MediaWatch: July 1991
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: July 1991
- Double Standard For Sununu
- NewsBites: Touting Tito
- Revolving Door: Democratic Convention Control
- Marshall Loss, Thomas Gain Seen as Twin Threats
- Liberals Admit Media Errors
- Janet Cooke Award: ABC: Children's Crusade
Janet Cooke Award: ABC: Children's Crusade
In April, MediaWatch handed the Janet Cooke Award to CBS for relying on the loaded statistics of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), a left-wing lobby for nationalized child care and increased welfare spending. In June, ABC's World News Tonight followed the same shameless formula, proclaiming: "The Children's Defense Fund...is widely recognized for keeping accurate statistics on children." For uncritical reports on the CDF and a week of one-sided stories on child poverty, ABC earned the July Janet Cooke Award.
THE '8Os. The first sign of ABC's affection for CDF came on June 2 and 3 when they promoted the CDF's latest report on child poverty not once, but twice. On June 2, reporter Kathleen DeLaski led off: "The report also says that while poverty rates for the elderly decreased in the '80s, poverty rates for children increased."
Misleading. Viewers could see for themselves that even the chart ABC displayed on screen clearly showed a decline since 1983. CDF used 1979 as a beginning yardstick, thus adding the last two Carter years to the statistics. By the CDF's own calculation of Census statistics, the number of poor children dropped from a high of 13.9 million in 1983 to 12.6 million in 1989. Likewise, they calculated that the percentage of children living in poverty has declined from 22.3 percent to 19.6 percent.
STEREOTYPES. The next evening John McKenzie again summarized the CDF charges, intoning, "The stereotype: a black child living in an inner city with a single mother on welfare and no man in the house. The Children's Defense Fund now says that stereotype is wrong."
Misleading. While CDF insists that only one in ten children fits that description, they also reported that one in three poor children is black and that 43.7 percent of black children are poor. They reported that 54 percent of poor families are female-headed. They reported that three times as many poor children live in metropolitan areas than live in rural areas. It's only when you add them all together to calculate the number of black, inner-city, single-parent children, that it appears like an unsupportable stereotype.
McKenzie continued: "The study found that most poor children come from families of just one or two children, and that most have older family members who are working." On June 18, Jennings added: "Most poor children in America have a wage-earning parent."
Wrong. In fact, the government classifies someone as working even if they only work one day a year. In The New Republic, Mickey Kaus took issue with the assertions made by liberal groups: "Less than half of poor families with children field even a quarter- time worker. Fully 40 percent do no work at all." In responding to Kaus, Robert Greenstein of the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities insisted their group's study pointed out that only one-sixth of poor children live in a family with a full- time, year-round worker.
SPENDING. "The report blames the situation on bad economic times in general and government spending cuts in particular." -- McKenzie, June 3.
Wrong. In constant dollars welfare spending is at an all time high. CDF did decry the lessening value of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits, but those levels are set by the states.
NON-CASH BENEFITS. On June 18, the first day of special broad-casts from Ohio, Peter Jennings asserted: "A single mother with two children, a fairly typical example of a poor family, gets a little more than $550 a month in cash and food stamps from the government, which still leaves that family more than two hundred dollars a month below the government's official poverty line."
Misleading. Jennings failed to explain that the poverty line measure counts only cash assistance, so his calculation did not include non-cash benefits like housing assistance, Medicaid or school lunch programs. In fact, the government spends an average of $11,120 a year on non-cash benefits for every poor household, about 75 percent of all welfare expenditures. This was the only ABC/CDF contention that ABC allowed a conservative expert to challenge. In their June 3 report, the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector contended: "If you add up all the different welfare benefits from different programs, the average single parent on welfare with children has an income above the poverty level, not below it."
DAY CARE WELFARE. "Here in Franklin County, which pretty much matches the rest of the country, the number of families on welfare who have access to this kind of [child] care is ridiculously low. Only two and a half percent get any financial aid to pay for it." -- Jennings, June 19.
Misleading. AFDC recipients are entitled to day care reimbursement, and the 1988 Welfare Reform Act expanded the amount of money available for it. Only three percent of AFDC recipents per month claim the reimbursement because only eight percent of recipients have earned income.
HOMELESS CHILDREN. "Analysts often disagree about how many homeless children there are in America: maybe 100,000, maybe half a million. They do agree that children represent the fastest growing segment of the homeless." -- Jennings, June 20.
Wrong. CDF promotes the 100,000 figure, citing a 1988 report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). But the NAS didn't do any original research to determine its number, using three other sources, including an August 28, 1985 front page story in The New York Times by Josh Barbanel. But the Times article cited no figures on the number or percentage of homeless children. The most comprehensive homeless count to date remains the Census Bureau figure of 230,000, which makes Jennings' numbers look a little inflated. By Jennings' estimation, then, either half of the homeless are children, or there are more than twice as many homeless children as the Census counted homeless people.
On June 20, Jennings went beyond editorializing to tossing sarcastic cheap shots: "When you get close to the poor, you recognize right away that very often the level of assistance doesn't even lift them up to the legal poverty line, let alone above it, which seems to say your Congressmen and your state legislators have failed to recognize that children and families in poverty are a national disaster. In your name, they often argue about other priorities and welfare cheats. Twelve million Americans who cheat." This came two days before Jennings' Friday "Person of the Week" segment on a ten-year welfare mother: "Three years ago, when most of the welfare money was going for booze, Lisa Krause decided: enough."
Despite all the passion, ABC never asked the question: couldn't all these programs be causing the further deterioration of poor families? A recent comparison showed that since 1950, the percentage of female-headed households has almost doubled while federal social spending has increased threefold as a percentage of GNP. ABC must consider these questions politically incorrect.
At ABC's request, we faxed a list of the points made in this article and asked for an item by item response. Instead of answering any point, World News Tonight Executive Producer Paul Friedman issued this statement: "We have accurately portrayed the problem of American children living in poverty. Your choice of data is not persuasive."
