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
No 'Left-Liberal Line' in Essays
Simon Comments
Responding to MediaWatch's June Review "Scott Simon's Simple Sermons," Simon wrote: "Thanks for the accurate quotations from my essays on Weekend Today over these past ten months. I do think, however, you overlooked instances in those essays where I expressed approval of former Presidents Bush and Reagan, and criticized old communist regimes and left-wing rebel movements."
He didn't identify when he criticized left-wing rebels, but he did explain: "When I `jibed,' as you put it, that `Reporters were never asked to make up former President Reagan, although, it often seemed, they were willing to shine his shoes,' the `jibe' was at my own profession, even at myself." Of course, thinking reporters were too kind to Reagan's policies reflects a liberal view.
Simon recalled: "My essays have defended George Bush on Iraq and assailed Bill Clinton over his inaugural spending, cabinet choices and for not standing by those cabinet choices; defended the millions of dollars spent to develop a toilet aboard the space shuttle, and criticized the firing of Mike Ditka. I proposed a few facetious plots for New Age Espionage stories....I ruminated over the significance of a railcar in the Holocaust Museum -- and asked if the crimes we recognize and revile thru the telescope of history aren't being revisited in Bosnia. Frankly, I don't detect the `left-liberal line' you see running thru this series of viewpoints. A skeptic might even call them contradictory, instead of consistent."
