MediaWatch: May 1995

NewsBites: Brownout

Brownout. Los Angeles Times reporters Sara Fritz and Rich Connell revealed on April 9: "Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown has effectively concealed his personal investment in a trouble- plagued, low-income apartment complex that is part of the rental empire of a Los Angeles businessman whom federal officials consider a notorious slumlord."

Brown is not the first prominent Democrat revealed to have ties to "notorious slumlord" -- and Democratic Party contributor -- A. Bruce Rozet, who's been accused by HUD officials in both the Bush and Clinton administration of abusing low-income housing programs. On February 3, 1990, The New York Times reported "The Reverend Jesse Jackson repeatedly sought meetings with Housing Secretary Jack F. Kemp last year" on behalf of Rozet. The networks were silent then, and five years later, nothing's changed. The network evening news shows failed to run a single story on the Brown revelations.

Burying the Big Story. Years after the Cold War ended, anti-anti- communism still rules. Last year, CBS canonized Edward R. Murrow in a special hosted by Dan Rather in which he labeled the 1950s as "a time of blacklists and witch-hunts and red-baiting." CBS Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood attacked the FBI file on conductor Leonard Bernstein: "It is a milepost, I think, to be reminded how irrationally suspicious and fearful we once were."

Now the new book The Secret World of American Communism, by Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, using recently released secret documents from Soviet archives, demonstrates the extensive financial and political links that the Communist Party USA, Armand Hammer, and even journalists had with the Soviet Union. The Boston Globe put the story on the front page April 11. The Washington Post picked up on the story on page A6 the next day with Michael Dobbs underlining that "The documents provide corroboration from Moscow's side to back up the view that the Soviet Union succeeded in using left-wing front organizations such as the American Communist Party to penetrate U.S. government agencies." But The New York Times, home for "all the news that's fit to print," didn't note it until two weeks later. The April 26 story by Serge Schmemann failed to even mention the author's names or any details of the charges, such as Soviet funding of U.S. communists. Instead, the Times focused on debates about the reliability of the archives.

The book also provides corroborating evidence supporting the conviction of Alger Hiss, yet CBS, which last year suggested Hiss was simply "accused" of being a spy, ignored it -- as did ABC, CNN, NBC, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and the Los Angeles Times.

Only Angry White Males? ABC reporter Julie Johnson provided the Angry White Male update on the April 2 World News Sunday: "Republicans have found an issue they can sink their teeth into -- ending affirmative action." Johnson said opposing quotas "resonates with white men. An ABC News poll shows that more than 80 percent of them oppose preferences for women and minorities. That's too many potential voters to write off."

In a column in the April 14 Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer pinpointed Johnson's report as "a textbook case of willful distortion by way of a fact. Yes, 81 percent of white men oppose preferences. But what ABC omitted is that the same ABC poll showed that practically the same percentage of white women (77-79 percent) oppose preferences as well" -- 77 percent against preferences for women, 79 percent against preferences for minorities. The poll also showed "three out of four Americans said they opposed affirmative action programs that give preference to minorities to make up for past discrimination, and a virtually identical proportion felt the same way about programs for women...more than two out of three said those programs should be changed or eliminated."

More Ned Dread. Scientific evidence to the contrary, the media continue to trumpet dire warnings of global warming and press for government intervention. On the April 5 World News Tonight, ABC devoted the "American Agenda" to what Peter Jennings called "new evidence that man may be turning up the thermostat." Reporter Ned Potter cited oceanographers worried about declining plankton, and warned: "The ocean is giving a signal of global warming -- the much-debated prediction that industrial air pollution will trap the sun's heat and warm the Earth in coming decades." Potter claimed: "There is evidence, tentative but increasing, that the climate has already begun to change, affecting people's lives in a range of ways." He wondered: "Polar ice, tropical disease, dying oceans -- do these prove a warming pattern?...Among the believers is the White House."

Potter noted the Clinton Administration "promise to protect the global climate could not come at a more chilly political climate," even as environmentalists continue "building up evidence that the world's climate may already be changing." But John Merline provided a less hysterical scenario in the April 21 Investor's Business Daily. He quoted a study released April 3 by the George C. Marshall Institute (and ignored by ABC) which said "a growing body of scientific evidence shows global warming is not a serious threat." Merline pointed out "concerns about global warming rest on computer simulations of the Earth's climate," but "the study concluded that these simulations are unreliable as a source of solid information." Merline found "highly accurate satellite data show that global temperatures haven't budged in the past 16 years."

Paving the Everglades? CBS reporter John Roberts rode a boat through the Everglades on the April 16 Sunday Morning to mark Earth Day and warn of the new Congress: "There are some areas of the country where things aren't getting better. They're getting progressively worse....The Everglades is a perfect example.... environmentalists are now worried that Republican-sponsored legislation in Congress could be the final nail in the coffin."

Roberts quoted liberal representatives from the Audubon Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Friends of the Everglades, as well as Al Gore. The only anti-regulation view in the 10-minute segment was two sentences from a former Republican Congressman. Roberts painted a simplistic picture of helpful regulators versus harmful developers, although historically, the federal government has not been a friend of the Everglades. Jonathan Tolman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told MediaWatch "the Department of Agriculture has an incredible tariff scheme for imported sugar. They restrict imports so that the price for domestic sugar is twice the price of international sugar," encouraging use of the Everglades for sugar production. "They can grow it there because the Army Corps of Engineers drained the Everglades in the '50s. They took the Kissimmee River that meandered and channeled it so it ran straight."

But almost everyone Roberts talked to was convinced that the government was the Everglades' only hope: "Conservation activists fear that the new Republican-dominated Congress is well on its way toward implementing policies that would inflict great damage to the environment....pushing through all of these policies under the heading of regulatory reform."

Witty Guy? Washington Post reporter Guy Gugliotta devoted his April 12 "Capital Notebook" feature to a sarcastic attack on conservatives for proving corporations fund liberal causes. As a prelude to his assault, Gugliotta wrote: "As House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey pointed out in a March 24 letter to GOP House colleagues, Forbes 250 corporations have an irritating habit of giving money to liberal organizations, the lefties who think big government is the solution to everything....To bolster his claim, Armey enclosed copies of the Capital Research Center's Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy, a conservative publication that rates corporations according to the ideology of their philanthropy each year."

Gugliotta explained: "For the GOP, the welfare state thus appears to have replaced the Soviet Union as the source of almost everything bad that happens, whether it's drug trafficking, the 32-cent stamp or Elvis's untimely disappearance. Nobody knows exactly what the welfare state is, but it's always easy to blame." Gugliotta then took a swipe at CRC: "Patterns said Monsanto in 1992 donated $10,000 to the Children's Defense Fund, which the GOP suspects of links to COMINTERN (just kidding), and also kicked in for American Lung Association ($250), the Humane Society, of Greenville, S.C. ($1,100), the NAACP of East St. Louis, Ill. ($500) and other allegedly dangerous groups." If Gugliotta took his job of reporting more seriously, he could have explained CRC has monographs documenting how these groups lobby for liberal causes.

ABC on Drugs. "Legalize it!" was the mantra on the April 6 ABC special America's War on Drugs: Searching for Solutions. Host Catherine Crier promoted European drug policies: "The main goal is to keep addicts functioning in society. Give them treatment, not punishment. Give them clean needles. Legalize marijuana. And even, under supervision, give hard-core addicts their drugs."

Crier claimed Dutch experiments with legalization of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin were a success. But as former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Joseph Califano pointed out in a New York Post op-ed, from 1982 to 1992, marijuana use soared 250 percent among Dutch teens. Crier said Dutch coffee houses, where marijuana can be legally sold and used, allows the Dutch to "spend very little money policing the coffee shop scene because, they say, there's virtually no crime associated with the use of marijuana." But Crier ignored that because these shops have become havens for dealers of heroin and cocaine, Amsterdam will soon prohibit any more from opening. Crimes to fund drug use have skyrocketed in the Netherlands as well: 43 percent of burglars describe themselves as drug users. Crier declared America's "striking lack of success" in combating drugs. "There's not much disagreement that we're losing it," she said. But Califano again corrected her: the number of cocaine users has dropped 75 percent in the last 10 years, and the number of teens trying marijuana has also dropped dramatically.

Wallace's Rerun. In January, 60 Minutes broadcast a segment focusing on the left-wing group Call to Action's criticism of Catholic doctrine. Mike Wallace aired 25 soundbites from dissenters and not one soundbite defending Church teaching. Prompted by letters of complaint about his report, Wallace took a second look at the debate in the Catholic Church. His new piece was not much better.

On the April 16 60 Minutes, Wallace interviewed Catholic spokeswoman Helen Alvare and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony. In both, Wallace promoted Call to Action's agenda items: ordaining women, allowing contraception and abortion. Wallace peppered the Cardinal: "Why shouldn't women be ordained?....It has nothing to do with equality as far as you and the hierarchy are concerned. It has a great deal to do with equality with a lot of women who give their lives to the Church."

Wallace said of Mahony's liberal actions like opposing Proposition 187: "Just when you think it would be hard to be more conservative than the Cardinal, you run into archconservative Catholics so outraged by the Cardinal's actions that they've been picketing these annual [conferences]." Wallace added "archconservative" once more, and "far right." Wallace used no labels for the longtime Sandinista supporters of Call to Action, who were "hardly wild-eyed radicals...They're sober church workers, nuns and priests, and just plain concerned Catholics."

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