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
No Clinton "Sleaze Factor"
S&L Story Spiked
Serious charges of conflict of interest have moved from the Resolution Trust Corporation to the Justice Department's criminal division, charges that could damage the ethical reputations of the President and First Lady of the United States.
A former Arkansas judge charged that in 1986, then-Governor Bill Clinton had pressured him to make a $300,000 Small Business Administration loan to one of Clinton's financial partners, Susan McDougal, even though she was not financially disadvantaged -- a requirement. Prosecutors dropped the case because documents detailing the business activities of Whitewater Development Corporation, the Clintons' joint venture, could not be found.
Webster Hubbell, the third-ranking official in the Justice Department, and Vincent Foster, the White House deputy counsel who killed himself earlier this year, told federal bank officials their Rose Law Firm had not represented S&Ls. But Hillary Clinton, a Rose partner, represented the bankrupt Madison S&L before state agencies her husband controlled.
Other than one brief question to CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Inside Politics November 2 and a November 11 NBC Nightly News story by Andrea Mitchell, the TV networks have done absolutely zero on this potentially ruinous scandal. The news magazines dismissed the story with one page or less each.
The only interested media outlets seem to be Washington's two newspapers. The Washington Times, regularly breaks embarrassing news about Democrats that the rest ignore. But The Washington Post has remained interested in the story, placing it on Page One four times since it returned to the story on Halloween.
Most reporters hated this Clinton S&L story last year, too. When The New York Times broke the scoop on March 8, 1992, the four networks did only five full stories between them. The news magazines were even worse: Newsweek devoted one clause, while Time and U.S. News wrote nothing. After a brief rash of stories in March 1992, the scandal disappeared. Other than two stories in the late summer of 1992 and one this April by The Washington Post, it never came up again until the new stories started on October 31.
