MediaWatch: January 1995
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: January 1995
- Revolving Door Spins More for Clinton Administration that Bush's
- NewsBites: Scrooged
- Magazine's Unrelenting Attacks
- CBS Star Far Nicer to Bill Clinton's Mother in 1993 Interview
- Double, Triple the Spending
- Martin's Unmatched
- Abramson-Mayer Book Eviscerated--"Impeccable research"?
- Janet Cooke Award: The "Nonpartisan" Take on Reaganomics
NewsBites: Scrooged
Would it be Christmas without the media comparing Republicans to Ebenezer Scrooge? After ignoring the content of the Contract with America before the election, reporters attacked the Contract based on complaints by liberal interest groups.
Morton Dean introduced a December 21 Good Morning America story, intoning: "The incoming Speaker of the House is being called a modern-day Scrooge by a coalition of charities." Reporter Bob Zelnick summarized Republican plans to return federal programs to the states in block grants, then added: "Some of the nation's largest charities charged that the plan would sharply increase hunger among the poor." He cited the left-wing Food Research and Action Center, and said charities fear "a huge cutback in federal food programs could generate more hungry people than they could possibly accommodate."
The same day, NBC's Kenley Jones declared on the Today show: "Churches and charities who deal with hunger lashed out against the Republican Contract...comparing it to something Ebenezer Scrooge would have dreamed up." Without citing any statistical evidence, Jones asserted "the problem of hunger in Atlanta is getting worse" and concluded: "Mission officials are worried that cutbacks in federal food programs will bring more hungry people to their door but without the money to feed them." Zelnick and Jones focused on the complaints of service providers and poverty lobbyists, whose talk of unnamed "cuts" are, to date, just as fictional as Scrooge.
Oh No! Bias!
Washington Post media reporter Howard
Kurtz has found a practitioner of media bias -- on the right.
In a December 15 profile of ABC 20/20 correspondent John
Stossel, Kurtz described his criticism of the Food and Drug
Administration: "such unabashed free-market advocacy has made
the ABC reporter the darling of conservative and industry groups.
Consumer advocates, not surprisingly, take a dimmer view." Kurtz
warned: "As television news has grown more crowded and magazine
shows have multiplied like rabbits, many network
correspondents have become more openly analytical -- some say
to the point of editorializing -- in an effort to stand out
from the crowd. And while the news magazines have always framed
their stories around good guys and bad guys, Stossel seems to
go a step further." Further than whom? Dateline NBC on GM?
Such advocacy hasn't escaped the liberal bias specialists at ABC. Kurtz quoted one unnamed ABC reporter who regards Stossel's work as "bizarre" and "horribly thin, with almost some kind of agenda." Kurtz added that Stossel's reporting places him in a peculiar spot with the network brass. "Has Stossel gone too far? Richard Wald, ABC's Senior Vice President, says Stossel's public call for deep-sixing the FDA has not run afoul of a network ban on taking partisan stands because it hasn't involved a current political controversy." Kurtz didn't mention Wald's position on the reporting of Ned Potter or Peter Jennings.
Snoozing Watchdogs
The media watchdogs who jumped on every scandal, real and imagined, during the Reagan years continued their slumber through the Clinton years. Two scandalous stories about Clinton's close associates were ignored by the networks in December.
On December 16, The Washington Post reported in a page one story that the Clinton presidential campaign paid $37,500, including $9,675 in federal matching funds, to settle a sexual harassment claim against longtime Clinton friend and Hillary business partner David Watkins. Although many top Clinton campaign and White House officials knew of the payoff, Watkins was appointed head of the White House Office of Administration and served until he was fired for taking a presidential helicopter to a golf course. Network coverage of Watkins' hush money? ABC's Good Morning America broadcast a short piece read by anchor Morton Dean. The other networks and all the news magazines ignored it.
On December 21, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth asked the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney to examine White House aide Ira Magaziner's testimony on the health care task force for perjury and contempt of court violations. Magaziner headed Clinton's health care task force and helped conceive and author the Health Security Act. In response to a lawsuit trying to stop the committee developing the health care plan from working in secret, Magaziner gave a sworn declaration that only federal government employees were working on the health plan. Judge Lamberth wrote that Magaziner must have known his declaration was false, because employees of his private consulting firm were working on the task force. Network and news magazine coverage of Magaziner's lie? Zero.
No Jesse Jackson Gaffes
You didn't know that Jesse Jackson made statements equating conservatives, specifically the Christian Coalition, with Nazis, slave owners and white supremacists? You're not alone.
During a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board in early December, Jackson claimed: "The Christian Coalition was a strong force in Germany. It laid down a suitable, scientific, theological rationale for the tragedy in Germany. The Christian Coalition was very much in evidence there." In remarks broadcast Christmas Day on British television, Jackson continued his attack: "We must no longer allow the clock to be turned back on human rights, or put up with political systems which are content to maintain the status quo. In South Africa the status quo was called racism. We rebelled against it. In Germany it was called fascism. Now in Britain and the U.S., it is called conservatism." Both stories were covered in many newspapers, but network evening news shows didn't find Jackson's hate-filled tirades newsworthy enough to report. Has Jackson ever whispered to Connie Chung that Nancy Reagan or Barbara Bush is a bitch? We would never know, since the media protect their liberal brethren from the gaffe-of-the-day coverage they apply to conservatives.
Another Counterculture McGovernik
The same media which raked Dan Quayle over the coals over his service and his views on the Vietnam War ignored Vietnam-era letters from Al Gore to his then-Senator father quoted in the November 28 New Yorker. The letters revealed a very radical Al: "We do have inveterate antipathy for communism -- or paranoia as I like to put it...my own belief is that this form of psychological ailment -- in this case a national madness -- leads the victim to create what he fears the most. It strikes me that this is precisely what the U.S. has been doing. Creating -- and if not creating, supporting, energetically supporting -- fascist totalitarian regimes in the name of fighting totalitarianism....For me the best example of all is the U.S. Army."
The networks all but ignored the Gore letters. Only CNN carried a brief story on the Nov. 20 World News. The only news magazine mention came from baby boomer Jonathan Alter, who spun to the rescue in the December 5 Newsweek: "Zero damage done -- the man is '60s proof."
Democratic Orange County Treasurer Robert Citron's speculative investments cost the county's investment fund billions in taxpayers' money. But in a December 23 Money section cover story, USA Today reporter David J. Lynch blamed voters for passing Proposition 13, which limited property taxes 16 years ago. Lynch asserted: "But if one man's hubris fueled this crisis, the kindling that turned his [Citron's] flaw into a county's tragedy lies elsewhere: voters' fierce anti-tax sentiment; public clamor for services; and an outmoded county government." The problem? "Residents' anti-tax fervor collided with their demand for roads, libraries, and schools." Lynch wrote: "Citron appeared a savior...he saved Orange County from a budget crunch by producing unexpected interest income. The cash helped save popular programs, such as an anti-gang initiative, without higher taxes."
In the January 9 Investor's Business Daily, Charles Oliver reported: "In Orange County, total general revenue increased from $1,683 per capita to $1,721" between 1977-1989, adjusted for inflation. Even Lynch later admitted that Orange County's "$2.3 billion annual budget -- [totaled] almost seven times the fiscal 1974-75 figure." Since he never broke down the expenditures, it's hard for a reader to see how Prop. 13 led to an underfunded Orange County.
Death Penalty Detractors
When is a statistic wrong to the media? When it doesn't prove a liberal point. On the December 5 NBC Nightly News, reporter Jim Cummins didn't let statistics ruin his story on the death penalty in Texas. Cummins stated: "Since Texas resumed executions 12 years ago, the murder rate has dropped about 25 percent." But Cummins lined up criminologist James Marquart to dispute that: "Marquart is convinced the resumption of executions had nothing to do with that reduction in the murder rate." Cummins offered no alternative cause for the reduction of murders.
Then Cummins found a statistic more to his liking. "Capital punishment is expensive. A Duke University study found the average cost of convicting and executing a murderer is $329,000. It costs little more than half that to convict and imprison the same murderer for 20 years." But criminals facing the death penalty often file multiple appeals. Many murderers plea bargain for life in prison, causing much less money to be spent on their conviction.
Cummins' conclusion was no more convincing. He stated that the death penalty "doesn't solve the larger problem. Texas and the other states that execute the most murderers still have persistently high murder rates." Cummins failed to point out that states without a death penalty, like New York (13.2 homicides per 100,000) or the District of Columbia (75.2 per 100,000), have persistently higher murder rates than states that do execute murderers.
Carter Coronation
The media continue to bolster their favorite ex-President, Jimmy Carter, peripatetic peacemaker, hopping from hot spot to hot spot. On the December 19 ABC World News Now, former ABC News Washington Bureau Chief George Watson nominated him Man of the Year, over Time's selection of the Pope: "But who, pray tell me, has made more of a positive difference this year?....Because of his illness, the Pope had to cancel his trip to Sarajevo. Jimmy Carter was there."
On the December 18 CBS Evening News, Cinny Kennard also got religion: "The people in Sarajevo prayed for a breakthrough this Sunday. The Cardinal spoke of unity, perhaps welcoming President Carter when he said what we need here now is good people with good hearts."
But the ultimate Nobel Prize endorsement came from Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau Chief Jack Nelson. Over the December 17 headline "Carter, Driven to Do Good, Looks to Bosnia Quagmire," Nelson wrote that in 1980, Carter "immediately went back to what he had done much of his life; pursuing lost and neglected causes with a missionary's zeal....anyone who has followed his career closely can understand why he has legions of admirers here and abroad who view him not as self-absorbed but as a dedicated political leader who is driven by moral principles and who devotes his life to resolving conflicts and helping the unfortunate."
This is nothing new for Nelson. Three years ago on the PBS special Jimmy Carter: Speaking Out, he narrated, "The more people see of this Jimmy Carter, the more likely they are to warm to him. Negative feelings toward Carter's personality clouded the public's perception of his White House achievements. A more open Jimmy Carter may lead to a more objective assessment of his presidency."
