MediaWatch: June 1997
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: Like A Good Neighbor?
Like A Good Neighbor? When the Supreme Court ruled that Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit against President Clinton could proceed, all three evening news shows led with the story. But only NBC's Jim Miklaszewski told viewers: "This case is running into some big money. The President's lawyers have already billed more than a million and a half dollars, most of it paid by the President's insurance companies." But he didn't convey the potential scandal this encompasses.
In a June 1996 American Spectator story the networks skipped, Byron York questioned coverage from State Farm and the Chubb Group, suggesting the policies violated many normal insurance industry rules, making this look like a gift. With all the controversy about whether Bob Dole's loan to Newt Gingrich would create a conflict of interest, this lack of concern over insurance payments to Clinton is odd. While Clinton's legal defense fund won't accept corporate money, York noted: "When two giant corporations pitch in $900,000 for the same cause Clinton's legal defense no such ethics rules apply."
No Way, San Jose. Being a reporter means never having to admit you're wrong. Last August the San Jose Mercury News printed an expose from crusading reporter Gary Webb, charging the CIA with introducing crack cocaine into black L.A. neighborhoods during the '80s to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. The four networks devoted a total of 16 stories to the allegations and the resulting inner city anger, including all four networks' coverage of CIA Director John Deutch's town meeting in South Central Los Angeles.
The networks covered the story from the conspiracy-mongers' viewpoint. On October 1, 1996, CBS's Bill Whittaker warned: "There is no evidence directly linking the CIA to the drug sales and the CIA says its own internal investigation has found no connection. Yet here at Ground Zero of the crack explosion, the story simply won't go away." When Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos said in a May 11 editorial the series "fell short of my standards," the June 13 Dateline NBC was the only show to mention it. For the rest, the story did go away.
Reich vs. Reality. On the April 17 NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw glowingly profiled former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and touted his new book Locked in the Cabinet as "an instructive and insightful account of his frustrations and his triumphs," and described Reich as "a physically small man with a big agenda for the working class." Reich may be short, but the tales he told were very tall.
In the May 29 edition of the online magazine Slate, Jonathan Rauch uncovered various inaccuracies in Reich's memoirs, including a February 1995 session with the Joint Economic Committee: "'The Republican attack machine is gearing up,' Reich writes, 'and I'm one of the targets.' Then he paints a scene in which committee Chairman Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) interrupts Reich's initial testimony and lights into him savagely starting with, 'Where did you learn economics, Mr. Secretary?' and then jumping up and down in his chair and crying, 'Evidence! Evidence!' while pointing to a chart."
Rauch checked the C-SPAN tapes: "Reich appears to have fabricated much of this episode for dramatic effect. Saxton was, in fact, decorous and polite. He did not jump up and down; he did not impugn Reich's education; he did not shout 'Evidence! Evidence!' Most of the lines that Reich attributes to Saxton starting with 'where did you learn economics, Mr. Secretary?' appear never to have been said at all." On the May 25 Meet the Press, Tim Russert moderated a debate over the accuracy of Gary Aldrich's book Unlimited Access. NBC has yet to do the same for Robert Reich's collection of embellished half-truths.
Flinn Spin. The media's obsession with military sex scandals continued with the saga of Air Force Lt. Kelly Flinn, the first female B-52 pilot, who was charged in a court martial for adultery, lying, and disobeying an order. Network reporters attacked the Air Force for going after a woman, and turned a home wrecker into a victim.
Morley Safer started the odyssey with a sob story on the May 11 60 Minutes. Safer presented to the American public the quivering, tearful, lovestruck Flinn as an acclaimed pilot, a "warrior" from her evaluations who was now being chased out of the military for the "biblical offense" of adultery. Safer told Flinn's parents, "It's hard to believe someone of her ability and character could go to jail." Mocking military readiness, Safer asked an Air Force attorney, "the suggestion is that sex could be our undoing as a military fighting force?"
With that report the flood gates opened up. In the three weeks that followed, the three networks ran a combined 29 stories on the evening broadcasts. Twelve stories set her on a pedestal as the first female B-52 bomber pilot who was now under attack. CBS's Peter Van Sant on May 15 was typical: "She was the pride of the Air Force, making history as the first woman B-52 pilot." Van Sant falsely reported Air Force statistics: "Lieutenant Flinn's case has become an embarrassment to the Air Force because she is being prosecuted for crimes that are often overlooked or handled with counseling when the accused pilot is a man." The very next night NBC's Jim Avila set the record straight: "More men have been court-martialed than women, 363 men and only 21 women." In a service where 16 percent of the members are women, Avila's numbers show that only 5 percent of those charged with adultery are women.
Not that NBC didn't have a pro-Flinn spin. On May 22, Tom Brokaw blamed the men: "We began this evening with the story of Lieutenant Flinn, a woman caught in a tangled web of rules in what had been a man's world." The next night, NBC's Andrea Mitchell put the onus on the military, not on Flinn: "The Kelly Flinn case has ignited a national debate over whether the military can deal fairly with women."
Storm Over Strom. Quiz: Name the Senator who is A) the most senior member of his party and B) a former member of a violent racist organization? Hint: It's not Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). Yet when Thurmond set the record for length of Senate service May 22, the networks focused squarely on the Senator's segregationist past. Without noting that he was a Democrat at the time, that night CBS's Bob Schieffer called him an "arch-segregationist who filibustered 24 straight hours against civil rights." NBC's Joe Johns noted he was once a "staunch segregationist." On Today the next morning, NBC's Lisa Myers asked: "You were once a segregationist. You voted against most major civil rights bills. Do you regret that at all?"
Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein was unforgiving on the PBS chatfest Washington Week in Review May 23: "We shouldn't forget that this was a man who defined his identity and became a national figure by being on the wrong side of the most important issue America has faced since World War II....And no matter what else has happened since...that is something that lives as part of his record always and really shouldn't be forgotten." Host Ken Bode agreed: "Yes, that's true."
Thurmond's past is worthy of criticism, but when it comes to the segregationist history of Democrats who have adopted liberal civil rights stands, journalistic memories run short. How about the Ku Klux Klan record of Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV)? The subject went unmentioned when Byrd achieved his own milestone of 14,000 Senate votes in July of 1995. Philip Terzian of the Providence Journal ran into the media double standard on the February 3, 1995 Washington Week: "The Democratic point man on the Balanced Budget Amendment is Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Retired Klansman, who really personifies transferring portions of the federal government to West Virginia...Is he the wisest choice to be leading the charge on this?" Steve Roberts, then of U.S. News & World Report, shot back: "I think calling him a retired Klansman was a little harsh. That was a long time ago in his past."
Still Crazy After All These Years. A recent survey for USA Todayfound that 22.4 percent of Americans believe the U.S. had its best leadership during the 1980's, second only to the 1960's. These Americans must not watch or read the national media, who continue to rewrite the history of the 1980's to match the liberal view that Reaganomics made the rich richer and the poor poorer, and tax cuts combined with defense hikes made the deficit soar.
On the May 4 C-SPAN Sunday Journal, Washington Post reporter John Yang used flawed assertions about the 1980's to discredit the current proposed tax cuts: "The way these tax cuts are structured, many Democrats fear that they will explode, the costs will sort of explode in the second five years and that we're getting ourselves into the same situation we got into with the 1981 tax cuts...I think there's concern that we're getting into a situation where we're going to have to pay for these tax cuts over the second five years from 2002 out, and that's gonna cramp the government, have even less money for spending and less money for programs."
As economist Daniel Mitchell argued in the Heritage Foundation's book Issues '96, "Tax revenues expanded from $599 billion in 1981 to $991 billion in 1989. Even after adjusting for inflation, revenues grew by 20 percent."
In a May 22 USA Today profile of Rep. Dick Gephardt, reporters Jill Lawrence and William Welch scolded him: "He voted for the 1981 Reagan tax cuts that were a windfall for wealthy Americans." But IRS figures show that the share of income tax collections paid by the top one percent of taxpayers grew from 18 percent in 1981 to more than 27 percent in 1988. The share paid by the top ten percent also rose as the percent paid by those earning less than $30,000 fell. Later, the two repeated Yang's error: "'This all started, in my view, back in 1981,' Gephardt said. He didn't mention that he had voted that year in favor of the deep Reagan tax cuts that fed the federal budget deficit."
Race Ranting. CBS launched a backlash against anti-affirmative action movements around the country. On the May 16 Evening NewsDan Rather compared the end of quotas to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Rather told viewers: "Earlier tonight we reported the President's apology for medical experiments that allowed black Americans to die of syphilis. The President noted how badly this hurt public trust in government, especially among minorities. The same criticism is being made today on another score. As CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports, it's the fallout from California's voter-approved ban on state affirmative action programs."
Blackstone focused on the decrease in black applications for admission to California's state sponsored medical schools asserting that "the main reason for the drop in medical school enrollment next year is that minority students have chosen not to apply. Many seem to believe no matter what their qualifications, the welcome mat has been pulled in at California's universities." Conservative anti-quota activist Ward Connerly appeared in the report, but he was drowned out by four pro-quota talking heads. Never mentioned in the piece is that the decline in enrollment may prove that without the preference, some minorities could not meet the standard set for everyone else. Also neglected is the idea that trust in government may increase now that the bureaucracy is no longer playing favorites according to the color of a person's skin.
On June 7, Saturday anchor Paula Zahn interviewed retiring Spelman College President and leftist activist Johnetta Cole. Instead of challenging Cole on her radical affirmative action views, Zahn lobbed softballs at her. Among her questions: "What do you think is the most insidious threat to women today: sexism or racism?"
