MediaWatch: March 1990

NewsBites: Free Enterprise? Oh No!

FREE ENTERPRISE? OH NO! No matter how good the news for freedom around the world, some reporter will always find the dark side. Poland has enthusiastically launched a massive restructuring of its economy toward a productive free market. But on the February 24 CBS Evening News, reporter Bert Quint managed to unearth some people hurt by the switch: deaf-mutes and mentally retarded girls. To anchor Bob Schieffer, layoffs of these workers from an inefficient textile factory reflected "a painful lesson in the reality of capitalism." Quint described it as "the new Polish capitalism, replacing the old communist system where people couldn't lose their jobs."

Quint concluded: "Poland is learning what survival of the fittest means, and there are those who begin to wonder if capitalism is really better than what they had."

HUNTING DOWN RED OCTOBER. "Will there be any reviews aside from this one that don't begin or end with the observation that the Cold War is over and that therefore this movie is anachronistic?" asked Wall Street Journal film reviewer David Brooks. The answer is no as far as The Washington Post is concerned. In the March 2 "Style" section Hal Hinson wrote: "The Hunt for Red October, the new Sean Connery movie based on the Tom Clancy novel, is a leviathan relic of an age that no longer exists....And that it lurches into view as a Cold War anachronism is, in fact, the picture's most fascinating feature. It makes it irrelevant in an astoundingly up-to-date way."

"If you're miffed because the Cold War's over, Ceaucescu's dead, the Sandinistas lost the election in Nicaragua and it seems like there's no one around to hate any more, then maybe The Hunt for Red October is just the thing," Desson Howe began sarcastically in the "Weekend" section. Howe added: "This is a Reagan youth's wet dream of underwater ballistics and East-West conflict." Funny, we don't recall the Post calling Born on the Fourth of July anachonistic.

YOU LISTEN TO WHAT YOU ARE. A year ago National Public Radio (NPR) asked Gallup to poll Morning Edition listeners. The results, which MediaWatch recently obtained, are not too surprising. Nearly 70 percent of listeners who also contribute money to NPR stations and 58 percent of "randomly selected listeners" considered themselves liberal. Virtually no NPR listeners (3 percent) believed Morning Edition was "presented from a conservative perspective" and 66 percent called it pretty balanced. The remaining 30 percent called it liberal. Those 30 percent were asked whether "this is good or bad." Good, said 55 percent. Bad, said 17 percent.

GRIPE OVER PIPES. Newsweek used a stable of Soviet experts for its February 19 focus on "Life Without Lenin," but only the conservative needed an ideological description. The magazine quoted "Jerry Hough, a Duke University Kremlinologist," "Alexander Motyl, an expert on Soviet nationalities at Columbia University," and "British Soviet specialist George Walden." But Harvard historian Richard Pipes, the magazine warned, is "a longtime anti-Soviet hardliner."

EASY ON JESSE. The TV network news decisionmakers don't think all scandals are created equal. When President Bush's son, Neil, was implicated in the savings and loan mess on January 26, ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC each featured the story on their nightly newscasts. But when Jesse Jackson's connection with the HUD scandal (lobbying on behalf of a builder under investigation) was revealed on the front pages of The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times on February 3, the networks were silent.

POST TOASTS JIMMY. "Down the winding mountain road came Jimmy Carter's caravan of conscience," began a highly sympathetic February 22 Washington Post "Style" section profile, "Citizen Carter: In Nicaragua and Beyond, the Peacemaker's Moral Mission." Post reporter Art Harris described Carter's ex-presidential role as "diplo-evangelist and counselor to the world," heaping praise on the ex-President: "When Carter speaks, Latin America listens," and "In a sense, fair play at the polls -- and the importance of Carter's verdict -- is a measure of Citizen Carter's moral clout in the world."

Attempting the impossible (saving Carter's historical reputation), the Post explained that Carter's tenure of foreign humiliation and domestic disaster made him a "victim of history." Harris wrote: "In retrospect, however, Jimmy Carter has become a moral presence, running harder than ever to recast his legacy with good deeds and making an impact in a way historians say few ex-Presidents have even tried...Now, a decade out of office, he appears to be on a popularity roll."

The Post ended by quoting a college student from Cameroon: "As President, he was so far ahead of what the American people think, but he was restrained by the system. If he could have won another term, he could have been like Gorbachev. But he was too revolutionary for the people."

CONSUMERISM, CBS STYLE. The major media have latched onto the cause of what the Left calls "ethical consumerism," buying products with a political or social goal in mind. For example, on the February 6 CBS This Morning, correspondent Erin Moriarty focused on the leftist Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), described only as "nonprofit." Their recent book, Shopping For A Better World, "rates companies according to their corporate policies." Which policies? Well, CBS paraded on air the negative ratings given to the makers of Advil, Dole pineapple juice, and Pine Sol for their failure in "promoting minorities" and "advancing women," (i.e. affirmative action) and for investing in South Africa.

On CBS' Nightwatch on February 23, CEP's Alice Tepper Marlin added another way to be ethical: staying away from firms dealing in national defense or nuclear energy products. She hoped consumers were supporting "companies with a better social record and staying away from the companies with a bad social record." What CBS (and Time, U.S. News and USA Today before it) are promoting is not consumer advocacy -- it's political advocacy.

LESLEY'S PRIORITIES. "I hope I'm not coming off as a defense expert," CBS' Lesley Stahl demurred while interviewing Dick Cheney on the February 4 Face the Nation. She needn't have worried: her comments spoke volumes. The White House reporter repeatedly demanded that Cheney respond to an Atlantic Monthly study which urged eliminating the B-2, the Trident missile, and the Midgetman while halving money for SDI to increase federal spending on health insurance, education, and foreign aid. Her "expert" proposal for U.S. troop levels in Europe: "What about 50,000? That's a presence." Meanwhile she lambasted the Bush plan as "enormous...all we're doing is creating enormous resentment from the people there...and we're going to be a target and they're going to hate us."

Stahl's shrillness resurfaced three weeks later. Moderating a debate between Reagan official Martin Anderson and 1980s-bashing economist Gary Shilling, Stahl unloaded a barrage: "...the Reagan economic planning. Was it too free-wheeling? Was it, there was too much laissez-faire economics involved?...Why can't we afford anything? ...Are you ready to say we need some more regulation after all?" Reaching new lows, she also claimed that federal spending under Reagan "was all on military...It was all military ...it was huge...it was military and debt."

WAR NO MORE. "The Soviets are in a hurry to disarm, by themselves and through negotiations. They need the money saved for their failed civilian economy. Also, President Gorbachev believes modern weapons make war too dangerous to fight." Thus began a glowing February 1 review of Mikhail Gorbachev's groundbreaking efforts for peace by NBC Moscow correspondent Bob Abernethy.

Conveniently overlooking ongoing Soviet policy toward Angola, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and all of its satellite nations, Abernethy presented Gorbachev's vision as if his sincerity were beyond doubt, saying, "Gorbachev's objectives in negotiations are ...an eventual ban on all nuclear weapons...all chemical weapons and nuclear weapons tests. And Gorbachev argues all forces should be defensive only. No country should have troops on the territory of another."

FINDERS KEEPERS. The notion of Lithuania escaping from its Soviet occupiers has few critics, but CBS' Barry Petersen is a rare naysayer. "Talk is cheap, but independence could be very expensive," Petersen began his February 6 Evening News report. Because of "Lithuania's dependence on Moscow...Electric lines and generating plants, Moscow owns them. The trains that bring in virtually all of Lithuania's raw materials are state-owned, too." To the Moscow correspondent, "Lithuania is learning that even in independence, the country it most hates is the country it will most need." Petersen didn't consider that Moscow has no right to "own" anything since it stole Lithuania's entire economy when it annexed the country during World War II.

BACKING UP BORK. Did Robert Bork get the short end of the media stick during the circus over his 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court? Yes, says ABC legal correspondent Tim O'Brien in a March 1988 letter to Bork published in the forthcoming book Ninth Justice: The Fight for Bork, by Patrick McGuigan and Dawn Weyrich. "[A] good deal of our reporting was sloppy and simply inaccurate," O'Brien admitted. "Sometimes we journalists take great joy and pride in challenging (or attempting to challenge) the statements of high government officials. I feel it is quite clear that we failed to challenge many of those who made statements regarding your nomination."

Conceding the shortcomings of television news reporting, O'Brien added that "writing a story for a network news broadcast is somewhat akin to writing a majority opinion. We have half a dozen editors who feel they have not earned their salaries unless their two cents worth of editorial wisdom appears in every story. Most of what we write is often written in haste. And, as with occasional opinions at the court, sometimes the finished report produces neither heat nor light, only smoke."

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