MediaWatch: January 1996

NewsBites: The Silent Veto

Bill Clinton vetoed the welfare reform bill late on January 9, in an apparent attempt to avoid that night's news coverage. His concern was understandable; the veto would be an admission that he was breaking his famous campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it."

Clinton worried needlessly: None of the network's January 10 evening news shows mentioned Clinton's veto, even after possible GOP opponent Bob Dole took to the Senate floor to criticize Clinton's betrayal. Although the media properly focused on criticism when George Bush broke his "no new taxes" campaign pledge, there was no focus on criticism of Clinton. The media missed another opportunity when Clinton held a press conference January 11. He was peppered with 18 questions, but not one raised the issue of his breaking his welfare promise, the crux of his effort to portray himself as a "New Democrat."

Flattening Forbes.

At first glance, Steve Forbes' presidential campaign would seem to fulfill the media's standards for a proper Republican candidate: One with sufficiently soft stands on social issues to avoid the "divisive" label. Unable to attack Forbes as extremist (he has suitably "tolerant" stands on such issues as abortion and immigration), in the December 4 Time, Senior Writer Richard Stengel charged that "for all his patrician good humor, Forbes' message and his campaign have begun to show a hard edge." Stengel exploited a tenuous link between Forbes and Senator Jesse Helms' racially-tinged campaigns: "While Forbes generally shuns the politics of exclusion, he has nonetheless attracted to his organization two veterans of Jesse Helms' race-baiting campaigns."

He also attacked Forbes' centerpiece flat tax proposal: "Despite his frequent protestations that he understands the needs of the average Joe, his flat-tax proposal would reward wealthy investors while leaving the burden on middle-class families." He added the plan would "do little to disabuse taxpayers of the notion that the rich get a better deal from the tax system." He cited data from the "generally liberal" Citizens for Tax Justice, stating a seventeen percent flat tax would produce a revenue shortfall of $200 billion. The group also claimed Dick Armey's similar flat tax plan would raise taxes on middle class families, estimating increases in the $1,740-$4,600 range on families earning between $45,000 and $85,000.

Stengel didn't quote a conservative expert, but for a balancing view he could have referred to Time's very own flat tax analysis of April 17, when a CPA estimated how much tax a hypothetical family of four making $50,000 could expect to pay under the Armey plan. Time found the family's taxes would be cut by almost half, from $4,249 under the existing system to $2,244 under the Armey plan.

DeParle's Platform.

Twice in December, The New York Times provided a platform for reporter Jason DeParle's personal crusade against Republican welfare reforms. In the December 17 New York Times Magazine he depicted a post-welfare reform nightmare. DeParle wrote his story as an encyclopedia entry from the year 2015 that took a look back at the history of welfare.

The fictitious excerpt presented welfare reform as an initial success when left to the states until a recession hit in 1999: "Faced with declining revenues and rising aid requests, states slashed their payments....With families crossing borders in search of aid, the `race to the bottom' ensued, with each state trying to be as tough as its neighbors." DeParle described an almost apocalyptic state where mothers were "arrested each year for locking their children in cars as they worked." DeParle predicted a million families would be "lining up at shelters, stealing into abandoned buildings and begging on street corners." DeParle continued his gloomy forecast: "Some became more reliant on abusive boyfriends, and reports of domestic violence rose. Abortion rates hit record levels and so did arrests for prostitution, leading several cities to decriminalize the practice in specified red-light zones."

DeParle's Other Platform. Two weeks earlier in a Times "Week in Review" piece, DeParle charged: "While the Republicans promise that the poor will prosper, the evidence does not. Indeed, most suggests the opposite: whether the economy or poor people are ultimately to blame, most will fail to replace their lost benefits. If the past is a guide, less will not mean more. Less will mean less, for those who already have little."

DeParle criticized the GOP plan to let states run welfare, taking on supposed GOP arguments such as "The programs don't help much anyway," and "Earnings will improve with time." DeParle even refuted the notion that the poor actually "will be better off by working," answering: "Or will they? No one knows how many of the five million women of AFDC will be able to find and keep work. Many have few skills and lead the kinds of chaotic lives that interfere with full-time work: sick kids, dangerous neighborhoods, abusive boyfriends, broken cars."

Newt the Destroyer?

ABC previewed the Democratic strategy to hang Republican Tom Campbell with the "Newtoid" tag, but when the strategy backfired ABC ignored the results. In Carol Lin's December 10 piece for World News Sunday she highlighted Democrat Jerry Estruth's effort to defeat Republican Campbell in a special congessional election to replace retiring Democrat Norman Mineta. Anchor Carole Simpson introduced the story: "For all of Mr. Gingrich's power on Capitol Hill, opinion polls show his star is fading with American voters. So much so that one congressional candidate in California is using the Gingrich image to beat down his once-popular Republican opponent."

Lin reported Campbell at one point had enjoyed a 43-point lead over Estruth. "Yet this political novice has managed to cut his popular Republican opponent's lead in half. By redefining the enemy. Estruth launched an ad campaign attacking House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And labeling Tom Campbell as a Gingrich clone." Lin pointed out that Campbell was more moderate than the Speaker on many issues, "But the strategy seems to be working. With more than a million dollars in donations pouring in." Lin continued, "Democrats hope Gingrich's negatives will be the central issue that can turn election campaigns across the country," before concluding: "Campbell is still the front runner in this race but only by a narrow margin. Democrats say that alone is still a victory for their party. Because they found their weapon. The man who started the Republican revolution may give frustrated voters reason enough to bring more Democrats back to office."

So, did ABC make it a big story when Campbell trounced Estruth by 23 points on December 12? No, not a word about the result on World News Tonight.

Hot Media Air.

CBS and ABC have recently portrayed House Republicans as the catalysts to impending global doom, but have ignored scientific studies which back the GOP. "Some House Republicans are objecting to the global agreement to ban industrial chemicals widely believed to be depleting the earth's ozone layer," Dan Rather intoned on the November 23 CBS Evening News. Eric Engberg explained "that 150 countries have signed a treaty banning production of ozone depleting chemicals," but "to the number three Republican in the House, it's Chicken Little Stuff...Time out! Not proven? Didn't this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry go to Dr. Mario Molina and two others who discovered ozone depletion?"

Over a month later, ABC's January 4 World News Tonight ran another alarmist warning. Peter Jennings began: "Two thousand scientists from all over the world agree the earth is getting warmer all the time, in part because the United States is not practicing what it has been preaching." Ned Potter followed, "scientists say if they [temperatures] keep going up as they have heat waves will spread across North America. A third of the world's glaciers will melt, flooding coastlines in dozens of countries. Tropical diseases will spread, exposing large parts of the U.S. to malaria." Potter charged that the Clinton administration "gave in to the petroleum and auto industries" and then he allowed Vice President Al Gore to blame the House GOP.

But the need for action isn't so clear. Washington Post science writer Boyce Rensberger reported January 8 that of the three major studies of global temperatures during 1995 one reported an increase in average temperature, one called 1995 "ordinary," and one found some cooling. Guess which two the networks have ignored?

Moyers On Wages. PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers returned to Milwaukee for the December 19 Frontline to visit two families who suffered layoffs in 1991 at the motor company Briggs and Stratton. Moyers complained: "Good-paying jobs are heading south or out of the country and workers like Tony Neumann are searching desperately for new jobs that will support their families...In the early '90s, families like the Stanleys and Neumanns were thrown into a emerging new economy built on light manufacturing and service jobs. It was a time when unemployment hit record lows. But many of the new jobs offered only part-time work and no benefits, and they paid lower wages." Moyers concluded the show: "For working people all over America, real wages continue to decline."

But in a review on the morning before the show, a sequel to the 1992 program Minimum Wages, Washington Post reporter Steven Pearlstein told a story Moyers didn't: "In fact, today there are 12,000 more manufacturing jobs in the Milwaukee area than there were in the fall of 1991 when Claude Stanley and Tony Neumann were laid off, while the average hourly wage in manufacturing has climbed from $12.54 an hour to $13.98, just about keeping pace with inflation." Pearlstein added that Briggs and Stratton motors are now cheaper for consumers and the company is making money for its stockholders.

Rather Embarrassed. While on Denver's KOA talk radio host Mike Rosen's program, Dan Rather tried to defend himself and his network against charges of bias. Rosen questioned Rather's repeated use of the word "cut" when describing the Republican Medicare plan on the CBS Evening News. Rather shot back, "Some of the time we use the language, `Medicare cuts,' which is what the Democrats insist these are, and some of the time we use that these are, `cuts in the rate of growth for Medicare,' which is what the Republicans prefer. We try to walk that line, we try to call it one way one time, one way the next time."

A review of Evening News broadcasts from September 20, the night before the Republicans unveiled their Medicare plan, to November 28, when Rather appeared on Rosen's program, shows the CBS anchor should pay closer attention to what comes out of his mouth. During this period, Rather used the Democratic spin term `cuts' eight times such as when Rather announced as fact on September 20: "Democrats and Republicans in Congress late today came close to actual physical blows over proposed cuts in Medicare. That's the separate U.S. government health care coverage for 37 million older Americans of all income levels. There's no doubt that Medicare spending will be cut, the question is how much and for how many." On October 25 he claimed that "Republicans vowed to press for huge cuts in government spending and $245 billion in tax cuts. President Clinton vowed to veto it as too radical and extreme."

He applied the phrase that best described reality, "reducing the rate of growth," or "reducing spending" three times. He relayed the Republican spin, "making the plan solvent" just once; hardly the "one way one time, one way the next time" which Rather claimed.

Featured Posts

Bozell Slams Hillary’s Shills in Media: ‘They Are Covering for’ Her

Get the Latest News From CNSNews

Get the Latest Media Analysis on NewsBusters