MediaWatch: July 1997
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: July 1997
- Gun Rights Forces Outgunned on TV
- NewsBites: Camel Canard
- Revolving Door: Sidney's Clinton-Loving Slant
- Hearings? What Hearings?
- They All Do It
- Nolanda's Non-Story, Religion and Rehabilitation
- Kurault as Liberal Advocate
- Janet Cooke Award: Another Frontal Assault on Objectivity
Hearings? What Hearings?
Just as they had all spring, the networks offered spotty coverage at best of the hearings into Democratic fundraising abuses.
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee convened to consider serious matters: charges that communist China plotted to illegally funnel money into U.S. politics, and John Huang may have committed espionage, or illegal fundraising as a Commerce Department official.
Unlike Watergate, Iran-Contra, or even the first stages of the O.J Simpson trial, the networks refused to provide live coverage, not even PBS. CNN and MSNBC coverage trickled to nothing within the first two days. But the networks had trouble summarizing the hearings in the evening.
Take ABC. In the first two weeks, World News Tonight aired only five stories and two anchor briefs. Only one story even aired a witness soundbite -- for three seconds.
On Wednesday, July 9, ABC subsumed the hearings into a piece touting President Clinton's new 64 percent approval rating. On July 10, ABC devoted almost twice as much time to Sen. Sam Brownback's perceived ethnic slur of John Huang ("No raise money, no get bonus") as to a vague 23-second hearings update.
On July 13, ABC's Deborah Weiner claimed Sen. Fred Thompson was overreaching, echoing a U.S. News story suggesting most of China's money went to legal lobbying. Next, anchor Carole Simpson plugged an upcoming "look at why average Americans seem to be paying so little attention to the campaign finance hearings." Maybe because the networks alternated between dismissing and ignoring them.
When Sen. Joseph Lieberman said Democrats agreed there was a Chinese plot, ABC skipped the story refuting its claims of a few days before. NBC's Tim Russert noted the bipartisanship on July 15, to which Tom Brokaw demanded: "When do you think we're going to begin to hear more from Republicans...about some of their transgressions?"
The ABC and NBC evening shows ignored the hearings two nights out of three during the second week. Nonetheless, ABC's Linda Douglass ended a July 18 story by noting that committee members are "wondering if the public is paying attention to any of this."
After a July 9 story on the opening statements, the hearings disappeared from CBS's This Morning without another mention for two weeks. Good Morning America and Today aired one discussion segment each in the first two weeks.
Observed Brit Hume of the Fox News Channel, which offered live coverage, in the July 15 Washington Post: "If this were Ronald Reagan accused of selling foreign policy to the highest bidder, it's a little hard to imagine this wouldn't have attracted more attention."
