MediaWatch: May 4, 1998
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: May 4, 1998
- Only Conservatives Qualify as "Haters"
- NewsBites
- Scientists Don't Scare Viewers
- We Knew Reagan Was Phony
- Fox on China
Only Conservatives Qualify as "Haters"
Students of history make distinctions of quality: there's history, which builds a story based on documented fact, research, and interviews; and there's psycho-history, which instead of dwelling on evidence, simply puts historical actors on the couch and attempts to read their mind as events unfold. Likewise, there's journalism, based on facts, and psycho-journalism, which simply seeks to guess the motivations of public figures.
In the last few years, reporters have introduced a new term
into the media lexicon to describe Bill Clinton's adversaries:
"Clinton haters." The April 11, 1994 Time published a story
titled "Clintonophobia! Just who are these Clinton haters, and why
do they loathe Bill and Hillary Clinton with such passion?"
Reporter Nina Burleigh didn't seem to care if her mind-reading
was accurate: after tagging conservatives like Rush Limbaugh as
"haters," Burleigh casually added: "Both profess not to hate
Clinton." She then referred to "Clinton haters" twice more.
Is "hater" the standard way the media describes a President's
opponents, whether they're Republicans or Democrats? To
determine the journalistic usage of "hate" terms, MediaWatch analysts
used the Nexis news data retrieval system to find all mentions
of the terms "Clinton-hater," "Clinton-basher," and
"anti-Clinton," (compared to "Reagan hater," "Reagan basher,"
and "anti-Reagan") in Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report, as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
For Reagan, analysts reviewed stories from 1981 through 1988;
for Clinton, from 1992 through mid-April 1998. These
publications contained: 63 uses of "Clinton hater," compared to
one use of "Reagan hater"; 106 references to
"Clinton-bashers" or "Clinton-bashing," compared to 17 references to
"Reagan-bashers"or "Reagan-bashing"; 55 mentions of
"anti-Clinton" groups or efforts compared to two mentions of an
"anti-Reagan" force.
Analysts also checked these
variants for independent counsel Ken Starr since 1994
("Starr-hater," "Starr-basher," or "anti-Starr." Time, U.S. News & World Report, and The New York Times have never carried these terms. Newsweek made one mention of Hillary Clinton as a "veteran Starr-basher." The Washington Post carried two mentions of "Starr-bashing." No one was a "Starr hater."
Magazines: Leading the Hate Hunters. Time
led the hate-labeling pack, with 28 designations of "Clinton
hater," with almost half of them (13) in the last four months. Time carried 11 mentions of "Clinton-bashing," and 14 mentions of "anti-Clinton" activists or activities.
By itself, "anti-Clinton" seems an inoffensive term, but Time
regularly applied modifiers like "fiercely" or "virulent" or
"obsessive" or "right-wing" to the term. The April 13, 1998 Time referred to "Richard Mellon Scaife, the rabidly anti-Clinton billionaire, and The American Spectator,
the gleefully anti-Clinton magazine that Scaife has
supported." A February 9, 1998 article called Scaife a
"super-Clinton hater."
In the June 9, 1997 edition, Time
reporter George Church described Paula Jones' first press
conference, "where she shared a stage with Clinton haters. That
helped to convince many that Jones was a tool, witting or
unwitting, of the rabid right." In the Reagan years, Time ran only three uses of "Reagan bashing."
Newsweek carried 17 references to "Clinton haters,"
14 uses of "Clinton bashing," and 19 "anti-Clinton"
designations. In a May 16, 1994 article, Mark Hosenball argued
"It is true that Paula Jones has been egged on by an odd
collection of right-wingers and Clinton haters." In the April 27, 1998
issue, Hosenball wrote: "The evidence linking Starr to
conservative Clinton-haters traces back to a single figure:
Richard Mellon ScaifeScaife is also a fervent Clinton-hater who
has spent millions trying to undermine the President."
Newsweek
carried four mentions of "Reagan-bashing" and one use of
"Reagan hater." In 1987, Jonathan Alter explained Sam Donaldson's
jobs as both an ABC reporter and commentator "exposes him to critics
who label him a Reagan-hater...In truth, his politics don't
interfere with his reportage."
U.S. News & World Report
carried 16 designations of "Clinton haters," nine of "Clinton
bashing," and 21 "anti-Clinton" mentions. In a November 7, 1994
election preview, the magazine charged: "The most virulent
Clinton haters charge that Hillary Rodham Clinton holds the
real power and blackmails her husband." In a May 17, 1993 column,
Mortimer Zuckerman began: "The media may be in a frenzy trying to
bash Bill Clinton, but the public is focused on something else:
the sagging U.S. economy." Only one U.S. News story cited "Reagan bashing."
Newspapers: "Bash" Is The Preferred Term. In eight years, The New York Times
never labeled anyone a "Reagan hater," although three stories
carried the term in quotations from political analysts. Only
one story carried the word "anti-Reagan," and only two
mentioned "Reagan bashing." In a 1987 review of the PBS show The Kwitny Report,
TV critic John Corry dismissed the episode alleging Reagan's
connections to the Mafia as "dreary Reagan bashing." By
comparison, the Times applied the term "Clinton hater" once, and variants of "Clinton-bashing" 17 times.
The Post
discovered conservative hate in a May 27, 1994 front-page
Sunday story by Ann Devroy: "Bill Clinton's enemies are making
their hatred clear, with a burning intensity and in some cases
with an organized passion." Variants of "Clinton-bashing" were employed
52 times by Post reporters.
The Sunday before the 1992 convention, Post reporter
Dan Balz began an article "Get ready for the bashing of Bill
Clinton." Four days later, Ruth Marcus started her piece: "The
Republican gathering here was expected to be a festival of
Clinton-bashing. As it turned out , the target has been not
only the candidate, but his wife Hillary." (Two additional
articles mentioned "Hillary-bashing.")
In January 1997, the Post's Kevin Merida described the Paula Jones complaint as announced at "a convention of Clinton-bashing conservatives." Five months later, Merida repeated the phrase verbatim.
In the Reagan years, Washington Post reporters never used "Reagan hater," although two articles carried the term in quotations. Seven Post
news stories mentioned "Reagan bashing." In one 1985 piece,
business reporter Peter Behr decried both sides of the trade
debate, writing "Reagan is inviting the bashing by continuing to avoid
the trade dilemma."
Politics creates passions that
inflame the whole range of emotions -- joy and sadness,
inspiration and disillusionment, love and hate. Bill Clinton,
like Ronald Reagan, fuels all of these. But reporters proved
their liberalism when they suggested in their stories, subtly or
unsubtly, that only one President was subject to unrelenting attack by
a group of obsessed "haters."
