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
Raines Rains on Reagan
Fly-Fishing Flashbacks
Howell Raines, Editorial Page Editor for The New York Times, has generated a bit of publicity for editorials critical of the Clinton Administration's ethics and decision-making process. But a new book by Raines reveals where his sympathies lie. In Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis, the former national political correspondent, who headed the Washington bureau from 1988 through 1992, fails to criticize the policies of any liberal, but he has plenty to say about Republicans:
"Then one day in the summer of 1981 I found myself at the L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine. I was a correspondent in the White House in those days, and my work -- which consisted of reporting on President Reagan's success in making life harder for citizens who were not born rich, white, and healthy -- saddened me."
"In 1981, shortly before the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, my family and I arrived in Washington. I was thirty-eight. I attributed any twinges of unhappiness I felt in those days to bad timing and the cycles of politics. My parents raised me to admire generosity and to feel pity. I had arrived in our nation's capital during a historic ascendancy of greed and hard-heartedness."
"I was taken aback by the news that Alan Simpson, the Republican Senator from Wyoming, was a fly fisherman. So much for the ennobling influence of the sport. During Bush's term, Simpson established himself as the meanest man in the Senate. True, his hatefulness had a kind of Dickensian grandeur. But there was no way you could follow his rantings about women, the environment and civil rights and still believe that fly fishing in the mighty temple of the Rockies is guaranteed to purify the soul."
