MediaWatch: July 1996
Table of Contents:
Families First Favored
NBC doesn't know what to think about the Contract with America's political appeal, but in 1994 they denounced its content while providing a more favorable forum this year for the Democratic platform.
House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt appeared on the June 24 Today to discuss his Families First agenda. Katie Couric asked: "Speaker Gingrich and company's Contract with America was ultimately rejected by the majority of Americans and few people believe it was really behind the GOP sweep of the congressional elections in 1994, so why are Democrats trying the same approach?"
But 45 minutes later reporter Joe Johns had a different view: "The new Democratic agenda echoes a successful GOP strategy. In 1994, Republicans unveiled the Contract with America, which framed their national agenda in the weeks before the elections."
Whatever its public appeal, NBC panned the Contract when the Republicans unveiled it on September 27, 1994. Anchor Tom Brokaw announced: "GOP congressional candidates were summoned to Washington and given a battle plan. However, as NBC's Lisa Myers tells us tonight, it is long on promises but short on sound premises."
Myers lambasted it with five condemnations. After saying it called for tax cuts and a balanced budget, Myers charged that "an independent budget expert called it standard political bunk." She let a Democrat tag it "a big fraud" and then she stated the plan "fell hundreds of billions of dollars short of balancing the budget." Myers allowed Gingrich to defend the term limits plank, but only to use his response ("I don't think you're going to say to everybody who's been here 12 years, `You know, this is your last term'") as a foil for her closing sentence: "And politicians wonder why voters are cynical."
The networks went much easier on the Democrats. On the June 23 CBS Evening News John Roberts relayed, without any critical comment: "The Families First agenda includes higher paychecks, welfare reform, college tuition tax credits, better health care, retirement security and safer neighborhoods." A Nightly News piece by NBC's Johns was balanced, saying only the proposal was "short on specifics" without attacking any of the planks. Gingrich would have appreciated similar treatment.
