MediaWatch: February 1990
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: Ray and Frances Shop for Bad News
RAY AND FRANCES SHOP FOR BAD NEWS. CBS business correspondent Ray Brady thinks government economic statistics only matter when they're bad. When inflation, which Dan Rather described as "up only slightly over the previous two years," was insufficiently gloomy on January 18, Brady began with this query: "Why do so many Americans question the government statistics?" These "many Americans" turned out to be one Frances Kessler, a shopper who relied on her memory to claim dramatic single-item price increases.
Cornflakes in hand, Kessler complained, "$1.99. I think the last time I bought this, it was $1.59. That's a big increase. It's ridiculous." Armed with a box of Kleenex, Kessler charged, "I just finished a box at home. The price was 99 cents. This is $1.29. That's 30 cents. That's a 30 percent increase. Ridiculous." The ridiculous label belongs to Brady.
SEMPER FIDEL. Given events in Eastern Europe, Fidel Castro must be struggling hard to keep hope for communism alive. The Washington Post's Julia Preston, once a writer for the pro-Castro North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), is just the person to give Fidel a helping hand. In a front-page article January 22, Preston asserted that "Cubans today do not compare their conditions to those of Western Europe, as do many East Europeans, but to those of Latin America. From that perspective, they see that socialism offered them exceptional advances."
Preston claimed that "Castro inspires Cubans who admire how he transformed the island nation of 10.5 million into a power that could stand off the nearby Yankee giant...Castro, 63, with tireless energy and political passion, is still popular with many Cubans. Although no accurate measure of Cuban opinion is available, analysts say fidelistas far outnumber devoted Communists."
LEFTIST EXPERTISE. The CBS Evening News keeps turning to liberal experts to get an understanding of Soviet events. On the January 22 broadcast, Dan Rather claimed "Bruce Morton sampled the debate in this country." But Morton's "sampling" ranged from left to left: Ellen Mickiewicz of the Jimmy Carter Center, Ed Hewitt of the Brookings Institution, William Hyland of the liberal journal Foreign Affairs, and CBS consultant and Nation contributor Stephen Cohen.
On February 3, anchor Bob Schieffer's "Washington Notebook" segment rounded up another group of experts: Jack Mendelsohn of the liberal Arms Control Association, Raymond Garthoff of Brookings, and Daniel Hamilton of the Carnegie Endowment. Since no conservatives were included in either group, MediaWatch can only conclude that only liberals have sufficient "expertise" for CBS.
PRIME TIME PRAVDA. ABC's search for better ratings for Prime Time Live (PTL) finally led to the Kremlin. Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer squandered the rare opportunity to look behind the Kremlin's walls. PTL repeated the tired myth that communism made life better for Russians. Discussing the show on Good Morning America, Sawyer proclaimed, "you realize the weight of the oppression, really, of 400 years under the tsars...you also see the vast, the startling difference when the Soviets came into power." It's hard to claim the system that Lenin built lightened the weight of oppression.
The show also repeated the myth of Lenin's charisma. "The man himself retains an almost mystical hold on the Soviet people," Sawyer asserted, "back in 1917, it was Lenin who fired up an entire country with his bold dream of communist equality." That's why it took bloody civil war until 1925 to force all of the Russians under the yoke, and until World War II to get control of the Baltic nations.
GORBY GROUPIES. Since they named him Man of the Decade, Time's editors continue to stick up for Gorbachev, no matter how far they have to stretch the facts. A January 22 piece by Associate Editor Jill Smolowe on Gorbachev's trip to Lithuania offered a goo example. "He touched down in Vilnius the dignified statesman ...the Soviet President proved himself a master of street theater." Smolowe gushed: "Never had Gorbachev sustained such an energetic performance." For Smolowe, "Thomas Jefferson could not have asked for a better illustration of democracy in action." Not mentioned: the trip was a failure for Gorbachev.
An unattributed article following Smolowe's asked "Could Lithuania Go It Alone?" The author answered that "if the Baltic state were ever to declare its complete independence from the U.S.S.R., that freedom would carry a price." And what is that price? "Most of Lithuania's factories, buildings, highways, trains, communication systems -- pretty much everything except the kitchen sink -- belong to the Soviet state....presumably Lithuania would have to compensate Moscow in some way for what it takes away with it." Time might have suggested Gorbachev compensate Lithuania for invading and forcing Lithuanians to work in those factories in the first place.
SCHIEFFER'S SMOG. Recent CBS environmental reports have been long on hype and short on facts. Dan Rather introduced a January 22 CBS Evening News report: "In the words of one lawmaker it is 'a test of our ability as a society to come to grips with problems that are part of what is now the most dangerous threat to our nation and our species.'" Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer piped in that "in the '80s nothing much was done" since Reagan questioned "if cleaning up the air is a good idea." He applauded that "for the first time in a decade, major legislation designed to reduce auto and industrial emissions will be debated on the Senate floor."
Schieffer's story made viewers believe that since "nothing much was done" by the government, nothing improved without it. But CBS didn't mention a single fact about air quality, so we thought we'd highlight syndicated columnist Warren Brookes, who noted that since 1975, all indicators of air quality have improved, with sulphur dioxide carbon monoxide, suspended particles, lead, and ozone each down at least 20 percent, some much more.
Schieffer brushed over industry concerns about added costs, but didn't mention how they might hurt the effort to improve air quality. As Brookes explained, higher car prices from tighter emission controls result in less turnover of older cars, meaning longer lifespans for pre-1981 models, which cause nearly all the auto emissions that CBS is so worried about.
GOOD MORNING PYONGYANG. On January 25, Good Morning America co- host Charles Gibson discussed the future of U.S. troops in South Korea with two experts. One declared that the reason North Korea "has the posture they have is because they fear the power of the American forces, particularly the American nuclear forces, and the only way they think that they can counter that is to build up a very powerful offensive force of their own so they'd make the cost of any move into North Korea so great that we wouldn't do it."
When Gibson pointed out that the mentally "unstable" leaders of North Korea were working on nuclear weapons, the expert shot back, "Well what would you do if you faced American nuclear weapons? Wouldn't you try to develop your own nuclear weapons to counteract them?" Finally, Gibson was told that "there are hawks and doves in North Korea...and the problem for the United States is to do things that will strengthen the doves, not the hawks."
So who was this expert? Richard Barnet of IPS? Noam Chomsky? No, it was Selig Harrison, a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who served The Washington Post as a South Asia correspondent (1962-65), an editorial writer (1966-67), a North East Asia correspondent (1968-72) and finally as national affairs reporter (1972-74).
LET'S SPEND MORE. If you're a liberal and want greater spending on social programs, CBS will do your bidding. When the National Urban League released its annual report on black America, CBS' Mark Phillips use the January 9 Evening News to parrot the sound- bites of the Urban League President John Jacob: "By the Urban League's arithmetic, 50 billion dollars in saved military costs a year should be spent on education, housing, health care, and job training for American minorities."
CBS aired no one who doubted that this new "urban Marshall Plan" was needed because of "the hopelessness of those up against the wall here." Phillips concluded: "The Urban League calls the '90s a window of opportunity for equality at home and competitiveness abroad. But action, it says, is needed now, or that window will slam shut for good."
AND MORE. Correspondent Bob Faw tried to top Phillips' imbalance in a January 26 report on black college enrollment. Faw cited a ten percent decline in college enrollment over the last decade. Faw and every one of his sources saw these figures as "killing hope for a better life and helping to create a lost generation of Americans." Perhaps CBS News should examine the Census Bureau figures cited by Ben Wattenberg in the January 22 U.S. News & World Report, which showed that since 1980 the number of black college graduates has gone up 30 percent while doubling to over two million.
MY, HOW TIME SPIES. During his stint with Time during the Vietnam War, Boston Globe Assistant Editor H.D.S. Greenway became chums with fellow Time correspondent Pham Xuan An. In a January 21 Washington Post "Outlook" section piece Greenway reminisced on the old Vietnam days, and the friend that gave journalists insights into the enigmatic country in which they found themselves.
Greenway later learned, however, that An was a communist working for the Viet Cong, a dedicated operative purposefully undermining American efforts. An used his press pass to gain access inside the South Vietnamese military, then briefed the Viet Cong on U.S. strategy. But the revelation that his buddy was a subversive imposter did not disturb Greenway. Rather, he became irate at the "right-wingers [who] seized on the An story to say that the press had fallen victim to a fiendish disinformation plot." How else could you explain it?
LISA'S LIBERALISM. You can forget about getting both sides in the abortion debate from NBC News reporter Lisa Myers. On the January 20 Nightly News, Myers was in Missouri, where the Supreme Court's Webster decision made abortion illegal in public hospitals.
Myers' only sources to comment on the change: an abortion clinic staffer and a representative of Planned Parenthood. Latching on to "pro-choice" language, Myers lamented: "For poor women, who rely on public hospitals, an abortion is no longer even an option. The law means most must continue unwanted pregnancies."
On the January 22 Nightly News, Myers added her spin again in reporting on the decline in the number of doctors willing to do abortions. Myers wrapped up her story this way: "Some clinic operators say the growing shortage of doctors may be the biggest threat to the widespread availability of abortion. They warn that victories in the courts and statehouses will be hollow if the battle in the streets is lost." Of course, pro-lifers would be happy to have "hollow" victories for abortionists, but Myers didn't report their side of the story.
LEADING LABELS. Anti-abortion activists "call themselves pro- life," NBC anchor Tom Brokaw told Nightly News viewers on January 22. But coverage of the January 22 March for Life showed how reporters continued to use the negative "anti-abortion" label for one side of the debate while using the positive and euphemistic "pro-choice" label for the other.
NBC's Robert Hager covered the march in typical form: it pitted "anti-abortion demonstrators" vs. the "pro-choice side," as leaders of "pro-choice groups" held a counterdemonstration. At a nearby clinic, "anti-abortion demonstrators" were arrested while "pro-choice demonstrators" taunted them. The state legislatures, Hager said are divided into "anti-abortion" and "pro-choice" camps.
ABC's Jim Wooten related the day's events as a protest by "tens of thousands who oppose abortion" and a counter-protest by "advocates of abortion rights." John Martin of ABC also kept the positive side for the pro-abortion camp. In his report, "those who oppose abortion rights" were pitted against "those who favor abortion rights." Abortion "opponents" in Pennsylvania have "succeeded in getting restrictions on abortion" while "abortion rights advocates have gained victory after victory" in other states. Republicans, of course, "have taken the most restrictive position."
DOING BARNEY'S DUTY. For years liberals have been trying to repeal the McCarran-Walter Act, a fight most recently led by Barney Frank. Now, liberals have NBC on their side. A January 27 Nightly News piece looked at the act, enacted during the '50s to bar entry into the U.S. by those who expressed revolutionary and communist views. Anchor Garrick Utley called it "a law whose time has clearly passed...from the days when people were afraid of communists and true freedom of speech." The piece glibly called for its repeal, with reporter Henry Champ noting it caused America to be "ridiculed elsewhere in the world." Utley suggested that glasnost has made the law obsolete and Champ agreed, "Communism is just not a threat anymore here in America."
BETTER RED AND DEAD. The Washington Post can't even keep bias out of the obituaries. Last June, when a succession of McCarthy era figures died, including Owen Lattimore and Alger Hiss, they were described in headlines as "victims of McCarthyism" and never as communists.
The Post burnished its bad reputation on January 28 with a glowing news story on a memorial service for far-left defense attorney Leonard Boudin, who for many years was general counsel for the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, a Communist front. "Civil Liberties Attorney Embraced Constitution," read the headline. Post reporter Paula Span ran an old Boudin quote: "I could never embrace an ism...I did embrace the Constitution." But Boudin, was fond of one "ism" the Post didn't report -- communism. He was a member of the Communist Party, USA.
The father of Kathy Boudin, in prison for a 1981 Weather Underground armed robbery, Boudin was remembered by the Post for defending "victims of McCarthyism" during "what has been called the American Inquisition of the late '40s and '50s." Span added that "More than once, he was referred to as having been the best constitutional lawyer in the United States."
BETTER RED AND DEAD II. The Soviet Union and abortion rights continue to dominate TBS and CNN Chairman Ted Turner's personal agenda. In October, his left-wing Better World Society awarded its annual Better World Medals. Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton garnered the "Population Stabilization" Medal, while Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded a medal for "Peace Advocacy and Arms Reduction." One of Turner's equally liberal media competitors, Time Inc., received the "Communications" award for 1989. Past recipients include: Communist China for "Population Stabilization" in 1988 and the team of Vladimir Posner and Phil Donahue for "Communications" in 1987.
