MediaWatch: December 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: December 1994
- Networks Assail Proposition 187 As "Racist" and "Inhumane," Ignore Proponents' Arguements
- NewsBites: Rather on Race
- Revolving Door: Another Journal Entry
- Media Outlets Scold "Rabid Attack Dog...Darling of the Ultra-Right"
- An "Intolerant Bigot"?
- Capitol Hill Waste
- Newt: Time's Reagan Replacement
- Janet Cooke Award: CBS Packs Story with Emotional Anecdotes, Dire Predictions, Liberal Advocacy Research
Newt: Time's Reagan Replacement
Ebenezer Gingrich?
The frustration of media liberals over the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives isn't confined to network reporters. The December 19 Time renewed the cannonade against the new majority and its newly elected leader.
In his column, titled "Newt's Believe It or Not," Time special political correspondent Michael Kramer bashed a number of conservative heroes. "In outlook, in prescription, and also in his penchant for shaving the truth by the clever manipulation of easily grasped images, Newt Gingrich is Reagan's true heir."
After listing his Gingrich "gaffes," Kramer added an attack on Rush Limbaugh: "Like Rush, it doesn't seem to matter that a lot of what Newt says is mostly not true. Audiences love it -- as they loved Reagan -- even when they know that what they're hearing is often baseless. For many who applaud Gingrich and Limbaugh, the catchy rantings are acceptable caricatures of a caricature they already despise -- government."
This disdain for inaccurate caricatures appeared in the same issue in which Time's cover carried a sour-faced caricature of Gingrich with the words "Uncle Scrooge: 'Tis the season to bash the poor. But is Newt Gingrich's America really that heartless?" In the cover story, "Down on the Downtrodden," Time Associate Editor Richard Lacayo, fresh from a November 7 cover story attack on Gingrich, resumed fire: "In the months to come, Scrooge is a role Gingrich and his followers won't be afraid to assume. The only question is how many Americans will applaud the performance."
Time found the Republicans too radical: "House Republicans have come to Washington promising not just to remake welfare but to pull down the entire edifice of federal poverty programs...in their unbridled willingness to go after immigrants and the poor, the new House firebrands may be getting out ahead of the public mood."
Lacayo complained: "When all the benefit slashing is over, who picks up where government leaves off?...A large population of the poor, cut off from government help and thrown onto the meager capabilities of private charity -- it's not a pretty picture." But is that a realistic picture? Time spent the 1980s lamenting the "ax" of social spending cuts -- as social spending continued to increase, now costing billions more. Where was the ax? Reporters like Lacayo don't seek to describe a new Republican reality of spending cuts as much as to prevent it -- again.
