MediaWatch: January 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: January 1994
- Conscientious Objectors to Trooper Allegations Jumped on Tower
- NewsBites: Bryant Confesses
- Revolving Door: Talbott Promoted at State
- Friend of Bill Takes Over at ABC
- Fascists, Communists on "Right"
- Boxing Helen Thomas
- TV Truth Squads Take the Day Off
- Janet Cooke Award: Newsweek Celebrates 60th Anniversary with Mostly Liberal Historical Essay
Fascists, Communists on "Right"
Russian Labels Blur
In her Newsweek column of June 12, 1989, Washington Post Editorial Page Editor Meg Greenfield wrote: "Every time there is a confrontation in the world, we manage to dub the good guys liberals and the bad guys conservatives and pretty soon that is common currency." Nowhere is that statement more accurate than in the media's characterization of the 1991 communist coup and the 1993 success of fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
On the August 22, 1991 World News, CNN's Gene Randall characterized the coup as an "ill-fated right-wing junta." Likewise, an August 26 story by Los Angeles Times reporter John-Thor Dahlburg referred to "the right-wing coup."
Two years later labeling remained ubiquitous. On the December 13 World News Tonight, ABC's Mike Lee delivered the following one-liner: "The big winner is the ultra-conservative Liberal Democratic Party." Only in the media would the words ultra-conservative and liberal appear back-to-back. On the next night's CBS Evening News, Dan Rather declared: "Russia's next presidential election isn't scheduled until 1996, but the right wing now has a power base in parliament." The December 15 Today featured NBC's Bryant Gumbel referring to Zhirinovsky as "the popular new darling of the Russian right."
Yet it was NBC's Bob Abernethy who had the worst time distinguishing between the two events. In 1991 he referred to the communist coup as "the hard-line right." This year he described the fascists as "Zhirinovsky and his far-right ideas," "the right-wing extremism of Zhirinovsky," and "Russia's right-wing extremists."
Ironically, the same media that consistently label both communists and fascists as right-wing cried foul when it came to the labeling of Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party. In the December 13 Washington Post, the same Fred Hiatt who two years earlier reported on "the failed right-wing coup" by communists, alerted his readers to "Zhirinovsky's misleadingly named Liberal Democratic Party." On the December 14 Nightline ABC's Ted Koppel commented: "His party, the Liberal Democrats, which may be the biggest misnomer since Adolf Hitler called his party the National Socialists, Zhirinovsky's party won and won big."
