MediaWatch: May 1997
Table of Contents:
Revolving Door: Hubbell's Friend
Former NBC News reporter Carl Stern would loan money to Web Hubbell, the former Associate Attorney General who served 18 months for stealing law firm funds. Michael Isikoff, in an April 14 Newsweek story, discovered: "Though he is the highest-ranking Justice official to go to prison since Watergate conspirator John Mitchell, few of his former colleagues speak bitterly about him. 'If Web Hubbell walked in the door today and asked to borrow $100, I'd give it to him,' says Carl Stern, the department's former spokesman."
Before joining the Justice Department in early 1993 as Director of Public Affairs, Stern spent 25 years as a Washington reporter for NBC News, covering the Supreme Court and Justice Department in the 1980s.
I'm Doing Good for Bill
"I like knowing that I'm doing something that will help make a difference in a good way," Clinton speechwriter Carolyn Curiel told a meeting of student reporters at the American Society of Newspaper Editors' (ASNE) convention in April.
Curiel, an editor at the New York Times and Washington Postbefore jumping to television in 1992 as a Nightline producer, long ago wanted to write speeches for a President, but she faced an impediment. As recounted in a report on the ASNE Web site, Curiel "was at The Washington Post when she first confessed to a colleague her interest in a White House speechwriting job. The only problem was that Ronald Reagan was President."
NSC to NBC
NBC News tapped a Clinton Administration spinster to fill the slot of Vice President of Communications. Julia Moffett, Director of Communications for the National Security Council, joined the network news division in April.
Moffett leaves behind a network veteran: Tara Sonenshine, an ABC News producer in Washington for twelve years until coming aboard Clinton's NSC in 1994 as Deputy Director for Communications. In 1995 she revolved back into the media to cover national security issues for Newsweek until spinning back to the NSC again earlier this year to help with the second term transition.
Democratic Pollster for CBS
CBS News has just promoted Dotty Lynch, Political Editor since 1985, to take over the division as Senior Political Editor in charge of the Washington staff of three. On May 8 The Washington Post's John Carmody reviewed her background: "Lynch began her political research career as a researcher for the NBC News election unit in 1968, went on to become Vice President of Cambridge Survey Research, which did polling for the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter...then served as Director of Survey Research for the Democratic National Committee in 1981-83."
Carmody could have added that Lynch also handled polling for Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential run and the 1984 Mondale-Ferraro effort.
ABC's Liberal Web Master
In charge of ABCNEWS.com, ABC's Web site launched in mid-May: Jeff Gralnick, a one-time aide to former liberal Senator George Mc-Govern. Back in 1971 Gralnick toiled as Press Secretary for McGovern. Gralnick soon joined ABC News, rising to Executive Producer of World News Tonight by 1979 and Vice President in 1985. He jumped to NBC in 1993 to serve as Executive Producer of NBC Nightly News. ABC lured him back last year to run their since- scuttled all-news cable channel.
