MediaWatch: June 1993
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: June 1993
- National Public Radio Anchor's Liberal Year at Weekend Today
- NewsBites: Tax Revolt?
- Revolving Door: Whiplash
- Clinton's "Serious" Deficit Cuts
- Hubbell's "Perception" Problem
- Myers on Euro-Pork
- Post's Ideological Double Standard
- Janet Cooke Award: Hard News Hillary's Pliant Press
Clinton's "Serious" Deficit Cuts
Candidate Bill Clinton harpooned GOP Presidents for adding $3 trillion to the national debt in the last 12 years. President Clinton's budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will add $1 trillion to the debt in the next four years. Would reporters fault Clinton like they did Reagan and Bush?
No, they praised him. On CBS This Morning on April 30, co-host Harry Smith asked Sen. Bob Dole: "Yesterday you came out and said `Let's give the President an E for effort.' Shouldn't he get a better grade for at least passing a budget that takes the deficit seriously for the first time?" On May 28, This Morning's Paula Zahn asked Ross Perot: "Do you acknowledge that this is at all better than anything the Republicans attempted over the last 12 years?"
On NBC, reporter Lisa Myers agreed on the April 30 Today: "The President deserves great credit for having the courage to come up with a deficit reduction plan and we shouldn't lose sight of that." Two days later on Meet the Press, NBC White House reporter Andrea Mitchell complained that Clinton's image was all wrong: "This is the first President in a generation who had the guts to try to do something about deficit reduction and to take on health care, and he's somehow not selling that. He's still being perceived as an old-style Democrat." Declared Bob Schieffer on the May 23 Sunday Morning: "It's a plan that calls for massive cuts in federal spending."
The canard continued in the news magazines. Time Chief Political Correspondent Michael Kramer saluted Clinton on May 3: "Great salesman that he is, Clinton can be viewed as a victim of his own success. His insistence on deficit reduction -- and his cajoling of Congress to support a multi-year plan to accomplish it -- is the very definition of courage in modern American politics."
U.S. News & World Report Editor-in-Chief Mor Zuckerman crowed on May 17: "The political climate has changed in large measure because of Clinton's determination to address the deficit seriously for the first time in 12 years."
The staunchest Clinton defense came from Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift on the May 15 McLaughlin Group: "Essentially, the plan maintains the balance which undoes the '80s: 70 percent of the taxes fall on wealthier people. He does have a dollar in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases. It's true...It's the first serious attempt to cut the deficit in this country."
In the June 2 Washington Times, Heritage Foundation analyst Daniel Mitchell showed the package consists of $301 billion in tax increases and $20 billion in actual cuts in projected spending increases, making the real ratio of tax hikes to spending "cuts" 15 to 1.
