MediaWatch: July 1991
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: Touting Tito
TOUTING TITO. While the nations held together by communist force in Yugoslavia tried to break away as our own Independence Day approached, NBC correspondent John Dancy offered an intriguing history lesson. "Yugoslavia," he explained, "was patched together after World War I out of Balkan states with a history of independence. President Tito, Yugoslavia's war hero, held the country together through his personal charisma." So Tito had all those tanks and soldiers so he could impress foreign dignitaries with big parades?
WHAT CUTS? Since late June, reporters have repeatedly blamed federal budget cuts for state deficits, as if it were beyond argument. For example, on June 30 NBC's Bob Herbert charged: "New Yorkers struggled for more than a decade against the cuts in federal aid imposed by Presidents Reagan and Bush. Then like a knockout blow came the recession." On July 1 CBS reporter Bob Faw asserted: "America's cities are also caught between a rock and a hard place -- new problems, homelessness and AIDS, but fewer federal dollars to spend, forcing New York City to raise taxes."
Before you buy this cop-out from big states that spent every cent they received and more during the '80s, take a look at the facts. Federal aid to states and cities has gone up from $115 billion in 1988 to an estimated $171 billion for fiscal 1992. If these kinds of "cuts" continue too much longer, taxpayers won't have any money left.
INDECENT EXPOSURE. The Washington Post's tender loving care of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) even extends to "artists" rejected by the NEA. On June 22, critic Pamela Sommers described Tim Miller's "Sex/Love/Stories" performance as a "compelling journey" where "gay activist" Miller entertains the audience by describing "a million and one liaisons in graphic detail," including one with "a muscular literary type on a nude beach that provide him (and us) with ample entertainment."
Sommers added: "He yanks down his pants and has a rank, emotionally charged discussion with his bared anatomy about the importance of celebrating the flesh, especially in the midst of disease and censorship and death." The Post critic concluded that "he must also be lauded for his artistry and bravery in difficult times."
CANADIAN CANDOR. Media bias is not a problem limited to the United States. Former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reporter Barbara Amiel conceded that bias permeates the government controlled network.
Writing in the April 29 issue of Macleans, a Canadian newsweekly, she explained: "My association with the CBC goes back over 25 years when I began working there. A left-wing political bias existed when I was in news and current affairs during the 1960s and continues today. Back then, we selected program topics and participants with an eye to confirming our prejudices. Inevitably, this meant the most strident and foolish people were found to present the alternative view. We were anti-American, anti-big business and pro-feminist and accepted uncritically certain assumptions about the existence of racism and sexism in Canadian society. We took a relentless approach against apartheid and turned a blind eye to the tyrannies in independent Africa." If only American reporters were so honest.
HUME'S HONESTY. Well, one reporter is. In a July 9 interview with Washington Times reporter Don Kowet, ABC White House reporter Brit Hume charged "a great many reporters are liberal." Hume offered some examples. "Take the Kemp-Roth tax cut. That was regarded by reporters I knew on Capitol Hill as being out there along with the Bermuda Triangle and getting a telephone call from Elvis."
Another example: "I'm constantly hearing reporters say, 'Well, Bush says he wants to be the Education President, but he doesn't come up with any money.' In other words, they're starting from the premise that the best way to advance the cause of education is to spend a lot of money on it. They're taking sides on an important aspect of the debate before they start, adopting one side of the debate's measuring stick -- the amount of money spent -- as their 'neutral' gauge of how adequate Bush's policies are."
HEALTHY SOCIALISTS. For the third time in two years, NBC reporter Fred Briggs has shared his infatuation with Canadian national health insurance with viewers. On the June 6 Nightly News, Briggs compared the U.S. health care system to Canada's as he stood at the U.S.-Canada border in Maine. In one comparison Briggs stated, "The bottom line is that a serious illness or injury on that side of the border may cause a family emotional pain, but it won't break them financially. Here it can and often does." As if Canadians weren't taxed for the government-run system, Briggs reported, "To get into a hospital or doctor's office, Canadians only have to present this card. They're insured by their government, have been for 27 years."
Unlike his earlier stories, this time Briggs noted that Canadians sometimes die waiting for health care, but he concluded with an endorsement: "Jane Tuck works in a convenience store and wonders how Canada seems to do what we cannot do." Tuck told Briggs, "We can help other countries, we can help this one, that one. Let's help ourselves." Briggs followed, "To the Canadian system? Living so close to it makes it seem very attractive."
SAME OLD MOYERS. David Horowitz of the Committee for Media Integrity urged balance in public television in an April 15 Currents article, decrying the imbalance of PBS documentaries like the Frontline series and the omnipresent specials of the self-impressed Bill Moyers.
Moyers responded in the same magazine's May 25 issue, defending his Frontline documentary on the Iran-Contra hearings: "Far from being an editorial on Iran-Contra, High Crimes and Misdemeanors was a plea for renewed fealty to traditional values so disdained by men like Ronald Reagan, William Casey, Edwin Meese, Elliott Abras, John Poindexter and Oliver North."
Moyers extended his assault not only to Horowitz, but to all conservative critics of taxpayer-supported television: "Horowitz, you must remember, has his own agenda. He and his ilk do not want 'fairness and balance' -- they want unanimity. They don't want 'media integrity' -- they want media subservience to their ideology. To him and his reactionary allies, criticism equals subversion, opposition equals treason, and liberalism is a personal affront."
A NEW MOYERS? Has Bill Moyers gone through a drastic change of heart? In a June 18 PBS special, titled After The War, he attacked President Bush from the right. "It wasn't just Washington's indifference toward democracy that angered the Iraqi opposition. It was also the President's decision to let Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard escape," Moyers declared. "General Schwarzkopf later told David Frost what a few more days of fighting would have meant," he said before chastising Bush for "pulling back [U.S.] forces while Saddam Hussein was still strong enough to take his revenge" against the Kurds.
That's ironic coming from a man who, at a March 8 gathering of House Democrats, derided the war as "a triumph of overwhelming technology and unchallenged power over a country no bigger than Texas and with roughly the same amount of people, ruled over by a paranoid psychopath, who proved to be just a video tiger, all growl and no guts." Could it be that Moyers is just looking for a way, any way, to deride conservative foreign policy with taxpayers' money?
LACKING DIVERSITY. In a June 4 MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour segment Charlayne Hunter-Gault interviewed David Lawrence, President of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and Publisher of the Miami Herald, about affirmative action.
Asked about his company's hiring policy, Lawrence stated, "We are the information medium for the American people. We are the filtering system, the prism, through which the people get their news and information and commentary. If it's all coming from one kind of person, it is going to be a very incomplete prism indeed. So, yes, I think more than any other institution in American society, we need to be a pluralistic, multicultural institution."
He was talking about hiring more minorities, but Lawrence inadvertently made a great case for hiring more conservatives. In a 1989 survey by Lawrence's own ASNE, 62 percent of newsroom employees overall and 87 percent of minority journalists boasted liberal leanings. Only 22 percent said they had a conservative bent. So why isn't Lawrence crusading to correct this distorted prism?
PRO-CHOICE POLLS? During the House debate on a bill about abortion counseling in federally funded clinics, reporters peddled the canard that most Americans unconditionally favor the abortion rights of Roe vs. Wade.
ABC's Cokie Roberts claimed on the June 26 World News Tonight: "President Bush must also worry about anti-abortion activists who have given the Republican Party so much support in the past. He's promised to veto this and all other bills supporting abortion rights and Congress is unlikely to override, meaning the President could win every battle on abortion rights but create problems for fellow Republicans come election day."
NBC correspondent Henry Champ on the June 23 Nightly News asserted, "Polls indicate Americans are pro-choice. They want or support the right to decide."
Well, not exactly. According to William Satelin of the electronic news service Hotline, polls say that though a plurality may be pro-choice, a majority favors abortion restrictions. In The Wall Street Journal, Satelin wrote: "When asked which of three statements best expressed their views 41 percent chose to say abortion should be 'generally available,' and an opposite 15 percent felt it 'should not be permitted,' but 42 percent chose positions favoring legal abortion with 'stricter limits'" for a grand total of 57 percent who favor either eliminating abortion or restricting it. Hardly a "pro-choice majority."
TED KOPPEL'S NON-STORY. On June 20, ABC's Ted Koppel devoted a one-hour Nightline special to the theory that former CIA Director and Reagan campaign manager William Casey met in Madrid in late July 1980 with Iranian officials to delay the release of the American hostages. Koppel thought he had smoking guns in the testimony of Iranian arms dealer Jamshid Hashemi, and in a 1988 New York Times story that mentioned Casey would be available for comment when "he returned from a trip abroad." The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and AP all reported the revelations the next day.
Then, at the very end of the June 26 Nightline, Koppel meekly noted that Casey was accounted for, in another country, during most of the time of the alleged meetings. Gulped Koppel: "We have spoken with several men who attended the Anglo-American Conference on the History of the Second World War. William Casey attended that conference at the Imperial War Museum in London."
The Post didn't reveal Casey's London whereabouts until they quoted Ed Meese in a July 8 news story. The Globe ran AP's week-late dispatch on July 3 with the headline: "1980 Casey Trip Draws Fresh Attention." A better headline: "Oops -- We Were Wrong."
RAY BRADY'S BITTER BUREAUCRATS. On June 7 the government announced the unemployment rate rose 0.3 percent in May to 6.9 percent. ABC's World News Tonight emphasized the positive side. "Economists say that the really important news lies elsewhere in the report. For the first time in nearly a year businesses hired more workers instead of firing them," Peter Jennings pointed out. Reporter Stephen Aug then explained how businesses hired 59,000 people. "At the Gould's pump factory near Los Angeles, business is booming, and they're hiring," Aug told viewers.
But over on the CBS Evening News, the focus was on the negative, as usual. "Amid all the talk and some evidence of economic recovery, unemployment hit a four year high," Dan Rather said. Reporter Ray Brady whined, "the unemployment numbers jumped last month partly because of workers like these Massachusetts state employees. They're protesting the cutbacks that pushed them into the ranks of the 370,000 Americans who lost their jobs last month. Workers like Marie Shamali, out of work from a job she thought she'd never lose." But according to Boston Herald editorial writer Jeff Jacoby, since late last year only 1,700 of the 12,123 state payroll jobs added by former Governor Dukakis in the last eight years have been cut.
MITCHELL MISSILES. Just what kind of "reporter" is NBC News congressional correspondent Andrea Mitchell? When NBC gives her the chance to vent her opinions, the liberalism comes through loud and clear. During a June 11 Today appearance, she charged: "While we see George Bush saying that he doesn't like the racist politics, boy, he's letting his White House staff play it full bore." The next week, President Bush criticized Democrats for failing to move on his transportation and crime bills. On the June 16 Sunday Today, Mitchell showed her displeasure: "I think that George Bush was terribly cynical and irresponsible in some of his criticism...that 100 day deadline just didn't make any sense on the highway bill."
"So just what has Congress been doing these past 100 days?" Mitchell wondered on NBC Nightly News on June 13. "For one thing," she answered, "living with the consequences of budget deal Congress made with the White House last fall. There is very little money for new social programs." Little money? Over half the $1.3 trillion federal budget goes to social programs and entitlements. But $700 billion plus isn't enough for Mitchell, who added, "With Congress and the President in gridlock and no money to spend, more and more responsibility is being dumped on state and local governments, adding to the taxpayer's dilemma." But Mitchell didn't report that federal aid to state and local governments has been going up.
CIVIL SLIGHTS. Several journalists have become cheerleaders and apologists for the Democratic version of the "civil rights" bill. ABC's Jim Wooten offered a typical analysis on the June 5 World News Tonight: "For better or worse, quotas have become a hot-button issue, easily exploited in the quick context of a television commercial. Look at this one from last year's Senate race in North Carolina. Republican Jesse Helms was narrowly re-elected, although his black opponent was as anti-quota as he." He was? In a March 17 New York Times op-ed, Helms' opponent, Harvey Gantt, argued that "quotas are as American as apple pie."
In the June 4 Los Angeles Times, staff writers William J. Eaton and Sam Fulwood III wrote, "discussions of the legislation, therefore, have centered on such abstractions as shifting the burden of proof from employers to employees, or vice versa, at various stages of litigation." Abstractions? If the presumption of innocence was taken away from criminals, would Eaton and Fulwood consider it an "abstraction"? No, they would probably call it what it is -- a civil right. One now shared by businessmen as well as rapists and murderers.
LAURELS FOR LANCE. The May MediaWatch called attention to Time Senior Editor Lance Morrow's April 29 puff piece on Senator Ted "PowerMaster" Kennedy. Morrow presented Kennedy as "one of the great lawmakers of the century, a Senate leader whose liberal mark upon American government has been prominent and permanent... The public that knows Kennedy by his misadventures alone may vastly underrate him."
University of Southern Mississippi Professor Glenn Wittig was moved to write Time regarding Morrow's article and forwarded Time's response to MediaWatch. Letters Department Deputy Gloria Hammond lauded Kennedy as "a figure whose name can conjure in the national mind hallmark images of modern political and social history, ad perhaps for that reason alone compels a willing-or- not fascination."
Hammond defended Morrow as a "writer with a singular reputation for applying his stimulating, penetrating and unmistakable style." Unmistakable alright. He's the same Time staffer who wrote "The skull is home. We fly in and out of it on mental errands....Home is the bright light under the hat."
CULT OR OCCULT? Time's May 6 cover story ripped into the Church of Scientology with an intensity usually reserved for the Reagan Administration. Time described Scientology as little more than "a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner." Although few people outside Scientology would disagree with Time's assessment, it's a bit silly coming from Time. After all, isn't this from the same company which profits from the Time-Life Books "racket" which pushes its "Mystic Places" books about astrology and space aliens landing on Earth with TV ads which once promised "power crystals" as a premium?
