MediaWatch: May 1990
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: Reds Like Ted
REDS LIKE TED. Soviet Life magazine recently gave its first Glasnost award to CNN founder Ted Turner. The May cover story explained: "A new era in East-West relations has erupted from the seeds of glasnost that were planted just a few short years ago by leading visionaries of our time. One such visionary is famed entrepreneur and media titan Ted Turner."
Turner is now shooting for the Chairman Mao Publicity Award for his defense of the Tienanmen Square massacre. As Tom Brokaw reported during the May 10 NBC Nightly News, "[Turner] said he would not criticize China, adding the demonstrators violated Chinese law despite repeated warnings. Said Turner, 'We bleed in our hearts for the students, but we also bleed for the government and the soldiers who felt like they were being forced to take this action.'"
DEBORAH LOVES DAN. Deborah Norville, the much-ballyhooed new co-host of NBC's Today show, took the network to a new low in a fawning April 24 interview with Daniel Ortega in Managua. "For a man who for ten years was applauded and admired by thousands of Nicaraguans, rejection at the polls has required Daniel Ortega to become philosophical about politics.... Ortega's statesmanlike acceptance of the voters' decision has prompted some in Washington to call the Sandinista leader a champion of democracy." MediaWatch tried to ask NBC who used this description, but NBC didn't return our calls. NBC also wouldn't reveal the source of this Norville question: "We talked to one observer who told us if he were awarding the Nobel Peace Prize, he would nominate Mikhail Gorbachev and Daniel Ortega. What do you think of that?"
When Norville's questions weren't thinly disguised compliments, her questions came from Ortega's left: "There are some members of the FSLN who say you've sold out. How do you respond to that?" Despite Ortega's 15-point loss after a campaign of government intimidation, Norville asserted: "His personal magnetism which helped bring him to te fore remains undiminished." Ortega's cult of personality was rejected by his countrymen, but it's still going strong on American TV.
BABYSITTING BLUES. A child care bill passed by the U.S. House provides $30 billion to subsidize child care. But that's not enough government intervention for ABC's Peter Jennings. Introducing a March 28 "American Agenda" story on the subject, Jennings complained, "It leaves the issue of child care standards up to the individual states, and according to virtually every child care expert, that is a mistake."
Reporter Rebecca Chase lined up a selection of child care educators in favor of federally imposed standards, concluding with a sweeping declaration: "So the experts are unanimous. The nation needs higher and uniform standards when it comes to child care." Chase noted Congress probably will reject this "unanimous" advice, prompting her to warn: "Experts fear that without mandatory standards nothing will change, leaving most parents without any assurance that their children are in good hands."
MISSING MANDELA'S ADMISSION. When Nelson Mandela was released in February, reporters hanged on his every word. At one point NBC anchor Tom Brokaw exclaimed, "Now we can watch him eat his dinner, and help lead South Africa to a new age." However, reporters were less attentive two months later when Mandela was forced to concede that his African National Congress (ANC) had tortured dissident members.
ABC and CNN ignored his April 14 revelation and CBS weekend anchor Susan Spencer only gave the story a brief mention. Only NBC devoted serious attention to the admission of the ANC's record of brutality, but did so with regret. "It was not a pleasant thing to say, but Mandela said it today in South Africa," NBC's Garrick Utley declared, adding "It is one more problem Mandela certainly does not need." Reporter Robin Lloyd agreed: "It was a political embarrassment." One thing NBC failed to mention: Winnie Mandela's participation in torturing several black teens.
PARADE'S ABORTION CHARADE. Parade, the Sunday newspaper supplement, had a strange way of looking at the abortion debate, commissioning abortion advocate Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan to write a piece presenting the arguments of both sides. Sagan and Druyan spent little of the April 22 cover story attacking the assumptions of the pro-choice movement, devoting most of the article to knocking down the pro-life argument by stretching its technical basis to ridiculous conclusions.
For instance, they wondered if masturbation or menstruation is murder because of the potential of eggs and sperm to create a human being. The article also claimed "there is no right to life in any society on Earth today," irrelevantly noting how often and remorselessly "we destroy forests; pollute rivers and lakes until no fish can live there; kill deer and elk for sport." They concluded: "We find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue"
REBUTTING RABEL. Last month MediaWatch detailed NBC reporter Ed Rabel's coverage of Cuba. During a two-part series on March 30 and April 2, Rabel insisted that the demise of communism couldn't spread to Cuba: "If they're bored with Castro's rigid Marxist- Leninist doctrine, or if they long for the sweeping changes occurring in Eastern Europe, they are not saying so publicly... There is no movement here for change, they say, because the revolution is too strong."
More observant reporting came the following weeks from CBS' Juan Vasquez, a reporter not known for being particularly tough on Marxists in Central America. On April 4, he noted: "After 31 years of revolution, Castro senses that Cubans, especially the young, may be losing some of their revolutionary fervor." Six days later, Vasquez again delved below the government line. "There are signs that Cuba's people see the handwriting on the wall: enrollment in advanced English classes has tripled...The appeal of a western-oriented consumer society may yet prove stronger. After 31 years of sacrifice, Cubans are getting tired of being on the outside looking in."
REPEATING RABEL. TV network news reporters aren't the only ones susceptible to the Cuban government's public relations. Take, for example, Frank Wright's two-part Minneapolis Star Tribune front page series April 29 and 30. "There is no sign of substantial organized resistance, and indeed, popular support remains strong for Castro and the revolution's provision of health care, education, employment, and other basic needs over the years."
Despite being "the best and most broadly educated younger generation in its history," Wright explained why Cuba's young just aren't appreciative: "Many are apathetic, others disaffected. They aren't old enough to remember the bad old days, and satisfying just their basic needs isn't good enough for them." Other countries like Vietnam may have "inched toward concessions that smell of capitalism," wrote Wright, but "communism won't go into the tank so easily ." One of Wright's sources, Manuel Lopez, President of Cuba's biggest cooperative, insisted "It is one of the fairest systems Cuba ever had." Wright's series relied heavily on communist Cuba's officials and "Cuba specialists" like Carter diplomat Wayne Smith, but how many sentences did Wright dedicate to the thoughts of Cuba's dissenting voices? Not one.
DON'T BOETTCHER LIFE ON IT. "What a pretty picture, if it were true. The foreign worker laboring happily at the side of an East German. For four decades communists proclaimed their state free of the prejudice that afflicted the West. The picture was a lie," Mike Boettcher began an April 14 NBC Nightly News story exposing the facade of interracial harmony the East German communists have for so long declared was the norm. "When a young Vietnamese student attempted to climb from East to West," for example, "he was grabbed by East German police. East German bystanders applauded the rough treatment he received."
But after so conclusively discrediting the communist propaganda line, Boettcher concluded the piece by echoing that same propaganda: "East Germany's guests quietly endure their ordeal and patiently wait for what reunification will bring. They knw it's bad here, but they've heard it's not much better out West."
CHEMICAL MIX-UP. From gun control to unilateral dis-armament, the left has shown an inability to distinguish between the possession of a weapon for defense and the use of that weapon to commit a crime. A classic display of this theme was Jeanne Meserve's dig at efforts to modernize U.S. chemical weapons stockpiles during the March 27 World News Tonight.
"Ever since Iraq used poison gas on Kurdish civilians, the United States has campaigned to stop the spread of chemical weapons," Meserve declared, "but that campaign may be undercut by the administration's efforts to buy the chemicals for itself." Elisa Harris of the Brookings Institution chimed in: "And this is perceived outside the United States as hypocritical."
Meserve concluded, "The Pentagon says it will produce chemical weapons until they are banned worldwide and it refuses to acknowledge any contradiction in pursuing the two goals simultaneously." Apparently no one has ever explained deterrence to Meserve.
AIRTIME FOR AIRLINE ATTACK. "Federal deregulation has put the airline industry in a tailspin. That's the word from a new study," CNN PrimeNews anchor Susan Rook announced on March 28. Rook failed to mention what organization released it: the Economic Policy Institute, a group founded by some former Dukakis advisers, a fact that made the conclusions hardly surprising. "The study concludes a little re-regulation may be the ticket to better service."
Reporter Frances Hardin, who failed to air an opposing view, claimed that the new study "confirms what many airline passengers already know about services, fares and what seem to be fewer and fewer direct flights." And what passenger complaints would re-regulation solve? One passenger whined: "This morning it was just a danish and coffee for breakfast; before, you used to have your bacon and eggs." And to think this atrocity is all blamed on federal deregulation.
VILNIUS VACUUM. Last year, the presence of the foreign press exposed to the world the atrocities committed in Tienanmen Square. In Lithuania, however, Mikhail Gorbachev expelled Western reporters over the March 31-April 1 weekend. The Committee to Protect Journalists, the Newspaper Guild, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the American Society of Newspaper Editors protested the expulsion. But very little of this protest carried over into network coverage, which only mentioned the expulsion in passing.
CBS gave the story a brief reference during an April 1 piece by Allen Pizzey. NBC's Rick Davis mentioned the story on the March 31 and April 1 Nightly News. On March 31, CNN's Jim Clancy warned, "The last members of the foreign press were ordered to leave the Lithuanian capital over the weekend, raising fears that the Kremlin planned to remove pro-independence politicians by force, if necessary." ABC's Jim Hickey mentioned the expulsion in his March 30, April 1 and April 2 stories from Vilnius, but ABC never again told viewers why all subsequent stories came from Moscow.
South African and Israeli restrictions on press coverage generated far greater reaction. The media aired entire stories on the anti-press actions b those countries and referred to restrictions at the beginning or end of many reports. Clearly this has not been the case in Lithuania, which raises the possibility that the media are more concerned with protecting Mikhail Gorbachev than telling the full story.
CHIDING CUBA'S CHURCH. Religious freedom is returning to Eastern Europe, but a number of reporters argue that it will not happen in Cuba. During the April 12 CNN PrimeNews, reporter Charles Jaco noted that "the number of priests [in Cuba] has dropped from 1,000 in 1959 to around 200 now." Jaco blamed the Catholic Church, not Castro, for this decline. "There's little indication Cubans are intensely religious like people in Poland or Czechoslovakia. One reason: the Catholic Church in Cuba has been historically conservative, often run by Spanish, rather than Cuban, priests," Jaco asserted. That's ironic since Cuba has been a haven for Marxist liberation theologians. Jaco used Jorge Gomez, a member of the Cuban Central Committee, to support his claim: "There does exist a separation between the Church and the people. It is not a conflict with the party, and the Church must resolve that conflict with the people themselves." Jaco downplayed the beating and jailing of Cuban Christians, declaring, "Despite some harassment from Castro's neighborhood revolutionary committees, churchgoers say they are free to worship."
Jaco concluded that "the Vatican indicated the Pope may come here in December. If he does it could put the Church's stamp of approval on a government that until recently tried to put the Church out of business." Did the Pope's visit to Austria put his stamp of approval on Kurt Waldheim? Did his trip to Poland mean he approved of that regime?
