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
Other Networks on Nicaragua
Ortega's Big Win. In addition to NBC's Ed Rabel, ABC also tried to sell viewers a Sandinista victory. "For the Bush Administration and the Reagan Administration before it," Peter Jennings intoned, the ABC-Washington Post poll "hints at a simple truth: after years of trying to get rid of the Sandinistas, there is not much to show for their efforts."
During a February 23 Nightline devoted exclusively to how the U.S. would normalize relations with the victorious Sandinistas, Ted Koppel predicted: "Almost certainly, the Sandinistas will still win." Reporter Forrest Sawyer claimed "Every independent poll shows him far ahead," although almost half of the polls taken in the months before the election had Chamorro in the lead.
Daniel The Great. CNN's Lucia Newman burnished Ortega's reputation, reporting on February 23: "The last time he went on the campaign trail, he looked like the serious and shy revolutionary that, according to friends, he's always been." Newman found an old neighbor who told her how "the Ortega boys had their father's patriotism in their blood." Newman continued: "No one has ever called Ortega charismatic, but his unquestionable dedication to his revolutionary principles, and enviable work capacity, has won him admiration of his friends and even some of his foes."
CNN's Ronnie Lovler remained impressed after he lost. "One observer commented that Ortega will look back on this day as a turning point in his life, when he demonstrated to the world that the one-time guerrilla had truly become a statesman and a leader of his people."
To CBS reporter Juan Vasquez, Ortega was "part populist, part Bruce Springsteen, selling an image, and for this do-or-die campaign, the Sandinista leader has not only changed his appearance, he even claims to have renounced communism. 'I never said the Sandinistas were a Marxist party,' he told CBS News. 'We're nationalists with a universal ideology.'" Right.
