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
Kurault as Liberal Advocate
When veteran CBS newsman Charles Kuralt died on July 4, eulogies heaped praise on him for his folksy demeanor and stories about the common American. Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales declared: "He didn't merely practice good journalism but came to personify it." But this same Kuralt abused his CBS News position to promote liberal views:
In a May 5, 1994 CBS special honoring his career, Kuralt told Morley Safer: "I think liberalism lives the notion that we don't have to stay where we are as a society, we have promises to keep, and its liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country?"
Kuralt was not always entranced by the American people. In an August 1991 Sunday Morning piece, he looked towards Europe with envy while scolding Americans: "A report last week compared health care for children in the United States with health care in the ten countries of Western Europe. Really there isn't any comparison. Nearly all children in Europe are able to see a doctor when they're sick. A lot more of them are immunized. A lot fewer of them die in infancy. Do Europeans care more about their children than we do? There's a simple answer: yes."
At the political conventions in the summer of 1992, Kuralt served as a commentator for CBS. At the Democratic Convention he breathlessly praised Gov. Mario Cuomo's nasty attacks on George Bush: "I'm still in the glow of that Cuomo speech. Mario Cuomo is like one of those three-way light bulbs...He said he was going to stay on dim so as not to put Bill Clinton in the shade. And then he stepped up here tonight and delivered a genuine 250-watter. A speech bright enough to fill up this dark room." But the next month at the 1992 Republican Convention, Kuralt was considerably tougher on speaker Pat Buchanan: "I thought the Buchanan speech had ugly elements in it, especially there at the end, take back our culture, take back our country. I think that was an appeal to racism."
