MediaWatch: June 1996
Table of Contents:
Stand for More Money
Liberal advocates of increased welfare spending used kids to advance their own interests through the Children's Defense Fund's (CDF) June 1 Stand for Children march. And the media bought the facade.
Time set the tone with a June 3 story headlined "The Children's Crusade: A '60s style campaign aims to put kids first in this year's budget battles and the presidential race." Elizabeth Gleick managed to squeeze only two conservatives into five pages as she painted the CDF as a group working to fix the "disconnect between what Americans say they want for children and what they actually do for them." Joan Lunden endorsed the message of organizer Marian Wright Edelman during a May 30 Good Morning America interview: "It seems like there's more money being spent for the environment or for the gun lobby...the federal government's talking about turning over a lot of the social programs to the states...What do you think is the best way to approach this?" As Edelman responded, "The first thing is we've got to make a commitment," Lunden chimed in "Yeah, yeah." Edelman then charged that march sponsors "will no longer tolerate the neglect and abandonment of our children or the massive budget cuts or the dismantlement of the safety net." To which Lunden gushed: "Gotta get the message out there and get people to rally around one of our most important problems."
Even pieces that included a conservative view still spun for the marchers. On the May 30 CBS Evening News, Wyatt Andrews talked to kids at a teen center, noting "the fear they express and the troubling state of kids in general is the reason" for the march. "A massive rally for children sounds like one of the least controversial ideas in history, and yet conservative critics believe this march is just a backdrop masking a liberal agenda." After a clip of the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector, he showed a teen saying "I don't want our future to be messed up. I want to, like, have a nice environment and live peacefully."
NBC's John Palmer concluded his June 1 Nightly News story with the marcher's spin: "As the rally ended, parents were urged to go back home and fight for increased public funding for programs that help children and to carry the message that children should come first."
