MediaWatch: March 1994

NewsBites: Aborting the Mother

Mother Teresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, strongly criticized abortion and its supporters at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 3. Mother Teresa delivered her condemnation before an audience which included President Clinton, Vice President Gore and congressional Democrats. She explained: "I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion because Jesus said, `If you receive a little child, you receive me.' So every abortion is the denial of receiving Jesus."

Such a strong rebuke in the President's presence by the world's best-known missionary would, with the presence of conflict and a compelling picture, qualify as great TV. But while The Washington Post and The New York Times covered it, the networks did not.

Gold Medal Gush
Olympics coverage usually inspires an examination of the host country's customs, and this year was no exception. On CBS This Morning February 24, co-host Paula Zahn played the role of advocate: "Children here are not only considered yours, but citizens of Norway, with the same rights as grown-ups, the right to free education and free health care, and the right to have their questions and concerns heard by those in power."

Zahn said Norway provides a year of paid parental leave for mothers or fathers and, "to ease the financial burden of raising a family, the state pays an allowance of about...120 dollars per month for each child, regardless of family income." But "free" education and health care and state allowances come at a cost that Zahn failed to mention: Norway is among the highest-taxed nations in the industrialized world, extracting over 50 percent more in revenues per capita than the United States.

Undeterred, Zahn then sung the praises of the Norwegian educational system, which does away with grades until the seventh grade. Talking with a group of children, Zahn lamented, "Some children in our country would love that, because we do get grades at some schools and it makes it very competitive." Following the report, Zahn's counterpart Harry Smith was giddy for the Norwegian system: "Paula, you and I have been talking about, we want to send our kids, we want to, want to move here and put our kids in school here, the kids are, are treated so well. I think we have a lot to learn from these folks."

National Nanny. Is government spending on child care the best determinant of its quality? According to Good Morning America co-host Joan Lunden, the best Governors "put their money where their mouth is." On February 10, Lunden showcased Working Mother magazine Editor Judsen Culbreth, and her list of "Governors who get it." These Governors, all Democrats, included Bruce King (N.M.), Barbara Roberts (Ore.), Gaston Caperton (W. Va.), Roy Romer (Colo.) and Evan Bayh (Ind.). Culbreth listed her six "worst" states for child care: "Alabama, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Virginia." The problem? Not enough government. Culbreth claimed "They have lax standards, very little regulation, and they put little money behind child care."

Culbreth's study measured only government-financed child-care, so big spenders dominated her list. In a new study, Cato Institute economists Stephen Moore and Dean Stansel graded governors on their taxing and spending performance and found only two of Culbreth's "Governors who get it" earned a "B" grade, Bayh and Romer. Roberts, Caperton, and King all received a "D" for excessive taxing and spending, while James Hunt of North Carolina got an "F." Moore and Stansel said "Hunt's pro-spending philosophy threatens to disrupt a decade of strong economic performance in North Carolina." When Culbreth concluded "the federal government has given $2.5 million dollars to the states to implement programs," Lunden interjected: "We'll end on that good note there."

The Gore Details
Ted Koppel announced a new way of news gathering at ABC on the February 24 Nightline. Koppel explained that Vice President Al Gore had presented him with some hit-squad research on the "anti-environmental movement" which showed it was funded by Sun Myung Moon, Lyndon LaRouche, and the coal industry. Koppel explored the charges against global warming skeptics and found them true. So did Koppel ever consider airing opposition research from say, Dan Quayle?

But Koppel also gave warming skeptics more air time in a half hour than they've gotten in years of network newscasts, and delved into the reliability of computer models in forecasting global warming. He even aired footage of an old Nightline about the atmospheric effect of the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires. Skeptical climatologist Dr. Fred Singer predicted the smoke would dissipate quickly; Carl Sagan predicted massive environmental damage. Koppel announced: "The record shows that in this instance Dr. Sagan was wrong and Dr. Singer was right."

Koppel concluded the show: "There is some irony in the fact that Vice President Gore, one of the most scientifically literate men to sit in the White House in this century, that he is resorting to political means to achieve what should ultimately be resolved on a purely scientific basis." What Koppel did not tell viewers was that the "most scientifically literate" Gore has refused to debate Dr. Singer live on television.

Pick A Number, Any Number
Once again, the press is accepting the largest numbers dealing with the homeless without question. On the February 6 CBS Sunday Morning, David Culhane reported: "Homelessness is a national scandal with an estimated two million people on the streets this year."

On February 17, Jason DeParle of The New York Times revealed a new homeless plan written by HUD's Andrew Cuomo: "A draft of the Administration's plan...says the problem is `far larger than commonly thought' and calls for spending large, though unspecified new sums on housing, mental health and tax credit programs." He continued: "Republican Administrations had said that about 600,000 Americans were homeless on any given night, with the majority suffering from drugs, drink or mental illness. The Administration's report, by contrast, endorses recent estimates that as many as seven million Americans were homeless in the late 1980s." CBS, NBC, and CNN each did stories on the seven million guesstimate without noting any lower estimates.

Compare these stories to the type of coverage that the 1990 Census report received. In a count using 1,500 enumerators, the Census Bureau found there were less than 230,000 homeless nationwide. It was ignored by ABC, CBS and NBC, and when newspapers picked it up, they attacked the number as too low.

Rush the Racist?
What does Rush Limbaugh have in common with Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Abdul Muhammad? According to Time staff writer Christopher James Farley, they are all racists. In a February 7 article on the pressure being put on black leaders to distance themselves from Farrakhan and Muhammad following a hate-filled speech Muhammad made at Kean College, Farley remarked: "What rankles some blacks is that some whites feel a need to make all black leaders speak out whenever one black says something stupid...Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern make questionable racial remarks, and yet President Bush invited Limbaugh to the White House, and Senator Alfonse D'Amato attended Stern's book party."

In his speech, Muhammad called Jews "hook-nosed, bagel-eatin', lox eatin' impostors." He attacked Pope John Paul: "The old no-good Pope...somebody need to raise that dress up and see what's really under there." He even attacked black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates: "Who let this Negro out of the gate?" Farrakhan has called Judaism a "gutter religion." How many comparable quotes by Limbaugh did Farley cite? Zero.

Tailhook "Facts."
The media settled on the "fact" that Tailhook accuser Lt. Paula Coughlin was the victim in the 1991 sex scandal. When Coughlin announced her resignation from the Navy, all the networks did stories with feminist outrage; Tom Brokaw's intro on the February 10 NBC Nightly News summed up the angle: "The Navy's Tailhook scandal in this country may be coming to a close without one conviction, without a single court-martial."

None of the reports explored whether the lack of convictions was due to an overzealous, politically-tinged prosecution. The networks didn't interview Center for Military Readiness expert Elaine Donnelly, who wrote in the March 7 National Review: "The [Navy] brass allowed themselves to be bullied into capitulation to feminists [like Rep. Pat Schroeder] on procedural and policy issues, at the expense of legal safeguards and sound military policy. The farce came to a humiliating end...when a Navy judge blasted Defense Dept. officials for bungled, amateurish witness interview reports that could not stand up in court, and threw out the last of the three pending courts-martial."

Donnelly explained that many airmen resigned or accepted fines and career-destroying disciplinary actions because of improper investigative methods. Prosecutors bluffed airmen into believing they had been implicated by fellow Tailhook attendees, gave dishonest interview reports, and asked "intrusive polygraph questions about sexual histories and practices." All this while many women who were active Tailhook partiers, like Lt. Paula Coughlin, who asked a man to shave her legs, were never charged for their infractions. All these facts are available in the public arena. But, like the Anita Hill controversy, sometimes the cause is more important than the truth.

Labelphobia. Descriptive labels affixed to individuals and groups can speak volumes about a reporter's political perceptions. No one should be surprised that conservatives frequently end up with a negative label. In Newsweek's February 14 article titled "Homophobia," Senior Editor John Leland wrote: "Gays are finding increased visibility is a double-edged sword. They have greater political clout and social acceptance, but their newfound confidence has energized the far right."

But further into the article, Leland labeled radical agitators ACT-UP and the Lesbian Avengers "confrontational gay rights groups," not "far left" activists.

Jonathan Altered
From the people-who-live-in-glass-houses department, Newsweek Senior Writer Jonathan Alter complained January 24 that some reporters were overplaying Whitewater details: "News organizations are routinely conveying misimpressions, including the notion that Whitewater files were secretly removed from Foster's office at night (they were removed in daylight in the presence of the FBI)." Alter didn't point out that ex-Counsel Bernard Nussbaum wouldn't let the FBI see the files, which are still off limits to the public and Congress.

As for conveying misimpressions, take a look at Alter's April 6, 1992 Newsweek column complaining that the media's focus on Whitewater "crosses the line from examination to vivisection... Jerry Brown was grossly wrong about Clinton `funneling money' into his wife's law practice...Hillary Clinton takes no share of state fees, but if she did, it would be peanuts." All the major papers have now repeated Jerry Seper's March 1992 Washington Times story that Mrs. Clinton was awarded $2,000 a month to represent Madison S&L before state agencies. Alter's column asserted that while George Bush's sons "make Hillary Clinton's activity look like one of those tea-and-cookies parties she disparages....the less convincing Arkansas stories [will continue], because of their daily drip-drip quality and the willingness of Jerry Brown to exploit them."

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