MediaWatch: November 1993

Janet Cooke Award: CNN's Brooks Jackson Denounces RNC Ad On Clinton Plan as "Misleading" and "Wrong"

Double Standards on the "Fact Check"

Brooks Jackson is a rarity -- an enterprising investigative reporter for a TV network. A former Wall Street Journal hound on the campaign beat, Jackson contributed to CNN's 1992 campaign reporting, especially the "ad watch" segments. While Jackson was the only reporter who reviewed more than one of Clinton's ads, his ad watches on health care, both this year and last, have unfairly shortchanged the Republican side. For declaring job loss estimates as "wrong" before the Clinton plan is enacted, Jackson earned the Janet Cooke Award.

On the October 22 Inside Politics, Jackson critiqued a Republican National Committee ad: "The ad has been running several days, claiming that President Clinton's plan is a job killer. `Without his mandates on small business, that would cost up to 3 million Americans their jobs.' But hold on -- that's absolutely misleading. Let's check the facts. The Republican commercial cites a study by the Employment Policies Institute, but it turns out the study is not a study of the Clinton plan at all. Its authors admit it was written last summer before key features of the Clinton plan was even known."

Jackson then quoted EPI's Executive Director, Richard Berman, who said: "It made our study outdated...This study is not a study of the Clinton plan. I think you just said that. That's true."

But Berman told MediaWatch: "While Clinton's planned subsidies to small businesses would reduce the estimate of job losses, I told Jackson there were other elements of the Clinton plan we were unaware of that would offset much of the effect of Clinton's subsidies. But Jackson only used the six seconds he wanted."

Jackson's story continued by questioning Berman's motives: "Berman turns out to be a lawyer-lobbyist whose clients include Burger King...and other restaurant chains.... and the restaurant industry is a bitter enemy of the Clinton plan, which would force restaurant owners to provide health benefits for workers."

Berman told MediaWatch: "I found it reprehensible that in the Jackson piece, despite the fact this was done by respected outside economists, Jackson tried to tie some of my clients to the study, like I'd bought the results." The study was done for EPI by labor economists June and Dave O'Neill of the City University of New York.

When contacted by MediaWatch, Jackson stood firm: "A normal viewer looking at that commercial would have been misled, and my job is to tell him what the facts are, and the facts are this study was not a study of the Clinton plan, and it was paid for by somebody with a very naked pecuniary interest in the outcome, which the Republicans didn't tell you. This isn't about Rick Berman, this is about what the Republicans did."

Jackson's story then went on to proclaim: "Independent experts say the GOP commercial is just wrong, that the Clinton plan will not cost anything close to 3 million jobs." CNN aired the graphic "Fact Check" and put a big red "WRONG" on the screen. How is it fact that the Clinton plan will not cost 3 million jobs when the plan has yet to be implemented? How can it be wrong?

Jackson shot back: "I didn't say that. I said 'independent experts say it is wrong.'" But when CNN puts the word "WRONG" on the screen in big red letters, doesn't the viewer think CNN is telling them it's wrong? Jackson admitted: "Yeah. But 'independent experts say'...The Republicans aren't using an independent expert."

Jackson argued the RNC's 3 million estimate is too extreme to be credible: "You can get it up to 1.2 million if you assume, which most economists don't, that employers won't cut wages instead of fire people. That is the extreme estimate from mainstream economists."

But Jackson did not note that "mainstream economists" also said Reagan's tax cuts would be wildly inflationary and the 1990 budget deal would fix the deficit problem. There are no facts about the effects of the Clinton plan, and "mainstream economists" may be as wrong on this as anyone else. Near the end of our interview, Jackson conceded: "I see your point. They are just predictions."

While Jackson has done an ad watch on the RNC and two on the health insurance industry, he has done nothing on ads by the Democrats or pro-Clinton groups like Families USA. Jackson claimed he had a practical, not ideological reason: "None of those have gone out of Washington, as far as I know. I've got kind of a $50,000 rule. I'm so sick and tired of being spun by various groups...the idea that they'll produce an ad that they never intend to run, and we will cover it as though it's some sort of big national event, thereby making it a big national event. I try not to get suckered by that stuff."

But what happens when Families USA charges another ad with lying? Isn't it unfair to allow them to denounce an ad when other reporters, like NBC's Robert Hager, found their ad contained "half-truths"? No, said Jackson, because Families USA's ad hasn't been seen: "If it did run, it ran lightly here in Washington. So if you've got a problem with that, you've got a problem with that."

In an October 19 Inside Politics story, Jackson reviewed an ad by the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA). Jackson didn't check any "facts," but focused on the legitimacy of the group's Coalition for Health Insurance Choices. He aired Ron Pollack of Families USA, who denounced the HIAA ad: "Once you cross the line of deception, deceit, and really not tell the truth, I think it's time to blow the whistle...The health insurance lobby has created a so-called coalition of health insurance choices, when it's really more aptly named a coalition of health insurance companies."

Jackson did not note the tag line of every ad says "Funding by the Health Insurance Association of America," or, as HIAA spokesman Richard Coorsh told MediaWatch, that the tag line exceeds federal disclosure requirements for type size and disclosure of funding. After detailing Pollack's copy of the HIAA strategy, Jackson echoed Pollack: "Campaigns like this are not really grass roots at all. There's nothing spontaneous about the voter calls to Congress they generate."

Jackson failed to mention that Families USA is doing many of the same lobbying activities as the HIAA: producing ads, goading calls to Congress, using field representatives outside Washington. Aren't they doing the same thing? Aren't the calls they generate about as "spontaneous" as industry's? Jackson didn't see it that way: "Okay, well, that's your view."

Jackson never asked Families USA for their lobbying strategy or asked about their funding sources. Jackson's reporting is suffering from a double standard: while business groups with a "naked pecuniary interest" are properly perceived as self- interested, liberal groups are never suspect. Now that's wrong.

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