MediaWatch: May 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: May 1994
- Amount, Tone of Scandal Coverage Markedly Different Than During the Reagan Era
- NewsBites: Newsweek Loves the Times
- Revolving Door: Formative 60's
- First Lady Called "Candid" and "Responsive" After She Evades Questions
- Vanishing Liberal Bloc?
- Stossel's Scare Special
- Washington Post's America of Cliches
- Janet Cooke Award: NBC's Ann Curry Offers Dire Scenario of Overpopulation Without Citing Sources
First Lady Called "Candid" and "Responsive" After She Evades Questions
Three Cheers for Slick Hillary
Reporters were happy when Hillary Rodham Clinton took their advice and held her long-awaited Whitewater press conference on April 22. They could finally ask hopefully as New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse did on Washington Week in Review: "Is this basically the end of Whitewater?"
But in reality, the end is nowhere in sight because many questions were left unaddressed. As columnist Tony Snow wrote, she "answered precise questions with lawyerly evasions [such as] 'There's really no evidence of that' ....and she invoked the amnesia defense more often than Ronald Reagan did in the days of Iran-Contra," saying "I don't remember" at least six times.
The media ignored her lack of specificity, grading her instead on style. NBC's Tom Brokaw gave her high marks: "She was cool, articulate, and for the most part very responsive to all questions." ABC's Peter Jennings repeated Mrs. Clinton's charge that attacks on her show "the country is having some difficulty adjusting to a working woman in the role of First Lady."
CNN's Jill Dougherty praised the First Lady on that evening's World News: "It was an extraordinary performance...[she] answered questions for more than an hour, for more than 100 reporters."
"A riveting hour and 12 minutes in which the First Lady appeared open, candid, but above all unflappable. While she provided little new information...the real message was her attitude and her poise," Time's Michael Duffy enthused in the May 2 issue. On CNN's Capital Gang, Time columnist Margaret Carlson touted the triumph: "Her explanations were perfectly reasonable, something else might come out, she didn't answer every question, but, hey, she came across fine."
An "A double-plus" was the grade Newsweek's Eleanor Clift gave her on The McLaughlin Group, explaining "She's been re-zoned back into the stratosphere...She really was convincing and sincere."
Of the network reporters, only ABC's Brit Hume suggested "Mrs. Clinton may not have answered all the questions about the family's financial dealings." Some papers explored the questions left hanging, such as why did the Clintons, 50-50 partners with the McDougals, bear less of the debt for Whitewater? How did Mrs. Clinton avoid receiving margin calls on her cattle futures trades?
The Washington Post ran an article inside headlined "First Lady's Explanations Yield Little Information" and even The New York Times' Maureen Dowd, who called it "an exceptionally polished and calibrated performance," conceded later that "she never fully resolved the central questions of Whitewater and the commodities trades."
