MediaWatch: January 1992
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NewsBites: Great Gorebasm
GREAT GORBASM. After a long history of praising Gorbachev, NBC correspondent Bob Abernethy issued one last tribute to his hero on the December 24 Nightly News. "Well, let me say how I hope history will judge him. Perhaps in time with help and work, people here will improve their everyday lives and remember Gorbachev's accomplishments, and that would seem to me fair. I remember not only the end but the beginning of the Cold War, and the forty years of fear Gorbachev more than anyone else ended. He seems to me to have done more good in the world than any other national leader of my lifetime." So the man who worked to save communism won Abernethy's favor over champions of democracy like FDR, Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan.
PETER'S PALESTINIAN PALS. How well Peter Jennings knows Palestinian leaders might surprise you. According to the December 30/January 6 issue of U.S. News & World Report, Jennings dated Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi in the early 1970s. He served as ABC's Beirut bureau chief when she was a graduate student. Jennings told U.S. News: "Anyone who has known Hanan as long as I have is not surprised to see her emerge as a persuasive spokesperson for the Palestinians."
This might help explain ABC's Middle East reporting. A new study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that World News Tonight coverage in the eight months since the end of the Gulf War had a distinctive, pro-Arab, anti-Israeli tilt. While all three networks were highly critical of Israel, "opinions expressed on ABC were seven to one negative compared with five to one negative at the other networks....By contrast, nearly three out of five ABC assessments (58%) supported the various Arab proposals, compared to a minority (45%) at the other networks."
JOAN'S NOW BOW. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the champion of radical feminists. To mark the occasion, on January 7 Good Morning America co-host Joan Lunden interviewed NOW President Patricia Ireland and liberal columnist Ellen Goodman.
Since ABC failed to bring on a critic, you'd think Lunden might have challenged her guests. Instead, she threw softballs such as, "Where do you see the greatest accomplishments?" At other times Lunden gave up questioning and endorsed Ireland's assertions. "Interesting," she responded, "you almost have to take the role of bad girl, so that you can make the noise, so you can open up that door so the more moderate ones can go through." When Ireland insisted that young women appreciate the feminist movement, Lunden agreed: "They recognize, Patricia, that you've stuck your neck out there and worked really hard over all these years."
PYONGYANG PRATTLE. Quick, name a hard-line communist country still remaining. Though many might name North Korea, New York Times reporter Steven Weisman probably wouldn't be one of them. In a Dec. 3 article, he reported: "But here in Pyongyang, random conversations over a day and a half revealed only the mildest signs of distress, and there are no discernible signs of dissent. Indeed the uniformity of political opinions makes it appear that Pyongyang is a city for the loyal elite, who are well-treated." After decades of portraying the Soviet people as contented, reporters still mistake silence for satisfaction instead of the secret police doing its job.
Weisman also noted the pampering the residents receive: "There seems to be plenty of diversions for the people of Pyongyang. There are public baths where men can relax and get a massage and an enormous array of sites for sports. At the city's big ice rink, a group of high school speed-skating teams were competing as a small crowd shouted. Two huge `Children's Palaces' -- closed this winter, perhaps because of fuel shortages -- contain dozens of rooms for after-school studies and such activities as singing, dancing, painting, and music making." Makes you want to pack your bags.
TIME STANDS STILL. Time magazine continues its crusade to solve perceived environmental problems with big government, anti- business policies. In the January 6 issue, staff writers labeled John Sununu's resignation the year's "Best" environmental news. The article called Sununu "notorious for his hostility to environmentalists and their agenda," and claimed, "if it was good for the earth but bad for business, Sununu's opposition generally persuaded the President." Time hailed the "derailing" of the Johnston-Wallop energy bill because it "downplayed conservation, boosted nuclear power and called for oil exploration in Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
Time listed the White House wetlands policy as one of the "Worst" environmental events, calling it "all wet....during his presidential campaign, George Bush promised `no net loss of wetlands.' But under pressure from business, his administration proposed a new definition of a wetland that would open at least [30 million acres] of off-limits land to development." Time failed to explain why it's such a great idea to violate the Bill of Rights, which prohibits the government's taking of property without compensation.
NO SAINT PATRICK. During the December 22 CNN Year in Review special, moderator Bernard Shaw warned: "I hope that throughout our work in covering campaign '92, we in the news media do not give Pat Buchanan a free ride." Not to worry. In Time magazine December 23, Washington reporter Margaret Carlson didn't exactly salute: "For Buchanan, Bush is insufficiently Buchanan-like -- not nativist, rightist, homophobic, authoritarian or anti-Israel enough. Like many ultraconservatives, Buchanan is unfailingly kind and generous to people regardless of their background. But he can be just as cruel to the groups to which they belong."
In a December 11 NBC Today interview with Buchanan, Bryant Gumbel asked: "What do you say to the idea that any President must be President of all the people and your written record of insensitivity toward blacks, Jews, gays, Latins, Asians, et cetera makes Pat Buchanan wholly unqualified?" On Nightly News the day before, reporter Lisa Myers charged "the landscape is littered with his, at best, insensitive remarks about blacks, gays and Jews." This came from the same reporter who, on October 3, was a cheerleader for Democrat Bill Clinton: "A star since first elected Governor at age 32, Clinton is less driven by ideology than by what works...Name a problem, Clinton probably has a solution."
TOO LEGIT TO OMIT. There's no doubt where The Washington Post stands on taxes. On December 12, their headline read "Economists Advise Against Rushing to Cut Taxes." Staff writer Eric Pianin reported how "prominent economists and financial experts" were against tax cuts. In case readers missed the Pianin article, Steven Mufson rewrote the story as a "news analysis" for the December 18 edition, with the headline: "Economists Take Dim View of Using Tax Cuts to Stimulate the Economy."
Who were some of the economists and "financial experts" the Post quoted? The first story highlighted John Kenneth Galbraith, who in 1984 observed that "the Soviet economy has made great progress in recent years." Guess what he advised: more federal spending "regardless of the impact on the deficit." Most of the experts were liberals: Robert Reischauer, director of the Congressional Budget Office, which neither reporter identified as Democrat-controlled; Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute; George Korpius, Vice President of the AFL-CIO; and Roy Ash and Dean Phypers from the liberal Committee for Economic Development. Neither reporter gave space to the many economists who support tax cuts.
JASON'S BACK. How bad is the recession? On December 12, The New York Times pushed the panic button with the headline: "A Growing Choice: Housing or Food." The story, by Times reporter Jason DeParle, focused solely on a study by two liberal groups, the Center for Budget & Policy Priorities and the Low Income Housing Information Service, without one word from any conservative or critical source.
DeParle promoted the study's results: "The report said 47 percent of the nation's poor renters pay more than 70 percent of their income for shelter." But he failed to point out that the liberal groups get this number only by excluding the value of food stamps and other non-cash government subsidies. DeParle's own story focused on chef's assistant Harold Coleman: "He rings home $596 a month. He pays about $480 in rent and utilities for an apartment." But later in the story, DeParle pointed out: "Mr. Coleman, as earnest as he is poor, feeds the family on $323 a month in food stamps." Reporters like DeParle aren't satisfied with portraying social problems honestly. Instead, they distort the truth by excluding everything the government's already doing for the poor.
NO NOBEL FOR BROKAW. Tom Brokaw's not much of an economist. Take this little story from the December 11 NBC Nightly News: "A congressional study tonight, by the way, says that richest Americans will pay lower taxes next year than in 1980, an average of $16,000 less. Meanwhile, taxes on the middle class in this country? Well, they're up and their income in the middle class has fallen."
Is there any part of this story that isn't wrong? Nope. First, Brokaw (and his congressional sources) assume that rich people would dutifully report the same amount of income whether the rate stands at the current 28 percent or at the pre-Reagan 70 percent level. Higher tax rates cause the rich to evade taxes with shelters. In fact, the Census Bureau reported that the share of taxes paid by those making more than $50,000 a year (in constant 1989 dollars) rose from 21.6 percent in 1981 to 29.0 percent in 1989. As for middle class incomes declining, may we repeat: average family income went up across the board. The middle class gained.
ALL TO WALES. Tom Brokaw opened the January 6 NBC Nightly News, "Here at home, the three R's have been jolted by a fourth, recession. Fewer teachers, fewer custodians, larger classrooms." So, out of 15,376 school districts nationwide, where did NBC find these conditions? In Wales, Mass. (pop. 1,500). That's the same one-school town which Giselle Fernandez focused on for the CBS Evening News four days before. She found "kids from different grade levels... crammed together on one classroom." For anchor Connie Chung, Wales showed how "Hard times are fueling a growing taxpayer revolt around the country. People...are refusing to pay more, even at the expense of their own children."
But Wales is anything but typical. As The Boston Globe noted on January 5, voters turned down a tax hike in part because "property taxes in Wales rose about a third last year." Then again, if Wales were typical, network crews wouldn't have driven for hours to find the rural town.
