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
We Knew Reagan Was Phony
Leave it to CBS. They can't even keep their anti-Reagan
vitriol out of a week-long retrospective series marking the
50th anniversary of the CBS Evening News. To CBS the Reagan
years denoted when image surpassed reality. Lesley Stahl recalled on
April 16: "They just, in a Hollywood way, put together
tableaus, pictures, that were so imprinted on the public's
brains that they overrode what people were saying because they
were so powerful."
Over video of Ronald and Nancy
Reagan walking across the South Lawn to a helicopter, Stahl
complained: "She'd give him the gaze. These are all visual
images that said, extremely powerfully, what a happy family they
are. Well we knew that he never saw his kids and he didn't even know
his grandchildren. We knew that, but the picture was more
powerful. I think we began to change the way we covered the
President after that. I think everybody realized, as I did,
that they were using pictures to drown us out."
Speaking of Presidents creating family images that contradict reality,
recall the video every network broadcast, from a week and a half
after the Lewinsky story broke, of Bill Clinton with his arm
around Chelsea as they walked to the helicopter for a Friday
night ride to Camp David.
But the March American Spectator
noted in its "On the Prowl" column: "As for the 'family'
weekend at Camp David, Mom flew off to Switzerland while Dad
logged more than six hours Saturday on the golf course, and
then two more holed up with personal attorney David Kendall
after dinner. Chelsea left early Sunday to be back at Stanford in time
for Monday morning classes."
CBS never reported that reality over the image. Neither did the other networks.
