MediaWatch: May 1992

NewsBites: No Homeless Hype

NO HOMELESS HYPE. In the 1980s the media repeatedly passed along homeless activist Mitch Snyder's assertion that there were three million homeless people. Now, one member of the media has acknowledged they bought a PR gimmick. In the April 6 Newsweek, reporter Jay Mathews came to a new conclusion: "The figure of 3 million homeless in the United States, used by advocates and the media in the 1980s, has little basis in fact. A 1988 Urban Institute report found there were no more than 600,000 homeless people on any night."

In the last few years, Newsweek itself used the three million number as a legitimate estimate in at least five stories. Maybe other news organizations will now retract their overstatements. Don't hold your breath.

ENVIRONMENTAL BULL. Cows cause global warming. That's what radical Jeremy Rifkin argues. Time considered his claim serious enough to justify a two page review of his book, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture. In the April 20 article, reporter Madeleine Nash explained: "The symbiotic bacteria that swell in every cow's gut enable grazers to break down the cellulose in grass. As a by-product, these bacteria produce considerable amounts of methane" which "periodically gusts forth from grazing herds in the form of rumbling postprandial belches."

Speaking of belches, Nash couldn't end her story without returning the blame to humans: "The environmental cost of beef is just one aspect of the multiplying burdens of producing food for an exploding human population. The real threat to the carrying capacity of planet Earth, dear Jeremy, comes not from our cattle but from ourselves."

TAX MY GAS, PLEASE. Time magazine may have a brand new design, but it's the content that needs changing. The perfect example of Time's preachy liberalism: its often-proposed hike in the gas tax. Seldom has a "news" magazine crusaded so long and so hard for an idea: Time has called for an increased gas tax more than 16 times in the last four years.

The latest outbreak of tax hype occurred in March. In the March 23 edition, Time suggested: "Tsongas' higher gasoline tax would help curb America's energy use and would provide funds for mass transit and rebuilding roads and bridges and would reduce the budget deficit." As an example of Bush's environmental "inaction," the March 30 Time cited: "Refused to consider higher energy taxes." Then, on April 6, in the first new issue, reporter Dan Goodgame suggested: "Increase excise taxes on gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco...Larry Summers, an economics professor on leave from Harvard, for example, calculates that a tax directed at halving the growth of carbon dioxide emissions would raise $16 billion a year, while increasing the price of gasoline only 5 cents a gallon."

GANNETT'S GREEN GRADES. The April 17-19 edition of Gannett's USA Weekend magazine put together a panel of "environmental experts to study candidates' environmental records." But the panel only polluted the debate, using left-wing politics as standards to grade the presidential candidates.

The panel included such noted scientists as Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. of the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice, and old-age hippie Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Predictably, the panel gave Jerry Brown A's and B's, allowed Bush to squeak by with D's, and trashed Pat Buchanan, giving him mostly F's.

Why were no market-oriented environmental experts included? Although USA Weekend summarized the business view in a 182-word sidebar, Assistant Editor Kathy McCleary told MediaWatch they had asked Russell Train, head of Nixon's EPA, to be a panelist representing the conservative point of view. The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Kent Jeffries told MediaWatch he wasn't contacted, and was surprised when told USA Weekend had asked Train, a green fellow-traveler, to represent the conservatives. This shouldn't be surprising: USA Weekend considered the owner of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream an "environmental expert."

FAMILY MATTERS. While conservatives talk of giving parents more options and decision-making power, liberals talk about increasing taxes, spending more money and adding more layers of bureaucracy. On the April 4 NBC Nightly News, John Cochran measured Bush's performance by the liberal standard, declaring the President's record of support for the family "spotty."

Cochran explained: "He has been generous in supporting the pre- school Head Start program, but educators complain that he has been tight-fisted with other school programs...Bush vetoed a parental leave bill, forcing employers to give workers time off to deal with newborn babies and other family emergencies. Bush urged firms to grant paid leave voluntarily, if they can afford it....Instead of building day car centers, Bush insisted on tax credits for parents, who are free to employ relatives or neighbors as babysitters."

ADORING ANNA. When New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, it made NBC's Today so happy that they interviewed her twice -- in one week. Mary Alice Williams, co-host of Sunday Today, and Katie Couric, co-host of Today, each took a turn celebrating feminism's newest heroine. For example, Williams' April 12 introduction: "A number of brilliant writers this week won the grand slam of journalism, the Pulitzer Prize. But only one of them produces the kind of work that people tear out of the paper and tape to the 'fridge." She described her guest as "one of the most influential journalists in America" and "a woman who's always exercising her intellect." Williams' idea of a tough question: "You have it all! Don't you just hate that?"

On April 8, Couric told Quindlen "So often I read [your] things and I think: 'Yes!' Now obviously you're convincing me or reaffirming some of my beliefs." What is it about Quindlen's columns that so delights Couric and Williams? Maybe such profound 'Quindlenisms' as, on January 24, 1991: "Sunday, the Super Bowl will be played in Tampa and so, inevitably, my thoughts turn to abortion." Or, on November 2, 1991: "This is what it is like to be a New Yorker, to have to stop and constantly acknowledge pain." And a quick sample of her "middle ground" analysis of politics, from April 8, 1992, "Ronald Reagan needed TV to abet a fantasy. Mr. Clinton needs it to communicate his reality."

ARTS ALLIES. The networks are still trying their best to prop up the National Endowment for the Arts. On the March 31 NBC Nightly News, Mike Jensen presented an entirely one-sided report, ending with a pro-NEA conclusion: "By its very nature, art goes beyond convention. Beyond reality. It pushes the boundaries. But the art world knows, and the government knows, that without taxpayer help, the richness and diversity of art in America could disappear."

"The National Endowment for the Arts has had an overwhelmingly wholesome influence in a thousand American communities," Charles Kuralt asserted in introducing Terence Smith's April 12 CBS Sunday Morning cover story. Smith only featured one critic of the NEA, Congressman Dick Armey, who was allowed 39 seconds of comment. By contrast, Smith allowed five NEA supporters time to comment, including ex-NEA head John Frohnmayer; Marlon Riggs and Martha Wilson, two NEA grant recipients; NEA backer Rep. Pat Williams (D-MT); and Brian O'Daugherty, an NEA media director. They were allowed 164 seconds of airtime to promote the NEA, an almost 5 to 1 ratio over NEA critics.

PENTAGON PAIN. Anyone who assumes liberals want to cut the defense budget would have been shocked by the March 29 Meet the Press. The three panelists assaulted Defense Secretary Dick Cheney for having the nerve to hurt people by cutting defense spending. Host Tim Russert, a former aide to Mario Cuomo, accused Cheney of heartlessness: "Isn't the problem here...that you're going to dump out into the unemployment lines about a million people?" Russert argued: "I think the concern is that the Constitution says 'provide for the common defense' and 'the general welfare.' And they [defense contractors] see the Administration cutting, in terms of the common defense, but not providing for the general welfare of these people."

NBC Pentagon correspondent Fred Francis got personal: "You've got weapons systems designed for the Cold War, born of the Cold War. Would you prefer to have those weapons systems or hurt the little people, the guy in uniform who just came back from the Persian Gulf?...SDI. You've got over $5 billion in the budget next year....That's something that can be cut." Later, Francis contradicted his earlier statements: "Many people say...that you're not bringing it [the US military presence in Europe] down enough...When Mardi Gras is over, people leave New Orleans. And we're staying there." Cheney responded: "I am amazed...It's as though my friends on Capitol Hill, who like to cut the budget deeply, are amazed that that's going to have an impact on people."

STAR WAR STORIES. A March 23 Newsweek article, "A Safety Net Full of Holes," told of how one SDI "whistle-blower" alleged officials "knowingly masked the program's failures and overstated its progress just to keep the money rolling in." Reporters Sharon Begley and Daniel Glick explained: "Engineer Aldric Saucier, who was fired by the SDI program last month, described...a conspiracy within SDIO worthy of an Oliver Stone movie. He accused SDIO [Strategic Defense Initiative Office] of 'systematic illegality, gross mismanagement and waste, abuse of power and the substitution of political science for the scientific method.'"

Newsweek went on to suggest an orchestrated attempt by Pentagon scientists to "criticize Saucier's work and even question his sanity." But those scientists may have had good reason to criticize Saucier. The Washington Post reported on April 14 that Saucier's past is full of holes. On his government employment form, he claimed he had a bachelor's degree in physics from UCLA and "told a reporter last November that he had a bachelor's degree in physics and 'an advanced degree in propulsion and nuclear engineering' from UCLA." Both academic claims are false. Saucier has no degrees from UCLA, or any school for that matter.

RUSH TO RIO. ABC is keeping up the media drumbeat for President Bush to attend June's "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro. During the April 7 World News Tonight, Peter Jennings accused the Bush Administration of being "out of step with the rest of the industrialized world" on the issue of global warming. Instead of acting like a reporter and presenting both sides, Ned Potter resorted to hype that would make Chicken Little blush: "If the world is to head off the risk of global warming with its danger of massive crop failure, of rising sea levels, of spreading starvation in the poorest countries, then America -- the largest producer of the gasses that cause global warming -- is in the spotlight."

Potter failed to mention that there's no scientific consensus that carbon dioxide gases are causing any warming. In fact, a recent Gallup Poll showed two-thirds of the scientists in the American Meteorological Society and the American Geographical Union doubt that increased carbon dioxide causes global warming. But Potter didn't feel the need to explain why two-thirds of his potential experts aren't worth talking about: the drafters of the proposed Rio document, which all participants are expected to sign, have declared that the actual temperature record "does not matter." In other words, science takes a back seat to politics.

MEDIA WOMEN ON RUSH. In the May Vanity Fair, Peter Boyer showed that feminists in the media clearly don't get the joke when it comes to radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. One of Limbaugh's jokes concerns a group of women who demanded admission to a men's club, and then asked for an exercise room of their own. Limbaugh, knowing how to zing feminists, joked that the club owners thought they should put in a washing machine, an ironing board, and a vacuum cleaner. CBS This Morning co-host Paula Zahn said of Limbaugh's appearance: "If he mentions that washing machine line, he's not gonna survive his walk outside this studio."

Former Wall Street Journal reporter Susan Faludi slammed the Limbaugh audience: "It makes me wonder about the women [listeners], who clearly don't have their heads screwed on straight -- 'Put me down again.'"

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