MediaWatch: March 1990
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: March 1990
- More Media Money Moves Left
- NewsBites: Free Enterprise? Oh No!
- Revolving Door: New Racket for Brackett
- Networks Ignore Mendela's Unpleasant Past
- Environmentalists Get All The Time
- Other Networks on Nicaragua
- Goldberg Scolds Media
- Janet Cooke Award: NBC News: Sandinista Surrogates
Environmentalists Get All The Time
SUNUNU'S NO NEWS. Whatever environmentalists want done, the networks consider it beyond debate. The latest example occurred when White House Chief of Staff John Sununu dared to tone down a February 5 presidential address on global warming. "Almost immediately environmentalists attacked it, saying it proposed too little," announced CBS anchor Bob Schieffer. White House correspondent Wyatt Andrews asserted "a call for more research on global warming is not exactly the aggressive approach George Bush seemed to promise when he ran for office." Andrews concluded that "gambling with the ecology, then, rather than with the economy, is largely the work of Chief of Staff John Sununu."
When Bush created an Alaskan loophole in federal wetlands policy the same week, CBS reporter Deborah Potter spent a whole story explaining why "to environmentalist groups, it's a symbol of what they call the broken promises of the Bush Administration." Potter goaded Rep. Claudine Schneider, asking "So he [Sununu] is a road-block?" Potter's wrap up: "As for the administration's claim that things are much better now than in the Reagan years, one environmentalist sniffed 'let's face it, there was nowhere to go but up.'" Neither CBS report gave Sununu time to respond.
SOLID SOURCES ON SUNUNU. New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd wrote an impressively flimsy February 15 front-page story describing the rift between Sununu and EPA chief William Reilly. In 30 column inches, she relied almost entirely on unnamed sources, including "people familiar with the relationship" between Reilly and Sununu, "officials," "those close to Reilly," "Mr. Reilly's aides," "Mr. Reilly's long-term supporters," "one environmental lobbyist," "an EPA official," "administration supporters," "White House officials," "some environmentalists," "some party analysts," "some in the Bush inner circle," and "one Bush insider." If records for sloppy journalism were kept, this one would top the list.
SUNUNU'S VIEWS. Wall Street Journal reporter Gerald Seib was one of the few who actually described Sununu's reservations about environmentalist demands. In a March 2 feature, Seib gave Sununu equal time, reporting that Sununu believed "other government officials don't demand sufficient scientific proof that environmental proposals are feasible before agreeing to them." Sununu told Seib: "If you're going to make a trillion-dollar decision, if you're going to make a decision that's going to affect a million jobs, you ought to make it on the basis of what you know and not on the basis of what your emotions may lead you to feel."
