MediaWatch: November 1991
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: November 1991
- Hard and Soft on Clarence Thomas
- NewsBites: Please Tax Us
- Revolving Door: Adding from Harvard Yard
- Nightline and Frontline Caught in Hoax
- The Court's Future
- Reporter or Campaign Strategist?
- Media Money Leans Left
- Once in Love with Nina
- Print Reporters Too
- Janet Cooke Award: L.A. Times: Savage Attack on Rehnquist
Reporter or Campaign Strategist?
BUSH BULL & HARKIN HYPE
It's not uncommon for reporters to become flacks or operatives for liberal candidates, but usually they wait until after they leave their network or paper. Not Boston Globe reporter John Powers. For the October 6 Globe Magazine, Powers wrote the cover story, "To: The Democratic Party, Re: Winning -- for a Change," a mean-spirited diatribe. He began with a series of cheap shots: "The Republicans will cheat to hang on to the White House, even if they think they have the election in the bag...The Republicans will distort, too. Remember Willie Horton, Bush's [Boston] harbor cruise?"
Powers urged Democrats to "shake the American people by the shoulders and tell them the truth. That life in the USA isn't getting better for most of them. It's getting worse -- and it's George Bush's fault." Later, he advised: "Whack away at Bush every day, and make it personal. You know what drives him crazy. The W word. As in wimp." More strategy from Powers:
"The country is going nowhere while George Bush's friends are living off their windfalls from the `greed is good' days. Make that your campaign centerpiece -- public distaste for the '80s is real. Bush spent those years in the White House, worshiping debt and calling it growth. Bush made Dukakis wear Willie Horton. You can hang Mike Milken around his neck. Both felons, right? And who did more harm to America?"
"You have to get people thinking that the '90s are the '30s revisited -- and blame it on Republican greed...You can make a strong case that the Republicans, who've been in power for 18 of the last 22 years, have knocked the working man and woman back into the 1950s."
"You don't have a Roosevelt or a John F. Kennedy out there, but you do have the makings of a Harry Truman in Tom Harkin, the Senator from Iowa....Harkin uttered the most memorable political lin of the year at Wisconsin's June Democratic convention, `George Bush and his fat-cat Republican friends say they are building a Conservative Opportunity Society. I've got a one word reply: Bullshit.' If Harkin will say that inside the sanitized fishbowl that American politics has become, he'll say a lot more. Plain talk for hard times."
Powers found nothing wrong with a reporter becoming a partisan advocate, telling MediaWatch that readers expect opinions in the magazine. As for why the Globe doesn't employ any conservatives who could offer a contrary view, he sarcastically claimed that executives can't locate any "literate" ones, suggesting that Globe Publisher Bill Taylor cannot "find a conservative who can put a complete sentence together."
