MediaWatch: January 1990
Table of Contents:
People Liked Communism?
MEDIA'S "OLD THINKING"
As one country after another in Eastern Europe has overthrown communist dictatorship, the national media haven't hesitated to declare the end of communism. But when Ronald Reagan was calling communism a discredited theory lacking popular support, reporters dismissed it as right-wing fantasy.
Back then Eastern Europe didn't get much network attention, but those few stories failed to recognize popular discontent with communist tyranny. NBC's John Cochran hypothesized in October 1986 that there existed "an unspoken agreement between the Party and the people" in which "the people have accepted the supremacy of the Party." Cochran was echoing CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg, who in March 1986 claimed the Soviet people "have made a deal with their rulers. Take care of us from cradle to grave, and in return we will be satisfied."
Even as events unfolded this fall, Arthur Kent of NBC refused to see why protests grew in Czechoslovakia. On October 30 he predicted that "as long as it can keep food in the stores, the government, too, is not expecting a public outcry it can't survive." Kent theorized "the attitude of Czechs themselves prevents rapid change. Many Czechs admit that life here is comfortable enough that protest poses too great a risk."
In February 1986, Stuart Loory, then CNN's Moscow Bureau Chief, enthusiastically argued for Gorbachev's popularity. In a letter to The Wall Street Journal he asserted that "if suddenly a true, two-party or multiparty state were to be formed in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party would still win in a real free election. Except for certain pockets of resistance to the communist regime, the people have been truly converted." On June 17, 1987, Dan Rather insisted that, "despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy."
Of course the Soviet Union has a long way to go to match Eastern Europe, but now CBS has a new excuse for why Western-style democracy can't succeed in the Soviet Bloc. In the wake of Ceausescu's overthrow, on January 1 reporter Bob Simon worried that Romania "has no liberal democratic tradition at all. People are used to being told what to do and what to think. These old habits may die harder than old leaders." Which democracies began as democracies?
