MediaWatch: May 1990

Janet Cooke Award: ABC News: Thatcher Thrashing

Without Ronald Reagan to kick around anymore, why not slam Margaret Thatcher? Elected before Reagan, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has embarked on an 11-year battle to dismantle socialism instituted by a series of Labor governments in the '60s and '70s. She has accomplished many goals by selling off inefficient state-run industries, re-implementing free enterprise, monetarist principles, and reforming huge social spending programs.

So it's no surprise that when a controversial poll tax for local services went into effect in England, many American reporters derided Thatcher and her decade-long conservative tenure. London-based ABC News reporter Barrie Dunsmore was by far the most tendentious, employing misinformation and untruths. For his April 12 World News Tonight report, he earns this month's Janet Cooke Award.

Dunsmore ostensibly was reporting on rioting caused by the new tax, but his true target soon became the British Prime Minister and her policies: "The worst riot in central London in this century, sparked by a new tax here called the poll tax. Because rich and poor will pay the same in each municipality, the taxes seem, even by many of the well-off, as intrinsically unfair. But many in Britain believe the riots were also an expression of anger about a decade of Margaret Thatcher's policies." Mimicking a line that could be pulled out of any media report on Reagan's economic legacy, Dunsmore continued: "The division between haves and have nots has widened."

Dunsmore accused Thatcher of pitiful governance: "Since World War II, the government here has promised the people of Britain that it will provide the minimum requirements in shelter, education, and health care. Mrs. Thatcher's growing unpopularity appears to be directly related to the number of people who feel that she has broken those promises." He described the National Health Service (NHS) as "once the model for Europe: high quality health care free for everyone. Now patients are treated in hospital corridors. There are acute shortages of beds, doctors, and nurses. More than a million people are now waiting for admission."

Next on Dunsmore's list was the school system: "60 percent of British school children leave school at the age of 16. That compares to ten percent of Germans or Americans." On the homeless and welfare issues, he was the most harsh: "The sight of large numbers of people living on the streets is new in Britain. A national organization for the homeless says there are a million people now without permanent homes. These people, and the permanently unemployed, are part of a growing underclass in Britain, a class the Prime Minister does not even concede exists." The report had this exchange:

Dunsmore: "Your critics are likely to say very often that your policies have created an underclass in this country."

Thatcher: "I think their analysis is totally wrong. I do not recognize an underclass. It is a new word and I think it is a commentator's word. I don't think it ties in with reality at all."

Dunsmore added: "In recent years, the government has stopped making support payments to anyone under 18." A homeless activist claimed: "They can't vote because they don't have an address. They don't get any welfare payments. They have nothing to lose." Dunsmore concurred: "Which may account for the very unBritish behavior in last month's riots, and for the fears that there may be more to come."

MediaWatch asked three British policy experts to analyze the report. All characterized it as extremely misleading and, at times, untruthful. Simon Clark, Director of the Media Monitoring Unit in London, pointed out that the riots were organized by prominent far-left groups, including communists and Trotskyites. Andrew Hubback, Research Director for the International Freedom Foundation-UK, noted that rich and poor certainly do not pay the same poll tax: "People on low incomes can claim rebates up to 80 percent."

Peter Allum, Secretary for Economic Affairs at the British Embassy in Washington, countered Dunsmore's argument that the gap between rich and poor is growing. Real average male earnings have rocketed up 38 percent from 1978 to 1990. Even those making half the average male earnings saw their real wages go up 32 percent. This compares to a real drop of one percent in average male earnings during the Labor Administration in the '70s.

Hubback added that the NHS budget "has been doubled since 1979 -- an increase in real terms of 30 percent." Thatcher succeeded in cutting back the bureaucracy, leaving more money for proportional increases in the number of doctors and nurses on staff. Thus, Hubback remarked, "the NHS now treats one million more patients a year than in 1979." In late 1989, Allum pointed out, waiting lists for in-patient hospital care was down seven percent from 1979 levels.

Social Security benefits were cut for those under eighteen to discourage dropping out of high school. Clark pointed out that Thatcher introduced the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) to teach dropouts to work in the private sector. If there are young people living on the street, Clark insisted "they are there by choice." As for the homelessness, it is not one million. A quick call to London's Department of the Environment put the figure at no more than 93,000 in late 1989 -- 88,000 of whom were being housed by local programs. According to Clark, the one million homeless figure (that would be one out of every 56 people) probably comes from a well-known, left-wing group called Shelter.

Dunsmore did not want to discuss his story nor defend his sources or statistics. Reached in London, he would only say: "I think not. As a general proposition [ABC] takes the attitude that we do our reports and do not comment on them. People either like them or they do not." It's safe to say, critics of Reagan in the United States liked what Dunsmore had to say about Thatcher and British conservatism.

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