MediaWatch: January 1997
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: Not Inn the News
Appearing on CNN's Larry King Weekend on January 4, NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell suggested one Clinton scandal resonated with the public, but she never told them about it.
The Washington Post reported in its Sunday editions on December 15 that the Democrats rewarded large donors with an overnight White House stay. When it came up on CNN, Mitchell explained: "I've been working on that story and I kind of think that even though Republicans in the past have had their big contributors and have abused the soft money contributions, the money that doesn't have to be accounted for, people understand the selling of the Lincoln Bedroom. You know, when the Lincoln Bedroom becomes the Motel 6, that resonates with the American people."
But NBC's Today didn't mention it the morning of the Post story or even the next day. Football bumped Sunday's NBC Nightly News, but nothing appeared the next night. In the three weeks from the Post story's publication through her CNN appearance, Nightly News carried three Clinton scandal pieces, all from Mitchell. None of the stories contained a word about this payback policy she claimed to be "working on."
A Plane Outrage
While the Motel 6 story went untold, NBC did have time to report the "scandal" of outgoing Rep. Bob Dornan's recent ride in a Marine fighter plane. On the December 10 Nightly News, Tom Brokaw announced: "Say you're a long-standing member of Congress whose support for defense programs is so legendary your colleagues nickname you B-1 Bob, for the bomber. And say your constituents just voted you out of office. What are you going to do? Well if you're Bob Dornan, the Republican firebrand from Orange County, California, you take one last spin in a Marine Corps F/A-18 fighter jet like this one...How much did this final ride cost taxpayers? Somewhere between two and four thousand dollars."
Earlier in the day on Inside Politics, CNN's Bernard Shaw also took up the story: "Republican Bob Dornan may have lost his congressional seat but he can still wrangle a perky elite seat from the U.S. military. Dornan has taken one last fast fling before his congressional privileges dry up...The public interest group, the Center for Defense Information, says that one hour flight cost about $4,000." While CNN promoted the liberal CDI's press release without explaining their politics, Shaw at least sought the whole story, adding: "A Marine spokesman says the flight didn't set taxpayers back. They say it would've taken place with or without the Congressman from California."
Pumping Up Poverty
If poverty doesn't appear widespread enough to justify more federal spending, just change the definition of the problem. A liberal group did and ABC fell for it. On the December 11 World News Tonight, anchor Peter Jennings announced: "There is a study today by a private research group called the National Center for Children in Poverty which believes that the government's official poverty level is too low." Reporter Rebecca Chase began: "During the last 15 years this study found the number of children under the age of six living in poverty grew from 3.5 million to 6.1 million. That's one in every four children. And when families living on the edge of poverty are included, using a cutoff of $28,000 a year for a family of four, nearly half of all young children are living in or near poverty. This means the United States has the highest child poverty rate among industrialized nations."
$28,000? According to the Department of Commerce, in 1995 the poverty level for a family of four was $15,569, barely half the figure used in the study. Obviously, the higher you make the poverty level, the more children you can claim live in poverty. Using a 15-year study period also obscures positive trends: for example, the Census Bureau's measure of child poverty declined in the Reagan years, from13.9 million in 1983 to 12.6 million in 1989.
Jack E. White Noise
Maybe the reason why there is so much liberalism in the media is because it is so often rewarded. In the December 23 Time, President Bruce Hallett boasted: "Last month the New York Association of Black Journalists honored us with four awards....Jack E. White for the second consecutive year received two prizes: one for `overall excellence in writing and reporting,' the other for his column, Dividing Line."
White described his philosophy: "The goal in my column and in other stories is to examine and expose some of the nonsense that Americans continue to believe about race. Generally, whites tend to downplay the extent of their racism -- and blacks tend to overplay it. We could use a lot more openness and honesty." But White has regularly overplayed it. On March 18 he blamed black church burnings on conservatives. White brought his "honesty" to the issue by blaming "all the conservative Republicans, from Newt Gingrich to Pete Wilson, who have sought political advantage by exploiting white resentment...Over the past 18 months, while Republicans fulminated about welfare and affirmative action, more than 20 churches in Alabama and six other Southern and Border states have been torched...There is already enough evidence to indict the cynical conservatives who build their political careers, George Wallace-style, on a foundation of race-baiting. They may not start fires, but they fan the flames."
In the September 30 Time, White refused to downplay speculation the CIA had introduced crack to the inner city: "Black Americans have been the targets of so much hostility that many of them would not put it past their own government to finance the war against communism by addicting thousands of people."
Affirmative Inaction
When the National Association of Scholars (NAS) commissioned a poll of full-time college professors by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research in October to assess professors' attitudes on quotas, the results were surprising. Sixty percent opposed race or sex-based preferences in faculty hiring practices and 56 percent were against preferences for admissions. The poll contradicted the images of college protests against California anti-affirmative action Proposition 209.
Bradford Wilson and Peter Warren of the NAS brought this discrepancy to light in a January 2 column in The Washington Times, noting that "the NAS thought these findings noteworthy enough to warrant the attention of the Associated Press." But, AP polling editor Howard Goldberg said that "since NAS is on the record as being skeptical of preferences, `We would have to put in the story that the survey was funded by an organization that opposed affirmative action.'" So, no AP story.
Yet Linda Seebach, editorial editor of the San Ramon Valley Times, opined in her New York Times News Service column, "What stories does the AP consider worth doing? We published one just last week, about graduate students and faculty in the English department at Berkeley who signed a public letter condemning Proposition 209 as an abuse of civil rights discourse."
Hyperbole Epidemic
There is an epidemic at NBC Nightly News. The main symptom is use of the word "epidemic" in the most bizarre of contexts. Over the past two years the program has used it 32 times, describing everything from AIDS, to asthma, to -- job anxiety? The year 1996 brought 15 "epidemics." Of those references, only three fit the traditional definition of an epidemic as a swiftly-spreading, contagious disease (those three concerned the spread of AIDS). Breast cancer and skin cancer were also labeled epidemics on March 26 and May 2, respectively, although neither one is a contagious disease. On October 29 health correspondent Robert Bazell said of obesity, "As an epidemic, it's no joke. Obesity is after smoking the second leading cause of preventable illness and death in the United States."
Some references were bizarre: On January 4, anchor Tom Brokaw claimed that job anxiety was an "epidemic sweeping the country." In the summer NBC found an epidemic of black church burnings. On June 10 Pete Williams warned that the "epidemic spread to Texas." Bob Dotson contracted the virus June 13, reporting of the burnings: "This epidemic is worse than a conspiracy." Pete Williams caught the bug again December 3 while covering the constitutionality of the Brady Bill: "But nationwide, many sheriffs and police chiefs willingly do the background checks believing the law helps reduce an epidemic of handgun violence."
In 1995 the show warned of an "epidemic" 17 times, covering such diseases as overmedication, asthma, the fear of urban violence, alcoholism among the elderly, domestic violence, and two references to a child abuse epidemic. Only 6 of those 17 "epidemics" referred to actual contagious diseases.
Cradle-to-Grave Refugees
It's impossible to over-estimate the lengths the networks will go to find victims of welfare reform. On the December 1 Good Morning America, ABC's Kevin Newman reported on the plight of Laotian Hmong refugees on welfare. Newman opened his piece: "This morning's Cover Story is a Thanksgiving tale of sorts. It's about charity and of people who performed a valuable wartime service for America." Newman profiled a community of Hmong living in Minneapolis "buried now in the parkas and fur hats of a Minnesota winter, with a story as bitter as the air."
After talking to a group of Hmong at a community center about promises the U.S. government made to them after the Vietnam War, Newman retorted: "Written proof of those promises is hard to find They were first moved to camps in Northern Thailand and eventually granted refugee status in America. That made them eligible for benefits which have helped many Hmong build new lives in cities like Minneapolis and Fresno, California. But now many of those benefits are being reduced or eliminated under the new welfare and immigration laws."
After stating that the Hmong could avoid the cuts by becoming U.S. citizens, which means having a basic competence in English, Newman again made their case: "For most refugees that's a simple test, but not for the Hmong But the language barrier is only the first that seems impossible to overcome. It's even harder to explain the concept of America's government. Or hardest perhaps to explain how that government which once counted on them now expects them to make it on their own."
Watkins Spiked
David Watkins' place in the Clinton inner circle was verified in 1994 when The Washington Post discovered the Clinton campaign paid off (partially with federal funds) a sexual-harassment claim against him. The networks ignored that story. The spiking continued when the January American Spectator published Watkins' recollections, in preparation for a book deal that fell apart, about the Clinton White House. Rebecca Borders told readers that Watkins related personal conversations his wife Ileene had with Vince Foster intimates indicating Hillary Clinton was having an affair with Foster and that Mrs. Clinton was shunned by the Foster family at the funeral.
Watkins also told Borders that presidential aide Marsha Scott told Mrs. Watkins she was having an affair with the President in the White House. The Spectator supported this allegation with White House logs that showed Scott entered the White House residence at 12:50 a.m. with other aides on the night of Foster's death, but did not leave with them around 1:30a.m. When asked when she went home that night, Scott told congressional investigators: "It's a blur." Would the press use this story as a lead to reinvestigate the context of Foster's depression and death, or see if the Clintons broke their promise of faithfulness expressed in their 60 Minutes interview? Answer: No.
