MediaWatch: February 1993
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: February 1993
- Loving the Children's Defense Fund
- NewsBites: Going Nowhere Fast
- Revolving Door: Time's FOB
- Reporters Hound Clinton on Political Missteps, But....
- "Uneducated" Conservatives?
- Cheers to Sam and Diane
- "Censored" Stories
- Janet Cooke Award: Time Calls for Gas Tax Increase at least 24 Times in Four Years
Cheers to Sam and Diane
During the Reagan years, as attempts were made to cut the size of government, the networks focused on the need for more spending. Now, ABC's Prime Time Live has bucked that trend. ABC devoted the January 21 program to showcasing the bloated bureaucracy, wasteful spending and perks of Washington. Consider co-host Diane Sawyer's introduction: "Welcome to the land where the bureaucracy that keeps growing out of control, where bills are so confusing, sometimes lawmakers don't know what they're voting on. We'll show you how your federal tax dollars are spent on local pet projects and how nobody even knows how much it really costs to run the White House."
Donaldson highlighted the Rural Electrification Administration and the Agriculture Department: "Your tax dollars support a two and a half billion dollar agency that was supposed to be out of business long ago [and] the government actually forces citrus growers to dump billions of dollars of perfectly good fruit and let it rot, even threatening them with jail if they dare give it away."
Sawyer then explained: "Now, no one disputes that the Agriculture Department runs a lot of important programs...but critics contend it wastes more than $10 billion on an outdated hodgepodge of subsidies and regulations." She singled out quotas on American orange growers: "Economists say [they] cost consumers $100 million each year...Taxpayers have also paid Sunkist $70 million to help them advertise overseas the oranges we're not allowed to buy." She also pointed out how three-quarters of farm subsidies go to major corporations instead of family farmers, and that by the year 2040, the USDA bureaucracy will have grown so much that there will be one bureaucrat for every American farmer.
Prime Time also displayed the lavish vacations and lobbyist- provided gifts afforded to Congressmen and Senators, to show, Donaldson said, "how the people you elect have access to all kinds of privileges and extras that you don't [and] how your tax dollars are spent on local pet projects." Donaldson highlighted the $2 billion Red River project in Louisiana. The Reagan Administration recognized it as pork and tried to have it removed. Donaldson reported that the Louisiana congressional delegation overrode the White House and kept it in the budget.
Sawyer concluded by promising: "We're going to come back to you six months from now with a progress report, and six months after that, and after that, as long as it takes." Too bad Prime Time Live wasn't around when the country had a President interested in cutting spending.
Anti-Abortion Attention
Two years ago The Washington Post was lambasted by its own Ombudsman for unequal coverage between the April 1990 pro- abortion rally and a pro-life rally held a few weeks later. The pro-abortion rally dominated the front page, with extensive coverage and multiple stories that day. The pro-life rally received two stories in the "Metro" section. Ombudsman Richard Harwood charged the disparity in coverage "left a blot on the paper's professional reputation."
This year, the January 23 edition covered the annual pro-life march in depth. The Post managed to place the pro-life story above the fold on page one, complete with interviews of participants and organizers.
