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
Hubbell's "Perception" Problem
No Hypocrites?
Apparently there are different standards of behavior for Democrats and Republicans. In February 1992, former Washington Post reporter Sidney Blumenthal wrote in The New Republic "While George Bush -- all whiteness -- talks about 'family values,' the Clintons demonstrate them by confessing to adultery." Is this attitude an aberration?
When Clinton Justice Department nominee Webster Hubbell's membership in a whites-only country club threatened to derail his nomination, the evening news shows said nothing. Apparently using Blumenthal's logic, the networks thought belonging to a racially exclusive club was not troubling for a liberal Democrat who had supported civil rights in the past. That's despite the fact that members of the Little Rock NAACP charged Hubbell with lying when he claimed blacks were solicited to join the club.
The networks also ignored Jerry Seper's May 18 Washington Times scoop that Little Rock investment banker Roy Drew charged that Hubbell may have used inside information to score a quick $3,500 profit in 1983. Hubbell ordered Drew to buy 500 shares of stock in the Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Company (Arkla). Hubbell's college friend, White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty, was named President of Arkla a month after Hubbell's purchase. Insider trading accusations may have been a hot story in the Reagan years, but the networks weren't biting.
ABC's Peter Jennings reflected the ho-hum attitude toward liberal hypocrisy. During the May 19 World News Tonight, Jennings reported: "Another lesson today in how important perceptions are in politics. President Clinton's nominee for the number three job at the Justice Department, Webster Hubbell, told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that he resigned from a country club in Little Rock, Arkansas, a club which admitted its first black member only in December. Mr. Hubbell said he did not want to appear insensitive on racial matters." The same night, CBS's Dan Rather dismissed Hubbell's resignation as only meaning "he did not want anyone to think he was insensitive to racism." NBC and CNN evening shows ignored the Hubbell nomination.
