MediaWatch: November 1990
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: Sam in Swim Trunks
SAM IN SWIM TRUNKS. We don't normally praise Sam Donaldson. In fact, we never have. But on Prime Time Live October 25, Sam and his PTL producers, Sheila Hershow and Rick Nelson, gave viewers an educational behind-the-scenes look at a congressional junket in action. Posing as tourists with hand-held cameras, ABC filmed some House Ways and Means Committee members during a five-day April stay in Barbados to discuss Caribbean trade.
The PTL crew did plenty of digging to determine that the Barbados excursion cost at least $42,000, including $689 worth of booze and a $1,176 per diem allowance for food and lodging claimed by all the legislators, even though they received a number of free meals. Over five days, the lawmakers spent seven hours in meetings. Donaldson also showed how Rep. Tom Downey (D-NY) and Rep. Marty Russo (D-IL) sponsored bills favoring lobbyists who accompanied the delegation on the trip. This kind of reporting on Congress is far too rare.
DEN OF DEMOCRATS. Washington's City Paper recently investigated the voter registration records of top editors, columnists and reporters of The Washington Post. Only one was registered as a Republican: columnist Tony Kornheiser, who quickly explained that he and his wife split in party registration so they would get campaign literature from both sides. We knew the Post liked Democrats, but we didn't know they were Democrats.
City Paper identified 25 declared Democrats at the Post: "Reporters Charles Babcock, Patrice Gaines-Carter, Michael Isikoff, John Mintz, Eric Pianin, Walter Pincus, Eleanor Randolph, Michael Specter, Elsa Walsh, Michael Weisskopf, and Juan Williams; columnists Richard Cohen, Chuck Conconi, Dorothy Gilliam, Mary McGrory, William Raspberry, and Jonathan Yardley; [Executive Editor] Ben Bradlee, ["Metro" Editor] Milton Coleman, ["Style" Editor] Mary Hadar, and [Foreign Editor] David Ignatius; editor/reporters Hobart Rowen and Bob Woodward; and ombudman Richard Harwood."
POVERTY OF DIVERSITY. The Census Bureau announced that the percentage of families living in poverty fell from 13 percent in 1988 to 12.8 percent in 1989. The September 27 Washington Post headline? "Poverty Remains High Despite U.S. Expansion," followed by the subhead: "Recession Could Push Millions Below Line." Piling on the negative analysis, Post reporters Spencer Rich and Barbara Vobejda wrote, "Economists across the political spectrum said yesterday the current economic picture could mean an even greater rise in poverty." Next came quotes from Isabel Sawhill of the Urban Institute and Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution. That's what passes for "across the spectrum" at the Post: two liberal experts.
HOMELESS LIVING AT HOME. When is someone who lives in a home actually homeless? When CBS News economics correspondent Ray Brady needs a suitably dire topic for an Evening News story. On October 31, Brady profiled Sally Carlson, "manager of a successful leather repair store" who has "been forced to move in with her mother" and "keep her hope chest in her mother's garage." But Sally's not alone: "Thousands of other tax paying, hard working Americans of all ages must live with family or double up, unable to afford a home of their own. They're among America's hidden homeless."
Brady reported ominously: "To older Americans, this is disturbingly reminiscent. In the depression of the 1930s, Americans lived five, six and more to a room in a land of vacant houses and empty apartments." The ludicrous comparison caught the attention of Newsweek economics columnist Robert Samuelson, who labeled it "an especially misleading report" on people "who live, often comfortably, with relatives. Having invented a new category of homeless, he then compared today's situation with the 1930s (a decade when unemployment averaged 18 percent)."
PRAISING THE PRIZE WINNER. The decision to award Mikhail Gorbachev the Nobel Peace Prize prompted glowing reviews for all the wonderful changes he's supposedly caused. On October 16 Boston Globe reporter Paul Quinn-Judge called Gorbachev "a true believer in democratic socialism" who "replaced class conflict by 'common human values' that transcend class boundaries. And he emphasized the interdependent world where environmental and health problems could only be solved by all countries working together."
"Beginning with his withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, Gorbachev did indeed change the world," oozed NBC's Bob Abernethy. By "barnstorming Europe," Abernethy reported on October 15, Gorbachev "became a folk hero."
CHANCELLOR CHANT. Voters rejected (or scared from running) Governors who had raised taxes, but NBC Nightly News commentator John Chancellor still found a mandate for higher taxes in the election results. "For ten years," Chancellor asserted the day after the election the American people have "been told by Reagan Republicans and conservative Democrats that the U.S. government can get along nicely with lower tax revenues." Failing to note that tax revenue grew faster than inflation during the 1980s, but spending soared even quicker, he declared: "It didn't work, of course. The federal debt went from $900 billion in 1980 to almost $2.5 trillion in 1990." As for cutting spending, "foreign aid is down to the bone" and "politicians won't cut Social Security or Medicare because the elderly would throw them out of office." So, "the fact is that most government spending cannot be cut." The solution? Raise taxes. Chancellor concluded: "There's encouraging news in the returns from yesterday's elections. Six states from Massachusetts to California rejected measures designed to limit taxation. Can it be that the great tax revolt of the 1980s is coming to an end? If true, maybe the country can get on with the business of balancing its books in a sensible and logical way."
POLL POLITICS. "Unprompted answers to a question about what it means to be a Republican showed the most frequent response is that Republicans are for the 'rich, powerful, monied interests.' Such descriptions were volunteered by 51 percent of those interviewed this year, compared to just 18 percent in 1987." So wrote David Broder in a September 19 Washington Post news story on a Times Mirror poll finding also highlighted by The New York Times the same day. An October 6 Post front page story cited the number as evidence of Democratic success in portraying Republicans "as interested in only one thing -- giving tax breaks to the rich."
So what's the problem? In mid-October, Times Mirror reported a computing error. Just 21 percent, not 51 percent, mentioned "rich, powerful, monied interests" when asked about Republicans. The Post noted the error in its "Corrections" box. The Times never corrected it.
FLORIO THE HERO I. Governor Jim Florio may be an ogre in New Jersey, but he is a hero to the networks. "Convinced that cutting services alone would not close the gap, Florio took the daring step of raising taxes, raising 11 separate sales and income taxes," lauded ABC's John McKenzie on the October 4 World News Tonight. A pollster then wondered: "Can someone talk rationally, logically, to the public about this issue and have them respond and be supportive?"
"In New Jersey, the answer so far is no," McKenzie answered. "Faced with the largest tax increase in New Jersey's history, residents here demonstrated through the summer and into the fall, close to a million petitioned the Governor to hold a referendum on taxes."
FLORIO THE HERO II. On the November 2 CBS This Morning, co-host Harry Smith refused to fault Florio: "Some of the blame for this 'have everything attitude' could easily be placed on the Reagan Administration and a compliant Congress....Face reality, like Governor Jim Florio has in New Jersey, and you've got a revolt on your hands. The recession has cut revenues there, so he's trying to raise taxes in order to still deliver the services the people in New Jersey say they want. hat, of course, is political heresy."
FLORIO THE HERO III "What happens when an elected leader says, 'This is what we have to do, this is what it will cost' and then he goes out and does it? Will the people support that kind of leadership?" asked NBC's Garrick Utley on the October 28 Sunday Today. "Example: New Jersey and its new Governor Jim Florio. He raised taxes and we can hear what happened." Utley conceded that Florio promised not to raise taxes, but his questions were less than challenging: "Why did you do it? Because you had to do it?"
"Decisions, hard decisions, and what Jim Florio is doing is making a big political calculation and gamble...He has four years, property taxes will go down, you hope, come four years the people will realize," marveled Utley as Mary Alice Williams chimed in, "And he'll look like a hero."
HUSSEIN HYPE. CBS doesn't know whether the Iraqis adore or abhor Saddam Hussein. On the Sept. 17 CBS Evening News, Bert Quint said: "In his speech, Mr. Bush tried to drive a wedge between Saddam and his people. But it may have backfired. When the broadcast was over, thousands were on the street denouncing the American President and praising Saddam. The fact that these rallies are staged does not mean Saddam lacks genuine support and by attacking him, President Bush could very well have strengthened the garrison mentality of a nation that takes pride in standing up against its enemy."
But on 60 Minutes October 7, Dr. Sahib Al-Hakim, an exiled opponent of Saddam, had a different story for Morley Safer: "All these things are prepared before his arrival. They order all the shop owners to close their shops and come to the streets. They push all the students outside the schools to demonstrate and they, the bodyguards, and the security forces men start the shouting, and preparing the banners."
PATRIOTS FOR PEACE? With support for the U.S. mission still strong, a handful of activists in several cities planned a rally on October 20 to protest American troops in the Middle East. ABC and NBC rushed to the scene. NBC anchor Garrick Utley wondered if they were "fringe groups which would protest any military involvement," but concluded they represented much more: "Clearly there is a major concern about war and you could hear that today." On Nightline October 19, ABC's Jackie Judd warned: "It would be easy to dismiss opponents of the build-up of oddball fringe elements. It's happened before. One bitter lesson of the Vietnam War is nobody paid attention to the critics until many thousands of lives had been lost. Today's dissenters say they hope they don't witness history repeat itself."
The "oddball fringe elements" neither reporter identified in the protest were the Spartacist League and the Workers World Party, a pair of Trotskyite-Marxist parties shown toting signs in NBC's video. According to the Associated Press, two other Trotskyite groups, the All People's Congress and the Socialist Workers Party, were also part of the protests.
DEREGULATION DISASTER. Oil and gas prices plummeted while thousands of new jobs were created in the private package delivery and long distance phone industries, all thanks to Reagan's deregulation policy. But Thomas Winship, Editor of The Boston Globe for two decades ending in the mid-'80s, put on his ideological blinders in reviewing the decade: "The press missed completely the full impact and significance of Reagan's overarching crusade to deregulate the federal government, and we all forget that Vice President Bush was assigned to develop and to carry out that policy by President Reagan. The book on the total cost of deregulation in lives and dollars has yet to be written."
In an address printed in the October 6 Editor & Publisher, Winship, now President of the Center for Foreign Journalists, complained Washington reporters took a "long winter's nap during the Reagan years when all those giant stories were missed or botched -- the S&L heist, the HUD scandals, Iran-Contra, and the pollution by radiation of 100 nuclear plants... and the biggest one of all, the monitoring of what Reagan's sweeping deregulation policy was doing to our distribution of wealth and to our fiscal solvency."
CALLING FOR QUOTAS. Reporters moaned when President Bush vetoed Ted Kennedy's "civil rights" bill, which would make employers guilty until proven innocent in cases of "unintentional discrimination." On October 17, NBC's John Cochran solemnly reported: "It started out as such a promising courtship: a new President reaching out to minorities, trying to show them that he is different from the old President. But now its all gone wrong with civil rights workers saying George Bush is as bad as Ronald Reagan."
When ABC's Nightline covered Bush's veto on October 22, reporter Jackie Judd proclaimed that "To hear veterans of the civil rights movement tell it, this was a day uncomfortably reminiscent of battles fought over 20 years ago." Rewriting history, Judd declared that "When George Bush came into office, he had fence- mending to do with black leaders, who were suspicious of him, principally because of the notorious Willie Horton ads." Like many other reporters, Judd could not accept that no ad featuring the name or picture of Willie Horton was ever produced by the Bush campaign. Judd concluded: "Killing a bill with support among important voting blocs, such as blacks and women, could hurt the GOP at the polls." Like in North Carolina, for instance?
A LONG WAY TO GO, BABY. Time's special Fall issue, "Women: the Road Ahead," contained much grousing about the lack of opportunity for women. Writer Janice Castro noted: "Twenty years after women entered the professional ranks in significant numbers, very few have broken through the middle ranks of management to the top jobs." Assuming that's true, Time brass should take note. Only 12 of its top 47 editorial positions are held by women. In fact, only three women currently hold a job higher than Associate Editor, the lowest position included in our count, and none of the top 17 positions are held by women.
