MediaWatch: July 1989
Table of Contents:
Revolving Door: Hoosier Time
Hoosier Time. Democratic political activist Ken Bode, NBC's Chief Political Correspondent for the past several election cycles, picked up his last paycheck from the network in June. He's moving to Greencastle, Indiana for the slower pace of academic life as Director of the Center for Contemporary Media at DePauw University. Bode is not completely abandoning television: He'll serve as moderator of a new quarterly TV series, American Survival, produced by the Hudson Institute in Indianapolis. Bode was a top level strategist for liberal Democrat Morris Udall's 1976 presidential bid. In 1972, according to The Washington Post, he wrote the McGovern Commission delegate reform rules.
From Carter to the Times. Leon Sigal, a Special Assistant to the Director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the State Department between 1979 and 1981, has joined The New York Times editorial board. As an editorial writer Sigal now works for Jack Rosenthal, Editor of the editorial page and a State Departtment official under President Johnson. A government professor at Wesleyan University before and after his government stint, Sigal has written two Brookings Institution books on arms control since leaving the Carter Administration.
Switching Sides. The Washington Bureau Chief of The Milwaukee Journal, John (Jack) Kole, has left the paper's D.C. office after more than 25 years. In June he jumped into politics as Senior Writer and press aide for liberal Congressman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat he spent much of his career covering.
Matthews in the Morning. For the past year or so Chris Matthews, Chief of Staff to former House Speaker Tip O'Neill from 1981 to 1986, has served as "political columnist" for CBS This Morning. The network must like what he has to say. In May Matthews signed a one year contract to contribute a news story, interview or commentary every Monday.
Gunning for Lugar. Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana has named David Shapiro his new Press Secretary. For the past six years Shapiro has been an off-air national security affairs reporter for the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour on PBS.
Columbia Journalism Review's View. Just after becoming Publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) late last year, Joan Konnor assured readers she does not think the media are biased in any way. "I believe," Bill Moyers' former producer at PBS wrote, that reporters "have no theologies, no 'isms'" and there is "no time for fixed religions, no dogma." In early March Konnor selected a new Editor: Suzanne Braun Levine, a founder, Managing Editor and later Editor of the liberal Ms. magazine. So much for any articles in CJR, the nation's largest magazine of media criticism, about liberal media bias.
