MediaWatch: January 1996
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: January 1996
- Same Liberal Song, Second Verse
- NewsBites: The Silent Veto
- Revolving Door: If You Cant Boost 'Em
- The Shutdown Soap Opera
- Today Gushes Over Hillary
- Nightline's True Story
- Brinkley Agrees Media are Liberal Paula Zahn is "Overloaded"
- Janet Cooke Award: Newt Gingrich, Political Liability
Brinkley Agrees Media are Liberal Paula Zahn is "Overloaded"
In a December 7 appearance on CNBC's Cal Thomas, David Brinkley reacted with dismay when read a quote from the MRC's Best Notable Quotables of 1995: The Eighth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting.
Thomas, one of the judges who voted on which quotes deserved inclusion in the year-end issue, asked: "Could you get away, for example, with asking a question like this, that was recently asked by a major network anchor of Pat Buchanan...`You've got political enemies out there calling you an isolationist, a bigot, you're anti-gay, and some even go so far as saying your social stands are reminiscent of Nazi Germany.' Now that's the kind of ideologically loaded stuff that turns a lot of people off, isn't it?"
Brinkley agreed: "That is so loaded, it's overloaded and it destroys itself in its own excess. Nobody would ever take that question seriously, I wouldn't even bother to answer it." Though Brinkley didn't know it, the quote, first runner-up for the "Damn Those Conservatives Award," came from Paula Zahn's July 5 CBS This Morning interview.
Earlier in the show the former NBC anchor and current This Week host acknowledged liberal bias."Well, it's there and it doesn't show itself in everything that is printed or broadcast but it is there, and I think we're all used to it, we discount it. Some of the press also is more conservative and it's just the way the action is in this country and I don't know any way to change it. You just have to live with it."
