MediaWatch: November 1992
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: November 1992
- Selective Post-Debate Truth Squads
- NewsBites: Mandate for What?
- Revolving Door: Clinton's Network Help
- Networks Say "Extreme" GOP Convention at Fault
- Bush Loss is Reagan's Fault
- NBC's Ross Dogs Dems
- Simon's Sermons
- Janet Cooke Award: CBS Reporter Eric Engberg, Running on Empty
Simon's Sermons
Since joining the weekend Today shows in August, former National Public Radio anchor Scott Simon regularly preaches the liberal line to his flock. Some examples:
On September 5, Simon delivered a lecture on the economy that sounded like a Clinton-Gore commercial: "According to the Census Bureau, 35.7 million people are living in poverty, two million more than before....But aiming blame at politicians may actually steer blame away from ourselves. Over the last generation, after all, we elected politicians who gave voice to our grievances and reduced what the government could regulate and guarantee...The financial wealth of the United States has doubled, but the number of poor people has stayed the same. Instead of trickling down, apparently that wealth mostly stayed in the tight fists of those who became richer."
On Columbus Day Weekend, Simon railed against the Italian explorer: "Christopher Columbus didn't discover a New World. He ran into the other side of the world....In the past year or more, many people have been asking 'What's to commemorate in that?' Of course, race found its way into the discussion: He sailed just as Jews and Muslims were being expelled from a Spain. The persecution of these peoples and the riches robbed from them paying for his small armada of ships....For Native Americans, the people who hardly felt discovered, Columbus' landing commenced a holocaust."
On October 17, Simon offered pronouncements on the Vietnam War: "And the cruel truth was that there were more Vietnamese ready to die for their country than there were Americans ready to die for a country that wasn't theirs at all....For many Americans, including many who served there, the war in Vietnam wasn't to defend the United States, but to prop up a corrupt and brutal South Vietnamese dictatorship....It may be useful for any politician who may be President to recall almost a generation later how that war really felt to people who didn't feel they were being asked to defend their country, but punish a smaller one."
His NPR colleagues must be proud.
