MediaWatch: February 1994

NewsBites: What A Great Book

"What A Great Book!"
In a saccharine Sunday Today interview, co-host Jackie Nespral gushed over 1984 Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. Nespral began by promoting Ferraro's new book, Changing History: Women, Power, and Politics, exclaiming: "What a great book!" Ignoring the inconvenient fact that the Mondale-Ferraro ticket lost the women's vote to Reagan by 56 to 44 percent, Nespral suggested sexism in the election results: "When you were a candidate for Vice President, you were heavily scrutinized. What do you think happened? Do you think America was just not ready for a woman Vice President?"

Though Nespral never asked Ferraro about her contentious (and failed) 1992 Senate bid, she ended by tossing her a softball about the First Lady: "Hillary Rodham Clinton...she has a lot of power in Washington, do you think she's paving the way for a brighter future for women?" With tough questions like that for liberal Democrats, Nespral must have her eyes on Bryant Gumbel's job.

The Gaffe Gap
On June 15, 1992, then-Vice President Dan Quayle attended a spelling bee in New Jersey where he misspelled the word potato. Over the next four days CNN, NBC and CBS ran six stories about the gaffe and countless newspaper articles have since recounted the incident.

On January 6 this year, Al Gore gave a speech in Milwaukee, comparing the city's ethnic background to the Latin phrase on U.S. coins. Gore erroneously said America "can be e pluribus unum -- out of one, many." No network mentioned the incident. The only major newspaper to run the story was The Washington Post. In a January 10 article Al Kamen pointed out, "No Al, that's the Soviet Union. We're out of many, one."

But on January 27, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw told America about Quayle's upcoming Super Bowl potato chip ad, noting: "It's about eating potato chips, not spelling them. After all, everyone knows how to spell potato chip don't they? C-H-I-P-E." The next night, CBS Evening News anchor Connie Chung quipped: "If you can't spell it, sell it."

Three Strikes Stink
Despite polls supporting the idea of life imprisonment for a third violent felony conviction, ABC reporter Chris Bury dismissed it as pandering. On the January 26 Nightline, Bury asserted "a giant gap exists between what politicians are demanding and what professionals and scholars in the field believe will work. The problem is, they say, mandatory sentences and longer prison terms have been a reflexive answer to crime for 20 years, yet violent crime has only grown worse." He concluded: "Washington has yet to demonstrate it can be tough and smart. The legacy of get-tough politics has filled up the prisons, all right, but hasn't made the streets any safer."

While host Ted Koppel went on to interview three opponents of mandatory sentencing, he left out the idea's supporters. Take Professor Morgan Reynolds, who wrote in a 1992 study for the National Center for Policy Analysis: "Since the early 1950s, the expected punishment for committing a serious crime in the United States (measured in terms of expected time in prison) has been reduced by two-thirds." For example, in 1990, a murderer "could expect to spend only 1.8 years in prison," a rapist, just 60 days. Bury claimed prisons are overcrowded, and each prisoner costs "$4,000 more than a year at Harvard." He didn't mention the cost of criminals loose in society, estimated at $430,000 per year by a Rand Corporation survey, which found the average career criminal committed 187 to 287 crimes per year, at an average cost of $2,300 each.

Old Habits Die Hard
Washington Post Ombudsman Richard Harwood lambasted his own paper in May 1990 for unequal abortion coverage. An April 1990 pro-abortion rally received front-page treatment, generating dozens of stories and taking up to 15 columns of space. A pro-life rally a few weeks later received a scant two stories in the Metro section. Harwood wrote the disparity "left a blot on the paper's professional reputation." What's happened since Harwood's scolding? The Post covered the January 1993 pro-life march above the fold on page one. But this year, the Post once again exiled the annual march to the Metro dustbin with one story a day for three days.

One possible reason for the continued difference in coverage may be the composition of the Post staff. At a Center for Communication panel discussion reported in the December 11 Editor & Publisher, Post New York correspondent Malcolm Gladwell said "If you have a staff that is totally unrepresentative of the national divide over abortion as ours is, you'd have to have a rule about not marching in a pro-abortion protest because the whole staff could conceivably be there."

Why Not Impeachment?
Seven years and $40 million later, The New York Times mourned the end of Iran-Contra. On January 19, the day after Lawrence Walsh released his final report, a "news analysis" by David Rosenbaum argued: "Presented so starkly, these matters seem grave enough to bring down a government, but they were basically lost on the American public. Under the glare of television lights, the congressional inquisitors came across as bombastic bullies, and two primary offenders, Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter, were seen as patriots."

The primary question Rosenbaum thought needed answering was why Reagan wasn't impeached: "When the Iran-Contra case developed, Mr. Reagan was a short-timer, in the third year of his second term. One reason impeachment was never even considered was that proceedings could not possibly have been completed before he was out of office anyway. Then, Mr. North, Mr. Poindexter and others refused to testify before Congress unless they received grants of immunity. For all intents and purposes, that meant they could never be successfully prosecuted and, indeed, their convictions were overturned on appeal because of the immunity grants."

Rosenbaum admitted that "one reason that miscreants were turned into martyrs in the public eye was that Mr. Walsh's investigation seemed at times to be so mismanaged." But the Times did no "news analysis" on Walsh's election-eve reindictment of Caspar Weinberger, or Walsh's documented financial extravagance.

Which Gender Suffers?
Discrimination against girls in public schools was Lisa McRee's subject on the new cable show Lifetime Magazine, produced by ABC News. On January 23, McRee promoted a new study by American University professors Myra and David Sadker illustrating the negative effects of gender bias in the classroom. According to McRee, gender roles, "even among 11-, 12-, and 13-year-olds, reflect society as a whole. The Sadker study shows that white males dominate classrooms. Minority males get the second most attention. White females place third when teachers call on students." Until this bias is eliminated, McRee contended, "girls in coed classes will continue to be second-class citizens in school."

In building her victimization story, McRee failed to note the actual record of success among these "second-class citizens." As John Leo reported in the February 7 U.S. News & World Report, "Women now account for 55 percent of all college students and 59 percent of those in master's programs." Further, "Girls are overtaking boys in one area after another. They now complete more high school courses than do boys in chemistry, algebra, biology and geometry." Rather than find a critic to question the Sadker study, McRee asserted "boys are taught differently than girls." In an ironic way, she may be right.

New Year's Eve Bash
Two segments on the December 31 MacNeil/ Lehrer NewsHour veered from the show's usual balance and honored a PBS tradition: slamming the 1980s. A repeat of a 1992 report by Paul Solman offered a simplistic and sometimes silly analysis of the alleged decline in real income in the Reagan years.

Using the wages of Archie Bunker's TV family as an example, Solman traced the drop's origin to the '70s, but argued things really fell apart under Reagan. "For the well-dressed and well-heeled, the data are pretty clear. In general the higher their income when the decade began, the greater their share of the economic gains of the 1980s. For awhile, many in the bottom 60 percent or so believed that the wealth would trickle down to them. But...it became harder and harder for folks like the Bunkers to maintain their real income." Solman ignored the fact that median family income increased every year from 1982 to 1989. Typical of '80s myth perpetuation, he aired the "greed is good" film clip of Michael Douglas as corporate raider Gordon Gekko, and concluded, "The go-go '80s, they were called. But the only direction the All in the Family guys were going was down."

Happy New Year
Later that night, Robert MacNeil moderated a year-in-review discussion with the NewsHour's left-loaded panel of "essayists," with predictable results. Anne Taylor Fleming began: "I...feel much more optimistic than I felt last year. It seemed to me that every year for the last twelve when I would come to the end of a year, during the Reagan-Bush years, it was with a sense of dread." Roger Rosenblatt chimed in, saying he was "much, much more optimistic. I think it has a lot to do with the Clinton administration versus the last two." Fleming's joy differed from her dismal view of the '80s. "I mean, during the last twelve years, the country was arming itself to the teeth, the deficit was growing, the economic classes were being wrenched apart...Reaganism essentially estranged everybody from everybody, rich and poor."

Hands Out Across America
ABC's "American Agenda" segment on January 24 featured stories from four regions of the country that the reporters argued have one thing in common: a need for more federal money. Aaron Brown reported on the Northeast's crumbling infrastructure: "Federal dollars are needed to rebuild. The jobs they create can help make the old Northeast new." Down South, Linda Pattillo found a tortilla factory in Fort Worth whose 44 uninsured minimum-wage workers faced possible job loss from the Clinton health plan. "They're afraid they will have to close [the factory] if President Clinton forces small businesses to begin paying for workers' health insurance," Pattillo noted. But when discussing education, she echoed Aaron Brown: "Schools here want federal money to give their children a better education, an equal education. It is something we heard throughout the South."

In the Midwest, Erin Hayes found that "folks here want national health care reform to bring good health care closer to everyone throughout the Midwest." Out West, Ken Kashiwahara lassoed an anti-government view from a Nevada rancher, who accused the administration of excessive regulation. But Kashiwahara also carried a plea for federal dollars: "Still reeling from military base closings and defense cutbacks, states such as California and Washington want more federal dollars to retrain thousands of defense workers whose jobs have disappeared with the end of the Cold War." California is also seeking federal aid to shoulder the costs of illegal immigrants. "It comes under the category, if the federal government mandates something, it should help pay for it, a sentiment expressed by states throughout the West," he concluded. But ABC failed ask why federal money should pay for basic state responsibilities, such as roads and schools.

Those Conservative Media Owners...
General Electric, NBC's parent company, not only supported the Clinton tax increase, it's now "leaning toward" the Clinton health plan. The February 6 New York Times reported that GE joined other large companies in pressing the Business Roundtable to "neither endorse nor oppose any plan."

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