MediaWatch: March 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: March 1994
- Networks Rarely Cover Church News, Ignore Religious Concerns on Social Issues
- NewsBites: Aborting the Mother
- Revolving Door: Tara Helps Tony
- Media Ignore Sexual Harassment Charges -- When Made Against Clinton
- Crying Over Spilt Milk
- Waste Watchdogs
- Reviewers Ignore Gulf War Record
- Janet Cooke Award: ABC's Strait, Compton, Kast, Gregory, and Burns Tout Benefits of Clinton Health Plan
Waste Watchdogs
Buried in the adulatory coverage of the "tightest budget in memory" has been the unpleasant fact that the pork keeps rolling. But ABC's John Martin and NBC's Lisa Myers both covered the routinely ignored annual release of the pork-barrel "pig book" by Citizens Against Government Waste.
On the February 16 World News Tonight, John Martin found the government "studying screwworms, which the group says no longer exist in the U.S., $34 million. Subsidizing small firms and tourism in Ireland, $19.6 million. Modernizing the Philadelphia Naval Yard, which is closing, $11.5 million." He noted "many in Congress turn aside questions on pork-barrel spending, preferring to deliver to their states projects the country can't afford, for votes they can't do without."
On the same night, Myers recounted the "usual eyebrow-raising projects: $2.2 million to build a parking garage for 18 federal employees in the district of Iowa's Jim Lightfoot; $120 million dollars for a new courthouse in Phoenix, dubbed the 'Taj Mahal of Justice,' courtesy of Senator Dennis DeConcini." Myers reported the pig book "found about $6 billion in pork-barrel projects last year, roughly the same as before all the rhetoric about cutting the budget."
Another Woman's Right
On the February 13 Lifetime Magazine, produced by ABC News, reporter Eileen Douglas focused on women forced to defend themselves with a gun. Douglas discovered "crowded self-defense classes make it strikingly clear -- more women are learning to shoot." Douglas found that for Noelle Miller, who shot an intruder, "taking one life has made her value her own." Laura Nazrini was confronted by a criminal and had to "kill or be killed." Douglas watched a safety and self-defense class where a female instructor "tells the women in her class that a gun is still an effective defense against an attacker, if they're willing to use it." The networks might learn that women's rights include self-defense.
