MediaWatch: July 1993
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: July 1993
- The Most Common Politically Motivated Statistical Exaggerations
- NewsBites: Conservative Corporations?
- Revolving Door: City Hall Calling
- Reporters Insist Budget is Half Tax Hikes, Half Cuts
- Globe Concedes Liberal Tilt
- Limousine Liberals
- nsists No 'Left-Liberal Line' in Essays
- Janet Cooke Award: Discovery Channel Series Starts Out As Slanted As CBS
Limousine Liberals
Democrats attract voters by attacking the privileges of the rich, but in the June 7 U.S. News & World Report, Senior Writer Edward Pound and reporter Gary Cohen found two major Democrats lived high on the hog at the party's expense. In 1991 and 1992 alone, the Democratic National Committee spent $250,000 on limousine services. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown (then party chairman) and White House aide Alexis Herman (then Brown's chief of staff) were especially compensated.
A 17-day trip to sub-Saharan Africa to promote democracy cost the DNC $36,000, including a $10,000 advance to Brown. While the Democrats lambasted John Sununu for free corporate flights, Brown regularly used a six-passenger jet provided by the Sheet Metal Workers International Union. Herman, unsatisfied with her stay at the fancy Waldorf-Astoria hotel, moved to $4,000-a-month apartment while planning the Democratic convention, partially paid with tax dollars. Did other reporters leap on the DNC story as they jumped on Air Sununu? No. The story went nowhere.
WIN Can't Win
What happens when a self-proclaimed "pro-choice, Democratic" organization recruits prominent female journalists to be guests at a fund-raising dinner? In the May 29 National Journal, Paul Starobin chronicled the reaction when the Women's Information Network (WIN) did just that.
UPI White House reporter Helen Thomas refused, saying "wire service people have to be as impartial and objective as humanly possible." Six journalists initially agreed to the dinner, but when told it was a fund-raiser, five backed out. Bowing out were USA Today's Judi Hasson, National Public Radio's Mara Liasson, and The Wall Street Journal's Jill Abramson. The sole holdout was Dotty Lynch, political editor for CBS News, who had also been unaware of the abortion-rights character of WIN. Lynch noted "I don't know if they're aware that they have a pro-life person on their agenda." In the end, WIN canceled the event.
Lehrer's Lecture
In a refreshing display of candor, one of the media's own criticized reporters during a commencement address at Williams College. On June 8, The Boston Globe's Cate Chant reported that Jim Lehrer, co-anchor of PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, took his colleagues to task for "snide arrogance."
Lehrer even suggested that viewers boycott news media they find offensive. "Do not tolerate lousy, arrogant, snide journalism," he told the graduates. "If someone does it in the newspaper you read or on the TV news you watch...complain. Don't watch those programs." He even said journalists think they know more than everyone else. "There is a stench of contempt...only the journalists of America are smart enough to know what to do in Bosnia, about health care."
