MediaWatch: May 1995
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: May 1995
- Network News Dominated by Arguements and Soundbites Against the GOP Contract
- NewsBites: Brownout
- Revolving Door: Burke's Back
- McVeigh: Newt's Protege?
- Hosts Blamed For Bombing
- Welfare Reform Ripoff
- Today Sounds Like Talk Radio?
- Janet Cooke Award: Sticking Up for Regulatory Overkill
McVeigh: Newt's Protege?
It took just two days after the FBI tied Timothy McVeigh to the April 19 Oklahoma City bombing for conservatives to be blamed. Sam Donaldson asked Morris Dees on This Week April 23: "To what extent, if any, do you think the political rhetoric to which you just referred has helped cause a climate in which people could go in that direction...rhetoric which says, not just against big government, or liberal government, or dishonest government, but `government is the enemy?'"
On CNN's Capital Gang that night, The Washington Post's Juan Williams argued: "You have angry white men here, sort of in their natural state, and you know, gone berserk.... some fanatic extreme, and I will grant you that. But it's the same kind of idea that has fueled so much of the right-wing triumph over the agenda here in Washington."
"Public antagonism toward government," Boston Globe D.C. Bureau Chief David Shribman wrote on page one April 25, "has been voiced and amplified by the new Republican House, which just this month completed its 100 days of action, much of it aimed at paring back the growth of the federal government. But now that an attack on a government building has left scores dead, including children, the allure is coming off the anti-government rhetoric."
Michael Kramer held Newt Gingrich culpable in Time on May 1: "Gingrich recently praised incendiary language as a key to winning elections." He noted "there is of course no straight line between any of this and Oklahoma," but Kramer nonetheless charged: "If the perpetrators...really view government as the people's enemy, the burden of fostering that delusion is borne not just by the nut cases who preach conspiracy but also to some extent by those who erode faith in our governance in the pursuit of their own ambitions."
"Can GOP candidates keep the support of the powerful far right and still repudiate its scary fringe?," read the subhead over a May 8 Newsweek piece. But reporters implied there's little difference between Republicans and anarchists. Exactly one week before the bombing, Bernard Shaw asked presidential candidate Bob Dornan on Inside Politics: "What do you say to people who say that you are an extremist, that you're a right-winger, that you're a nut, that you're a bomb-thrower?"
The next day, CBS's Connie Chung announced that Dornan "claims he's the right man for the job, as in far right." The day before the bombing, Today looked at a Colin Powell candidacy. Bryant Gumbel wondered: "Is it realistic to think that angry white males and far-right extremists, who are now so politically active, would ever vote for a black man for President, no matter how qualified?"
