MediaWatch: November 16, 1998
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: November 16, 1998
- Was 1998 "The Year of the Moderate?"
- NewsBites
- Stamping Dirt Down on Newt's Grave
- ABC's Quiet on Quotas
- Silently Playing the Race Card
Stamping Dirt Down on Newt's Grave
Media Outlets Pile on Gingrich Even As He Resigns as Speaker
Hours after House Speaker Jim Wright resigned over ethical failings on May 31, 1989, ABC’s Jim Wooten mourned on World News Tonight: "And if his moving speech today does not restore those decencies he so wistfully remembered today, then perhaps history will remember that at least he tried." When Majority Whip Tony Coelho resigned five days earlier, ABC’s Barbara Walters murmured on Nightline: "It seems to be a personal tragedy as well as, perhaps one for the country." On May 26, 1994, Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson asked Newt Gingrich about Democrat Dan Rostenkowski stepping down: "You’re an admirer of good legislators...Is this an American tragedy?"
But charity was not in the air when Gingrich announced his resignation on November 6. While Peter Jennings just called the step "bizarre" on Friday (and Linda Douglass noted he’s given the GOP "a snarling image"), Carole Simpson led off World News Tonight Sunday with a poll: "Good evening. A new poll from ABC News shows Americans will not miss Newt Gingrich: 70 percent approve of his decision to step down as Speaker of the House. And 90 percent say his successor should try harder to work with the Democrats instead of against them."
Ending CBS’s Face the Nation that morning, host Bob Schieffer claimed Gingrich’s self-importance led him to believe "it was alright for him to take ethical shortcuts" and "he once got a bad seat on Air Force One and said that was one of the reasons he shut down the government." But Gingrich said he’d been on a plane with Clinton for 15 hours and never discussed avoiding a showdown. Schieffer ended: "The man who saw himself as a transformational figure in American politics may turn out to be no more than a figure in transit. So long Newt. We hardly knew you."
In the November 8 Washington Post, reporter Thomas Edsall dredged up Willie Horton: "Gingrich followed that example but added new sophistication to the GOP’s use of such race-tinged issues as crime and welfare to win control of the House in 1994." Edsall ignored facts like how Gingrich lost two times to old-line Democratic segregationist John Flynt before being elected to the House in 1978.
On Fox News Sunday, ex-ABC reporter Brit Hume noted: "Gingrich had a terrible press and animosity. I know a lot of reporters in this town and their attitude about Newt Gingrich is poison... They hated the guy. Thought he was a bad person. Thought he was evil." It showed.
