MediaWatch: March 1991
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: No-Fault Press
NO-FAULT PRESS. Time devoted a three-page story to the public's disgust with media coverage of the Persian Gulf War. But Senior Writer Richard Zoglin's February 25 piece arrogantly blamed the public for not understanding the media's role. "It is not surprising that resentment toward the press has surfaced during a war that enjoys widespread popular support. The public wants to believe things are going well. Any report that tends to contradict optimistic U.S. pronouncements, or support Iraqi claims, casts the press in the role of unwanted messenger."
Since both liberals and conservatives have complained, Zoglin declared his profession vindicated: "The attacks from both sides probably mean that the press is situated just about where it usually is: in the even-handed middle ground."
Maybe Zoglin should consider one reason almost everyone is upset with the media: Even when polls show 80 percent plus believe reporters are doing a bad job, Time refuses to concede any fault lies with reporting.
SCHIEFFER SCUDS. The success of the Patriot missiles against Iraqi Scuds spurred calls for further investment in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). That prompted Bob Schieffer to launch a Scud of his own, with about as much accuracy as the Iraqis. "The problem with all this is that the Patriot system has very little in common with the Star Wars concept," he said during the February 2 CBS Evening News. Actually, the Patriots and SDI share the same mission, which is to use weaponry to strike down incoming missiles.
Schieffer retreated to the realm of the ridiculous, arguing: "To be effective against nuclear weapons, a Star Wars defense would have to be perfect." In fact, SDI was never intended to be perfect, but rather to save millions who might die in the absence of strategic defense. Schieffer's main experts were two members of the (not identified as liberal) Union of Concerned Scientists. "Critics of Star Wars say that as good as the Patriots have proven to be, what they have really shown is that no such system guarantees total security," Schieffer concluded.
GUMBEL GRUMBLES OVER REAGAN. Today co-host Bryant Gumbel refuses to give Ronald Reagan credit for anything. "Americans have been dazzled by TV reports of a wide range of computer and laser guided weaponry being used successfully against Saddam Hussein," Gumbel announced on January 28. But, he cautioned, "a lot of folks have been simplistically crediting Ronald Reagan, whose expensive procurements dominated government spending in the '80s."
After reporter Henry Champ explained how Jimmy Carter deserved more credit than Reagan for the air war's success, Gumbel interviewed former Reagan defense official Frank Gaffney and Rep. Pat Schroeder. Gaffney pointed out Reagan's greatest accomplishment: sticking by high-tech weapons despite constant congressional naysaying and funding cuts. "If you look at the Carter staples," Gumbel countered, "the Carter staples were the cruise missiles and the Stealth, two weapons that have played a large part in this conflict. The Reagan legacy is the B1 and Star Wars, which have not."
Despite their obvious effectiveness, Gumbel asked Schroeder whether the war "has exposed the need for basic armaments as opposed to high-tech, very expensive toys?"
PACIFIST PUFF PIECES. Reporters looking for pacifists against the Gulf War wrongly identified far-left Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Berkeley) as one of them. The March 11 New Republic documented Dellums' support for gun-toting dictators Fidel Castro and the late Maurice Bishop. Papers captured in Grenada included a letter that Dellums' top aide, Carlottia Scott, had written to Bishop: "[Dellums] really admires you as a person and even more so as a leader....Believe me, he doesn't make that statement often about anyone. The only other person that I know of that he expresses such admiration for is Fidel."
Undeterred, USA Today reporter Richard Wolf, who has lionized Dellums before, wrote on January 18: "For two decades in the House, Dellums, now 55, has practiced what his constituents sent him to Congress to preach: pacifist politics."
The Washington Post concurred on February 20 in a long "Style" section profile headlined "Ron Dellums, Waging Peace." Post reporter Lois Romano pointed out that "now he is also so mainstream that his wife feels the need to explain how difficult it was for her husband to file a lawsuit seeking to enjoin the President from declaring war." Romano should know better than to use this dodge: Dellums' personal feelings have never stopped him from supporting America's enemies.
INCORRECT FREE EXPRESSION. First Amendment rights are always a favorite issue with the media, but the Gulf War allowed some reporters to take free expression whining to new heights. NBC News correspondent Stan Bernard reported the war inspired "unbridled patriotism," but his February 13 story focused on how "Americans are also showing little tolerance for the minority who oppose the war."
Bernard's examples of intolerance? First, "The Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans last weekend...Woody Harrelson, the naive bartender on one of America's favorite TV sitcoms, was to be the Grand Marshal. His invitation was withdrawn after he participated in this anti-war demonstration in California." Second, "At Madison Square Garden in New York City, Seton Hall player Marco Lokar refused to wear an American flag on his uniform. The other players did. Lokar was booed."
These incidents led Bernard to a ridiculous conclusion: "With Americans risking their lives in the Gulf, the right of free expression, a right Americans take for granted, is taking a beating here at home." Not inviting goofball actors to the Mardi Gras parade is now an offense against the First Amendment? It looks like freedom of expression should be reserved only for war critics, not for those who oppose them.
OUT OF ENERGY. Bush's energy policy has a fatal flaw in the eyes of NBC News reporters: it does not force conservation through tax hikes or by mandating smaller cars. On NBC's Today reporter Henry Champ began: "The President wants to rebuild America's roads, bridges and airports, but he doesn't want to raise your taxes. His plan forces the states to do it." His model: Europe, "where drivers pay a $1.87 gas tax for clean and safe roads and good mass transit." Champ cited repair needs, such as in New York City where "the city's East River bridges are crumbling." Champ's February 13 story failed to explain how, if taxes are the solution, the region already with one of the nation's highest tax burdens on motorists could have so many bad bridges.
On the February 21 Today, substitute co-host Katherine Couric snootily remarked: "With a former oil man in the White House, it should come as no surprise that the Bush Administration's new energy policy is long on production and short on conservation." Deputy Energy Secretary Henson Moore explained how Bush's plan would reduce energy consumption more than it would increase production.
Couric ignored the point, concluding: "Well, it remains to be seen if we will ever have a national energy policy." So, no new massive government regulation means no plan.
PACT FACTS. On February 12, ABC left the war for a moment to announce the end of an era. Peter Jennings declared: "Another vestige of the Cold War is about to be buried. The Kremlin announced today that the Warsaw Pact military alliance will be formally disbanded on the first of April. There's really not much to disband. When communism folded up in Eastern Europe the alliance just sort of faded away."
Tell that to the Poles and the Germans. On the same day, Soviet charge d'affaires Lev Klepatski told the Polish government that it would not finish removing its 50,000 troops from Poland before mid-1994. The situation is even worse for Germany, where the removal of 380,000 Soviet troops will not be finished until 1994.
HOGGING HEADLINES. NASA global-warming guru James Hansen's annual study of land temperatures designated 1990 as the hottest year on record. Roy Spencer of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, calculated temperatures by satellite and classified 1990 as only the fourth highest year in the last ten. Who got more news copy? Guess.
The New York Times, the newspaper of record, mentioned the Spencer study in a January 10 story erroneously headlined "Separate Studies Rank '90 as World's Warmest Year." Reporter William K. Stevens gave four sentences to Spencer, but more than nine paragraphs to Hansen, dwelling on his quotes and data.
The February 3 New York Times Magazine also ran a long Hansen profile that featured the subheadline: "In 1988 Jim Hansen testified that the world was getting hotter. But how hot? And how fast?" Spencer, who's skeptical of detecting global warming from just ten years of data, doesn't have the alarmist skills necessary to score with reporters.
GUILT BY ASSOCIATION PRESS. On the night of February 16 Enrique Bermudez, a long-time commander of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters, was shot in the head and killed. Associated Press correspondent Filadelfo Aleman didn't have much nice to say about the man who left the security of Miami last year for the dangers of Managua.
Aleman charged that Bermudez "had close ties to the late dictator Anastasio Somoza," noting he was Nicaragua's military attache in Washington when Somoza fell. But as Council for Inter-American Security fellow Michael Waller pointed out in The Washington Times, "the post is less of a perk and more of an exile to keep potentially troublesome officers out of domestic politics." Even the Carter Administration considered Bermudez an acceptable post- Somoza military leader.
The AP story also devoted three paragraphs to detailing allegations Bermudez ordered the 1987 death of Benjamin Linder, a U.S. activist the Contras reported was wearing a Sandinista uniform when killed in a firefight. Aleman acknowledged "a federal judge in Miami threw out the suit in September 1987." So why impugn his memory with the allegation?
TAKING LIBERTIES. "The ACLU takes pride in its consistency, defending virtually every line in its 582-page policy manual from attacks from both the right and the left," Senior Editor Ted Gest asserted in his February 18 U.S. News & World Report profile of the American Civil Liberties Union. "In that respect, 'we're the most conservative organization in America,' maintains its Florida director, Robyn Blumner," added Gest, before he lauded the ACLU's broad client list: "For all the flak the ACLU takes over unpopular stands like backing war protestors and gay soldiers, it is applauded by those it helps, regardless of ideology." Gest cited the ACLU's defense of Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger, concluding, "With everyone from Nofziger to Nazis endorsing its cause, the ACLU's prominence as the self-appointed protector of Americans' basic rights in only likely to grow."
Tell that to pro-lifers. In a November 5 article in the same magazine, columnist John Leo explained how the ACLU refused to intervene on behalf of demonstrators charged under anti- racketeering laws: "It seems clear that the influx of single- issue pro-choice money and members is bending the ACLU out of shape, making it more a part of the pro-choice movement and less committed to a civil-liberties agenda."
GARTNER'S GREAT GUNS. NBC News President Michael Gartner believes in an expansive reading of the First Amendment, but not of the Second. In a January 10 Wall Street Journal column, "Tell Me a Good Reason for Handguns," Gartner called for Congress to pass "a strong gun control law." Gartner simplistically argued: "I'm especially against handguns. I'm against them because they are used to threaten, to maim, to kill. I'm against them because today, if it is typical, 10 children will be killed by handguns ....I can't think of any reason to be for handguns."
The January/February issue of The Quill reprinted Gartner's address to the Society of Professional Journalists in which he called for broadened First Amendment protections as championed by liberal Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. Gartner recalled sitting next to him at a dinner: "It was a pretty big dinner, and people kept coming up to him and saying, 'How are you feeling, Mr. Justice?' and he'd reply, 'I can make it two more years.' Finally, he leaned over to me, and he said: 'You know, that's what they really want to know. They don't care how I'm feeling. They just want to know if I can outlive the Reagan Administration.' Well, he did, and we're all the happier -- and freer -- because of that." Gartner later referred to the retired Justice as "my hero."
BUDGET DEFICIT ABC'S. Last November, a MediaWatch study found that the networks never reported that federal budget "cuts" were actually just reductions in projected increases. Now one reporter, ABC's John Stossel, has corrected his colleagues. In a February 15 report on 20/20, Stossel explained the deal between Bush and Congress: "They announced a $500 billion plan of tax increases and spending cuts. But the numbers tell a different story. The numbers show the budget was reduced from one trillion, 197 billion dollars to one trillion, 477 billion. That's how they count in Washington: 280 billion dollars more is actually less... These are people who just can't say no."
Stossel cited U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) as an example of congressional pork-barreling. Murtha got $10 million to build a drug intelligence center his district, though one exists in Texas. When Murtha defended himself by suggesting his state was losing clout in Congress, Stossel replied: "I as a taxpayer say so what? I don't care if you lose political power in Pennsylvania ....Isn't it kind of like stealing from the public to pay your friends?" Stossel decided: "When you think that there are 535 in Congress, you can see why we're in debt."
GIANT BIAS. Proving that the inability to separate opinion from reporting extends throughout the Time-Warner empire, an item in Sports Illustrated targeted a pro-life video put out by a football team." Champions for Life, a 10-minute-long piece of antiabortion propaganda that first appeared 14 months ago, became the subject of controversy last week when the New York Giants made it to the Super Bowl," began the February 4 item. "No matter how one feels about abortion, it's hard not to be repulsed by the video's inflammatory language." What did SI find particularly repulsive? "Jimmy Burt Jr., the nine-year-old son of Jim Burt, a former Giant now with the 49ers, looks into the camera from atop his father's shoulders and says, 'It's great to be alive.'"
SI ended its critique: "Apart from questions of taste, there's one further objection. As columnist Anna Quindlen noted in The New York Times, no women are heard from in the video." Possibly Time-Warner feels that women are better served by Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue.
