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
Double, Triple the Spending
It's Still Not Enough!
The media has holiday traditions: trimming the tree, trimming the turkey, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors' report, warning against trimming the budget. In December 1991, Dan Rather stated: "There's no joy in reporting it, but the ranks of homeless and hungry are up sharply and increasing." In the generous spirit of the season, the networks have again promoted this self-interested lobby's findings as objective news, without any opposing commentary.
For ten years running, the mayors have announced that hunger is up, homelessness is up, and more federal funds are required. Is this really news? All three networks thought so. On the December 19 World News Tonight, ABC's Carole Simpson pointed out "Almost a billion dollars was spent this year on homelessness, double the budget last year," but she added, "Some of the mayors are worried that the incoming reform-minded Republican-dominated Congress may make things worse."
On the December 20 Today show, NBC's Bob Kur cited the "bipartisan" mayors' report and upped the ante, saying "federal aid to the homeless has tripled in three years." Yet Kur continued, "The mayors say more spending is needed, not less."
CBS rehearsed its holdiay spirit as well."Winter hasn't even started yet and the outlook for the nation's needy is looking bleak," Dan Rather intoned in the introduction to Randall Pinkston's December 19 CBS Evening News piece. Pinkston claimed "a dramatic drop in federal food subsidies, from $80 million in the last fiscal year, to $25 million now."
But Robert Rector, in a forthcoming monograph from the Heritage Foundation, shows federal food aid is slated to increase by a billion dollars in 1995, from a level of $35.4 billion to $36.4 billion, with the emergency food assistance portion estimated to go from $122 million to $123 million. Still, Pinkston continued the media's trend of selective concern over deficit spending: "Advocates worry that if Republicans make good on their threatened budget cuts, whatever safety net exists for America's needy won't exist anymore."
With Republicans talking of spending cuts, the same party blamed for running up deficits in the 1980s is being deluged again with future "victims" of spending cuts. And reporters wonder why it's so hard to cut spending.
