MediaWatch: May 1993
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: May 1993
- CBS Stands Apart from Other Networks In Promoting Clinton Stimulus
- NewsBites: Eleanor and Evidence
- Revolving Door: Stern Justice
- Networks Ignore Protest Platform, Explicit Sex Talk, and Hate Speech
- Today's Double Standard
- Eye on School Choice
- Save Papers by Making Them Liberal
- Janet Cooke Award: CNN's Ken Bode Throws Allegations At GOP Without Airing Response
NewsBites: Eleanor and Evidence
Eleanor and Evidence. Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift, a passionate defender of President Clinton on The McLaughlin Group, penned an April 5 story deploring improper Secret Service gossip about catfights between the Clintons: "There is no evidence to support any of the stories...living in the fishbowl is hard enough without worrying about a Secret Service that can't keep mum."
This is a very different Eleanor than the one who lavishly praised Kitty Kelley's book of unproven gossip about Nancy Reagan in the April 15, 1991 Newsweek: "If privacy ends where hypocrisy begins, Kitty Kelley's steamy exposé is a contribution to contemporary history. The revelations about the First Lady's `promiscuous' lifestyle as a Hollywood starlet, her `intimate relationship' with Frank Sinatra and her eagerness for daughter Patti to undergo an abortion expose the cracks in the Reagans' family-values veneer."
Hillary Hilarity. According to Boston Globe reporter Nathan Cobb, jokes at Dan Quayle's expense are fine, but Hillary Clinton jokes reflect male anxiety. On the front page of the April 6 Globe, Cobb posited: "Not since the days of Dan Quayle -- has it really been two months already? -- has a national political figure been such a triple star of joke, one-liner and song as is Hillary Clinton." He then warned: "Not everyone thinks it's funny. Hillaryesque humor is seen by some people as a comment on how many Americans, from TV monologists to water-cooler wiseguys, are made uncomfortable by a powerful and ambitious woman."
Cobb added: "Patricia Ireland is not amused." Cobb then quoted the NOW leader: "They're trying to take a threat, and their fear of it, and make a joke. Many men are threatened by strong women." So, women in the media who derided Quayle were insecure in their femininity?
Patients' Paradise. On the April 5 CBS Evening News, Tom Fenton gave American health care reformers, who often look north to Canada for a role model, another system for the U.S. to emulate: Germany. "When it comes to health care, Germany does more for less." How? "Early diagnosis saves money. So does the bargaining power of the big nonprofit drug companies," reported Fenton. "Everybody has really free access to medical care," declared German doctor Bernd Dyckhoff. And the best part? Fenton asserted: "Germans get full medical and dental care without ever seeing a bill."
Sounding like a member of Hillary's task force, Fenton concluded: "As Americans search for a better system, the lesson from Germany is that private health care can be made available to everyone, provided all pay their fair share." But earlier he reported that not everyone does: "The taxpayer pays the premiums for the unemployed, the elderly, and the poor." It seems Germans really do see a bill, except it's presented by the government instead of private doctors.
Raise Taxes I. "Scratch an Average American and you'll find someone who believes himself, or herself vastly overtaxed; never mind that the United States pays far less of its income in taxes than other advanced countries," argued Marc Levinson in an April 26 Newsweek piece on "why it's so hard to talk straight about new taxes." Days after people filed their taxes, Levinson claimed that "many Americans pay far less than they think" in taxes. Sound familiar? In an April 13, 1992 article titled "April 15 could be worse: Believe it or not, Americans' taxes aren't that bad," Levinson told taxpayers that they "don't have much to complain about" and in fact "have it pretty good." Levinson also asserted "Taxophobia has been fanned by an enduring myth" as supply-siders "sold America on the notion that lower tax rates mean faster economic growth." Levinson insisted "the purported relationship between taxes and growth doesn't exist."
Raise Taxes II. Also aboard the "new taxes can't hurt" band wagon is Knight-Ridder Washington reporter Robert Rankin. On April 18, he assured Charlotte Observer readers: "You are probably not going to believe this, but your tax burden is not getting heavier year after year....As a share of your income, your taxes have remained remarkably stable for decades." Rankin insisted "that modern political rhetoric often has overstated the impact taxes [at the national level] have had on the nation's economic vitality."
How to overcome the public's anti-tax attitude? Rankin advised: "Clinton could cite statistical evidence showing how tax burdens have remained constant until now, and he could argue that even after his increases they really aren't so high compared with other advanced nations. But Americans have proved impervious to such arguments for decades, perhaps because the truth about the United States' tax burden is hard to comprehend."
Raise Taxes III. MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour marked April 15 by focusing on a California town "suffering anxiety over raising taxes, despite the obvious need to repair the infrastructure." KQED reporter Spencer Michaels blamed the problem on the 1978 passage of Proposition 13: "Today, many politicians blame the measure for a whole litany of civic problems that fester because of a lack of money....In San Anselmo, officials worry they will have to cut back fire protection, laying off firemen or closing the fire station because of a $300,000 shortfall."
Communism Disguised. When the leader of the South African Communist Party, Chris Hani, was assassinated, the networks eulogized him as a democrat and buried his communist ties. On the April 14 CNN World News, reporter Mike Hanna declared: "At risk now is the very thing that in life Chris Hani stood for, the peaceful achievement of a democratic majority rule government in which all the country's people are represented." Allen Pizzey claimed on the April 18 CBS Evening News, "Chris Hani preached peace, his legacy may yet be violence."
Preached peace? Hani had been involved in revolutionary violence since 1967, and in 1982 was named Army Political Commissar of the ANC, according to A Future South Africa by Peter Berger and Bobby Gadsell. Reporters ignored Hani's endorsement of necklacing, the practice of placing burning tires onto the necks of blacks suspected as `collaborators', and only six of the 25 network stories on Hani even mentioned that he headed the South African Communist Party at the time of his death, hardly advocates of "majority rule."
U.S. Ruse. Since Clinton-friendly economist Paul Krugman left the staff, U.S. News & World Report economics writer David Hage has taken up cheering for Clintonomics. Hage described the tax-and- spend Clinton program as not liberal or conservative, but "a third way that counts on free markets and fiscal restraint to deliver prosperity while using government to help the disadvantaged earn their fair share." In the April 26 story, Hage wrote that Clinton's model is John F. Kennedy, who helped spur economic growth in the 1960s with broad-based tax cuts, but Clinton "cannot simply install JFK's fiscal policies" because deficits are "forcing Clinton to build his growth strategy around deficit reduction." What reduction? Clinton's projected deficits are still larger than Reagan's.
But Hage reliably bashed the '80s: "The richest fifth of American families saw their incomes rise by a solid 13.9 percent, while the incomes of all other U.S. families stagnated or declined. And despite Ronald Reagan's radical tax cuts, economic growth subsided even further, to 2.5 percent annually." Hage's math failed to explain how the income of the bottom 80 percent declined when the median family income (the average of all incomes) increased from 1982-89. While Hage cited 2.8 percent growth for the 1970s, he didn't note that the growth rate for 1982-89 was also 2.8 percent, and inflation as much lower. Why lower growth in the 1980s than the 1960s? Consider federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product: it grew from 18.2 percent in 1960 to 22.3 percent in 1980. Under Reagan, it declined slightly to 22.1 percent by 1989. Under Bush, it roared back to an estimated 25.2 percent in 1992. Clinton's "fiscal restraint" won't lower that number any time soon.
Arnot, Dr. Bob. Infant health is a serious issue, but Dr. Bob Arnot of CBS isn't too serious about accuracy. On the April 13 CBS Evening News he charged: "In all of North and South America, only Haiti and Bolivia have worse records than the United States for vaccinating young children. As many as half of the two-year- olds in America are not fully vaccinated." Arnot neglected to mention that full immunization in the U.S. consists of five separate vaccines that are injected in over 15 doses from birth to age 6. Ken Allman, a health adviser at the Centers for Disease Control, told MediaWatch definitions of "fully vaccinated" vary, with most countries using a lower standard than the U.S.
To exaggerate another problem, Arnot excluded the majority from his statistics: "For infant mortality, America couldn't do much worse. Excluding white newborns, America ranks 70th in the world, roughly the same as Mongolia." According to the National Center for Health Statistics, infant mortality for black children was 18.6 deaths for every 1,000 children in 1989, over twice the rate of white children which was at 8.1. When all races are combined the U.S. mortality rate was 9.1 infant deaths for every thousand births for 1989, ranking the U.S. at 21st.
Armed Inequality. On April 28, Defense Secretary Les Aspin announced an end to the ban on women in combat. That night, the praise was nearly unanimous. CBS Evening News Pentagon correspondent David Martin profiled female pilots who may be flying in combat roles soon. "Lt. Jeannie Flynn will be the first..until now she has been restricted to this trainer [plane]. But next month she'll start flying the top of the line F-15E. For the first time, her sex makes no difference." Martin concluded: "For the first time, women in uniform have a chance to be treated as equals."
But sex does make a difference. Martin failed to note all branches of the military have different physical requirements for men and women. The Washington Times reported the Army requires men to do 40 push-ups in 2 minutes, while women only have to do 16. In the Air Force, men must run 1.5 miles in 13 minutes 20 seconds. Women are fit if they make it in 15 minutes and 30 seconds.
Advocacy Ads. Time can't stop promoting the Green agenda, even when promoting itself. In the February 22 Sports Illustrated, Time had a two-page ad featuring pictures of polluted skylines, garbage dumps, oil wells, and traffic jams. Under each photo ran lyrics from the song "America, the Beautiful." The ad text at the bottom claimed:
"Maybe it's time we changed our tune. The U.S. seemed oddly off key at the Earth Summit in Rio last June. With only 5 percent of the world's population, our country uses 25 percent of the world's energy and emits 22 percent of all CO2 produced. Yet of the 178 countries present, we were the most reluctant to make meaningful changes." It's not the first Time ad with ideology. In Sports Illustrated's April 22, 1992 issue, Time's ad declared "Nature has a cure for everything, except the spread of Western civilization. Until recently cultural genocide has been a quietly accepted practice. But times change and so does Time."
Pam's Parties. When Pamela Harriman, the widow of Averell Harriman and a Democratic patron, was named US ambassador to France, Beth Brophy of U.S. News & World Report raved about her "unique qualifications": "She lived in Paris twice: during finishing school in the `30's and again in the `40's and `50's." If that weren't enough, Brophy burbled: "Harriman does have an important ambassadorial attribute: She throws great dinner parties."
