MediaWatch: December 1993
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: December 1993
- TV Gun Control Coverage Tilts Its Tone, Talking Heads and Labels to Liberal Side
- NewsBites: Clinton on Quayle, Take 2
- Revolving Door: Democrat Heads PBS
- Media Dive on GOP in New Jersey, Ignore Democrats in Philadelphia
- No Clinton "Sleaze Factor"
- Endangered Property?
- Editor Squashes "Pejorative" Words
- Janet Cooke Award: CBS This Morning's Giselle Fernandez Hails "Castro's Playground;" Tunnels with Nightclubs
Revolving Door: Democrat Heads PBS
Democrat Heads PBS
Three months after NPR chose a Democrat as its new President, PBS has followed suit. Ervin Duggan, nominated by George Bush to fill a Democratic slot at the Federal Communications Commission in 1989, has been named President of PBS. He starts February 1.
Duggan was a Washington Post reporter in 1964 before moving to the White House as a Special Assistant to President Johnson. He later worked for then-Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas), followed by Senator Adlai Stevenson (D-Ill.) from 1971-77. In the Carter years, he wrote speeches for Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano, jumping to the State Department planning staff in 1979.
Two at USIA
Two network veterans have landed positions at the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), which runs the Voice of America. The Washington Post reported that Heidi Schulman, a reporter at NBC News for 17 years ending in 1990, "has signed on as a one-year, $330-a-day TV programming consultant." Last year Schulman worked on Hillary Rodham's staff, coordinating relations with Hollywood celebrities....Joyce Kravitz, Director of Information for ABC News in Washington from 1985-88, is now Senior Adviser for broadcasting. Kravitz was Press Secretary for the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
"Dump the Hump!"
In a September Vanity Fair story Jacob Weisberg wrote that "Curtis Wilkie of The Boston Globe once called the White House pressroom `the only day care center in America Ronald Reagan hasn't abolished.'" An October 31 Boston Globe Magazine cover story revealed that Wilkie's been a dedicated liberal since at least 1968, when he worked to elect liberal presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy.
In the midst of a tribute to Hubert Humphrey on the 25th anniversary of his loss to Richard Nixon, Wilkie recalled his activities during the Democratic convention in Chicago: "As a small town journalist in Mississippi, moonlighting as a foot soldier in the revolutions of the 1960s, I went from being an admirer of Humphrey for his work in civil rights to becoming an antagonist. As a member of an insurgent delegation from Mississippi, I went to Chicago, voted for McCarthy, and chanted `Dump the Hump' with thousands of other demonstrators under his window at the Conrad Hilton. We got tear-gassed for our efforts."
Wilkie conceded that "I probably should have been fired from my job for my partisan activities." But he wasn't quite finished with political activity: "My first brush with big-time politics over, I went back to covering Rotary Club speeches and the city council and grudgingly supported Humphrey in the fall. Wallace sentiment was so strong in the state that I perversely encouraged my 2-year-old son, Carter, to startle people with childish shouts: 'Boo, Wallace! Yea, Humphrey!'"
Wilkie's not the only Globe reporter directly involved in politics in the 1960s. In a June story on David Gergen's move to the White House, Globe Washington bureau reporter John Mashek revealed that he "worked briefly in 1964 for Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy." Mashek toiled for U.S. News & World Report and the Atlanta Constitution before joining the Globe in the late '80s.
