MediaWatch: February 1997
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: February 1997
- Newt News Triples Clinton
- NewsBites: Rooting for Rubin
- Revolving Door: Following Fallows
- Two Standards on Nonprofits
- Making Excuses for Fundraising
- Science Spinners
- ABC Refuses to Debate Accuracy
- Janet Cooke Award: CBS Makes Nice, Not News with Hillary Clinton
Janet Cooke Award: CBS Makes Nice, Not News with Hillary Clinton
Martha Makes Nice, Not News
In a September 1993 speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Dan Rather complained about the state of network news: "Do powder puff, not probing interviews. Stay away from controversial subjects. Kiss ass, move with the mass, and for heaven and ratings' sake, don't make anybody mad -- certainly not anybody you're covering, and especially not the Mayor, the Governor, the Senator, the Vice President, or the President, or anybody in a position of power. Make nice, not news."
A week earlier, Rather served as an example of his own speech in a make-nice interview with Hillary Clinton: "I don't know of anybody, friend or foe, who isn't impressed by your grasp of the details of this plan. I'm not surprised because you have been working on it so long and listened to so many people." He tossed softballs: "Are you willing to pay the ultimate price and go on David Letterman?" Just before Inauguration Day, Mrs. Clinton granted two interviews that aired on January 19 -- one to the deferential interviewers at C-SPAN, and one to CBS. C-SPAN's Steven Scully at least made news by asking Hillary if the media were biased, which she answered by suggesting there's no liberal media: "You've got a conservative and/or right-wing press presence with really nothing on the other end of the political spectrum."
CBS Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood hinted at their interviewer's long-standing friendship with the First Lady, begun in the 1960s at Wellesley College: "It happens that Martha Teichner has known the First Lady for almost 30 years, and was invited to the White House last week for another of many conversations she's had with Mrs. Clinton." For peppering the First Lady with nothing tougher than the notion she was a subject of relentless "bashing," CBS earned the Janet Cooke Award.
Instead of taking advantage of CBS's unique opportunity to question the First Lady on subjects she knows a lot about but is not forthcoming -- Whitewater, Travelgate, shredding documents during the 1992 campaign -- Teichner sought to soothe, noting: "The First Lady has become more and more uncomfortable and wary around the press." She had nothing to fear from Teichner, dressed all in black, peering out over half-glasses. Hillary appeared not only as the star of the piece, but as its director as well.
Viewers were virtually asked by Teichner to feel the First Lady's pain: "Heat doesn't begin to describe the firestorm that erupted when the President handed over health care reform to his wife." She asked: "Were you startled by the fact that it was as controversial an issue as it was, and that you became controversial?" What Mrs. Clinton actually did to create contoversy and failure -- a secret task force, a 1400-page plan, a failure to compromise on any point was not a subject for CBS.
Teichner continued with Hillary's woes: "Health care was just the beginning. She has been the subject of a non-stop, time-release litany of investigations. Three at the moment being conducted by Whitewater special counsel Kenneth Starr. Speculation she may be indicted continues."
Hillary claimed: "I expect this matter to drag out as long as it is to anyone else's advantage to drag it out and then it will end. I mean no one likes to be accused of having done anything improper or wrong. It becomes frustrating when you know that people are saying things that aren't true, but you just learn to live with it and you just go on day after day and..."
Teichner jumped in: "But how do you do that, though, in the climate of a non-stop four- or even eight-year bashing?" Teichner added: "Her biggest gripe is that the positive is never what the public sees; that her media image as a First Lady under fire, edgy and defensive, belies the real Hillary Clinton, who has even been known to laugh."
If this had been an interview instead of a unchallenged listing of Hillary's gripes, Teichner might have challenged the notion the public "never sees" the positive side of Mrs. Clinton. The entire CBS story served as a refutation of that claim. The Center for Media and Public Affairs found that from January 20 to April 1, 1993, while Bill Clinton received only 42 percent positive network evaluations, Hillary's evaluations were 78 percent positive. This hardly parses with the Teichner thesis that her appointment as health care czar was greeted with an "eruption" of controversy.
CBS moved from Hillary's lovable giggly side to stressing Hillary's serious "sermons" on women's rights, and her upbringing of Chelsea, asking how her departure for college would be handled. The last part of the Teichner piece resembled a Jackie Kennedy White House tour: "One gauge of a First Lady's stamp on the White House is the art she chooses to display there. `Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City' by Henry Tanner is the first work acquired for the permanent collection by an African American artist. It now hangs in the Green Room." Viewers saw the White House garden, in Hillary's tenure, has become a sculpture garden, about which Teichner asked: "Do you ever just go there and sit?"
Was Teichner's failure to ask difficult questions about political failures or ethical controversies motivated by warm feelings of friendship, or the controlling grip of White House spin control? The July 1996 American Spectator noted that before an interview on Larry King Live the White House staff "faxed CNN a list of 20-30 questions the First Lady hoped to be asked -- and five `issues' she would rather not hear about." (The King show's idea of being tough consisted of politely sending over sample questions the First Lady should expect on Whitewater and Travelgate before the show.) Did Teichner bow to White House demands or celebrate Hillary without prompting? And if there were conditions, shouldn't CBS have notified viewers? Teichner did not return repeated MediaWatch phone calls.
In his 1993 interview with Mrs. Clinton, Dan Rather asked her if it would be possible one day, whether or not the health plan passed, "that we will have reached a point when a First Lady, any First Lady, can be judged by the quality of her work?" Whatever her reasons, Teichner suggested that aiding the First Lady's quest for personal fulfillment is a more important objective than investigating the quality (or integrity) of her work.
Reporters feel the need to focus on The Role -- the perceived sexist attitudes that have held Hillary back, her symbolic role as gender Rorschach test -- rather than what the First Lady has done with the role, just as reporters introduced her to the country as a brilliant lawyer without ever asking what kind of lawyering she did. Anyone looking for new revelations about what Hillary Clinton has done will need to consult someone other than the political sympathizers and bosom buddies who claim to be objective journalists.
