MediaWatch: June 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: June 1994
- Network Contrast of Hill and Jones Show Dramatic Differences in Coverage, Tone
- NewsBites: Festival of Hate?
- Revolving Door: Selling Sarbanes
- Media Mourn 17-Count Indictment as Tragedy for the Country
- DDT, Eco-Racism Threats?
- Blaming the Victim?
- Raines Rains on Reagan
- Janet Cooke Award: Newsweek Hailed Hill, But Questions Jones' Credibility and Sexual Behavior
Blaming the Victim?
CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg began the May 26 Eye to Eye by proclaiming that "the new national motto should be `don't blame me.'" During his special hour-long report, Goldberg examined the "epidemic" of excuses, from the Menendez abuse excuse to the mob excuse used to justify the beating of Reginald Denny. He contrasted current criminal defense strategies with a bygone image: "Remember how Perry Mason would get his client off by proving, at the last second, that someone else had committed the crime? Well, today's defense lawyers are....trying to get their clients off even when they admit they did commit the crime."
Questioning the defense of "black rage" being used by Long Island railroad murderer Colin Ferguson, Goldberg noted that Ferguson "wasn't even born or raised in the United States. He grew up in the Caribbean, in Jamaica in...a fairly opulent way...He was sent to the best private schools." He then asked defense attorney William Kunstler, "How is Colin Ferguson a victim of racism? Give me an example or two...Here you are claiming white racism, black rage, but your client went on that train and killed people precisely because of their race, because they were white. Why can't you make the argument that the real racist was your client?"
The aversion to accepting blame also exists outside the courtroom and has resulted in such medical sounding excuses as "chronic lateness syndrome," "failure to file [taxes] syndrome," and for those unable to wisely spend large amounts of money, "affluenza, from the words affluence and influenza, which we all know is a sickness."
Financial Disabilities
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed to great applause for making buildings more accessible, but four years later, as Tom Brokaw pointed out on the May 16 NBC Nightly News, "There has been a downside as well. Out of control costs."
Reporter Bob Kur explained that "some insiders say it's become a law of unintended consequences fostering frivolous lawsuits and expensive hassles." Kur reviewed some ADA-based lawsuits: a 360-pound woman suing a movie theater that provided a wheelchair section but wouldn't allow her to bring in her own chair, a woman suing a ski resort that didn't have wheelchair transportation to the highest slopes so she could enjoy the view, and a student suing his university for not providing him with a note taker even though his mother did it for him.
Kur concluded that the ADA "has helped provide user-friendly equipment and jobs for blind and other disabled workers. But insiders have begun to question the cost of accommodating everyone who claims special status under the law."
