Today, co-host Scott Simon lectured: "This week's revelations about Alger Hiss may help us remember how vulnerable something as real as a reputation may be...So Mr. Hiss may have lived long enough to feel vindicated, but no one lives so long that they have years to give away to suspicions and mistakes."

Former USIA official Herbert Romerstein, in the November 28 Human Events, pointed out a key detail that the media failed to report: "Although the [New York] Times had reported that General Volkogonov had inspected 'all Soviet files,' the historian subsequently revealed that he had done no such thing." Romerstein confronted the General after his testimony before the Senate: "I asked [Volkogonov] what archives he examined to draw his conclusion that Hiss was innocent...His response...was that he had not examined any archives. Instead, he had asked Yevgeny Primakov, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (formerly the KGB), to provide him with the information." Columnist William F. Buckley added: "The overwhelming case against Alger Hiss is documented by Professor Allen Weinstein in his book Perjury...judged as dispositive of the Hiss case by historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who was not a McCarthyite."

Tamposi Tempest. Just like they crucified John Sununu, The Washington Post spent October and November prodding the rest of the media with front-page non-stories about Elizabeth Tamposi, a Sununu ally. Tamposi led the State Department search of Bill Clinton's passport records. The Post dedicated twelve front page stories to the Tamposi story from October 14 to November 19, On November 14, The Post led their front page with the scoop that Tamposi had passport files brought to her at home.

But what about special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's election-eve reindictment of Caspar Weinberger? The Post has done only one front-page post-election Walsh story and it cribbed heavily from the previous day's Washington Times. The Post has yet to launch its own investigation into the Walsh story. They also downplayed the General Accounting Office's (GAO) report on Walsh's financial practices earlier this year, including his dual offices and large expense-account tab (including $75 breakfasts at the Watergate). This could still be a good story, but the Post must think it's more fun hounding the loser.

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