MediaWatch: January 1988
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: January 1988
- Study: Gorbymania With A Twist
- Summitbites
- NewsBites: It's All In Who Says It
- Revolving Door
- Janet Cooke Award: Bill Moyers and His PBS Series
NewsBites: It's All In Who Says It
Staff writer Jacob Lamar Jr. lashed out at what he called Jack Kemp's call for "unrealistically stringent verification procedures" in a December 14 Time magazine article.
As for Pat Robertson, Lamar's supposedly opinion-free "news" article included this disparaging assessment: "Robertson's conditions for signing an arms accord seemed even more fanciful: he glibly recommended 'a rollback, a decolonization, if you will, of the Soviet empire."'
That's quite a different media reaction than greeted President John F. Kennedy's now famous, and widely considered inspirational, words along the same line: "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty." Where was Time then?
THE SCROOGE OF CBS. The day after Thanksgiving marks the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season. But CBS and ABC told viewers completely different stories about what the day meant to the upcoming busiest retail sales season. On the November 27 CBS Evening News, reporter Ray Brady once again earned his doom and gloom, or in this case "Scrooge," reputation by ominously warning: "There's a shadow hanging over the holidays, the shadow of the stock market crash." After a bit of searching Brady found a supposedly typical "New York shopper" who backed up his premise, claiming "the stock market crash has effected my habits, in the way that I'm being much more conservative this year." (Interestingly, on the same day CNN's Greg LaMotte reported "the majority of shoppers we spoke with said the stock market crash" will "have little or no effect on what or how much they buy.") Later Brady quoted a "new survey" showing "the average American family will spend about $380 on Christmas gifts this year, about the same as last year." Naturally, Brady felt compelled to bring on a "consumer analyst" to dismiss the seemingly good news as not so good because it meant sales would not increase.
Over on World News Tonight, Boston Herald columnist and ABC reporter Bill O'Reilly arrived at the opposite conclusion using the same facts. O'Reilly gave the $380 per family figure a little Christmas cheer spin, explaining, "since American households are increasing, sales projections are up. That's what store owners like to hear as they look for signals that people will buy." As for the seasonal outlook, an upbeat O'Reilly concluded: "Late today Bloomingdales and Macy's both reported an increase in sales over this day last year, an early, hopeful sign that the Christmas buying season might just be jolly after all."
Official figures to tell who was right are not yet out, but it just goes to show how easily reporters can take the same basic facts, and lead viewers to totally different conclusions by simply adding a little directional spin.
BROADCAST'S BROAD WITH A SENSITIVE BRA. Many believe the new movie Broadcast News, set in the Washington bureau of a TV network, is modeled after CBS. Susan Zirinsky should know. She's a Senior Producer of the CBS Evening News in Washington who took a leave from the network to help produce the film.
As Tom Shales recounted in a December 13 Washington Post Magazine story, Zirinsky was "dazzled" by the performance of Jack Nicholson playing a "Rather-like anchorman." She told Shales: "When he came on the set and started acting, I could feel it in my bra. That's how great it was." Too bad Rather didn't put in a cameo appearance.
THE BOESKY TWIST. When a New York court convicted Ivan Boesky on December 18 of charges stemming from his illegal "insider" stock trading, the three networks and CNN made it their lead item. But only the CBS Evening News devoted an entire story to portraying
Boesky as the natural consequence of conservative values that became dominant during the 1980's. CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer offered Reagan's 1983 comment that he wanted to make sure the U.S. "remains a country where someone can always get rich" as symbolic of misplaced values this decade. To corroborate his premise, Schieffer interviewed liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. who placed the blame on Reagan's conservative economic policies: "What happened to Boesky is a predictable result of an era which assigns moral priority to the pursuit of self-interest and where the machinery of regulation in the public interest is systematically weakened and discredited."
Agreeing with that assessment, Schieffer looked forward to life after Reagan, concluding his report: "Mopping up after the new gilded age and people like Boesky may well be the most important task the next President faces."
CBS FAILS TO GIVE MIRANDA RIGHT. A top level official of the Sandinista regime defects to the United States. He discloses that Nicaragua has no intention of abiding by the Central American peace agreement. He reveals Sandinista plans to train communist guerrillas from El Salvador, double the size of its military force and acquire advanced Soviet MiG-21 jet fighters, anti-aircraft missiles and artillery. The story is then confirmed publicly by Sandinista Defense Minister Humberto Ortega.
You might think the media would consider this remarkable development worthy of a major story, especially since it contradicted the "peace" overtures for the region Gorbachev made during the summit. At least ABC, CNN and NBC thought so. But not CBS. The network ignored the charges leveled by Major Roger Miranda, a former top aide to Humberto Ortega, which first appeared in a page one Washington Post story on December 13.
That night, after Miranda held a press conference, ABC's World News Sunday led with the story. On Monday, ABC's John McWethy delivered a lengthy report. NBC carried a football game on Sunday, but in a similar Monday, December 14 Nightly News piece Anne Garrels, like Anthony Collings on CNN PrimeNews, told about Sandinista plans to kidnap American citizens in neighboring nations in case of a U.S. invasion.
The first peep from CBS did not occur until Tuesday, December 15 when Evening News anchor Dan Rather barely acknowledged the major development, blithely saying Reagan did not "confront Gorbachev with the latest information from a defector about planned future aid" to Nicaragua. That was it. Censorship doesn't get any better than this.
FACTS DON'T STALL STAHL'S STORY. On November 13, CBS reporter Lesley Stahl devoted an entire Evening News story to advocating a tax increase. "To cut the deficit, why not raise income taxes just a little?" Stahl asked. "A two percent rate hike," she proposed, "would bring in more than $27 billion." A bit later she complained that "the system can't agree on any taxes, even a gas tax now when prices are low. A ten cent a gallon increase would raise ten billion dollars and discourage foreign consumption." Stahl ended the story by claiming most people are on her side, declaring: "The American people may be ready for sacrifice, but their elected officials are not ready to call for it."
But, Stahl's Washington bureau colleague, Bob Schieffer, arrived at just the opposite conclusion. On November 19 he did a story on the deficit, but reluctantly concluded a tax increase is not the answer because: "Taxes are still as unpopular as ever today." So who had it right? Schieffer did. A CBS News/New York Times poll released November 30 found that 60 percent of Americans are against paying any more in federal taxes. Stahl is apparently not one to let facts get in the way of a good story.
GLASNOST ANYONE? This is how Mikhail Gorbachev begins the U.S. edition of his new tome, "Perestroika":
"The purpose of this book is to talk without intermediaries to the citizens of the whole world about things that, without exception, concern us all. I have written this book because I believe in their common sense. I am convinced that they, like me, worry about the future of our planet."
But the Hungarian edition of the same book begins this way:
"In our work and worries, we are motivated by those Leninist ideals and noble endeavors and goals which mobilized the workers of Russia seven decades ago to fight for the new and happy world of socialism. Perestroika is a continuation of the October Revolution."
MediaWatch rests its case and thanks The New Republic's December 21 edition for bringing out this enlightening information.
WALKING ON THE LEFT SIDE. "A hip, cool, political satire," is how New York Times movie critic Vincent Canby appraised "Walker," a film that as even Canby reported, "was produced with the complete cooperation of the Sandinista government" of Nicaragua. Director Alex Cox takes the real life story of William Walker, an American adventurer who briefly ruled Nicaragua in the 1850's, and uses it as a convenient plot from which to rail against U.S. "interventionism" today. Indeed, the newspaper ad for the film is none too subtle, proclaiming: "Before Rambo...Before Oliver North...Walker, a true story." To make sure theater-goers get the connection to current events, Cox adds a few anachronisms to the 19th century scenes, like a modern helicopter rescuing Walker's men.
The heavy-handed left-wing political message turned off even a reviewer usually excited by such film themes. Rita Kempley of The Washington Post, who considered "Platoon" to be "the finest film of 1987," labeled "Walker" a "bungled, gratuitously gory political diatribe." But some others, like Time magazine's Richard Schickel approved. In the December 7 issue he wrote: "At all times one is glad to see the spirit of youthful subversion alive, applied to a sober subject." Neither Schickel or Kempley bothered to mention the Sandinistas' enthusiastic cooperation in producing the movie for Yankee audiences. Nor did they or Canby inform readers the film ends by rolling "special thanks" credits to Minister of the Interior, Tomas Borge, the man in charge of the Sandinista secret police. While this was enough to turn off most people, since "Walker" died after just a few weeks in theaters, it did not bother Canby. He concluded his review by issuing this endorsement of the film's anti-U.S. policy message:
'"Walker' is witty, rather than laugh-out loud funny. Without being solemn, it's deadly serious. It's also provocative enough to reach beyond -- if not preach to -- those already converted. 'Walker' is something very rare in American movies these days. It has nerve."
