MediaWatch: November 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: November 1994
- Conservatism Gets Little Credit After Election-Night Tradition of Blaming it For Losses
- NewsBites: Liberal of the Week
- Revolving Door: On the Campaign Trail
- The New House Speaker's Journalistic Welcome Wagon
- Media Get One Wish in Senate
- Stossel's Stunner
- Reporters Believed Clinton's Sex Tales
- Janet Cooke Award: ABC Devoted Almost Two Hours to New Book Full of Sexual Allegations Against Thomas
The New House Speaker's Journalistic Welcome Wagon
Newt Gingrich, "Radical Geek"
The dramatic Republican takeover of both houses of Congress delivered to Washington a brand new Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. Before the deluge, reporters shuddered at the very thought of it.
The Center for Media and Public Affairs found that in political stories on the networks between Labor Day and October 20, Gingrich drew 100 percent negative evaluations from reporters and talking heads.
CBS Evening News reporter Eric Engberg stayed negative on November 2: "From the start, modesty was not his style. Rejecting the House's gentlemanly ways, he waged such constant guerrilla war against the Democrats he was attacked for McCarthyism."
Engberg sounded like a negative ad: "It's a record filled with contradictions: the family values candidate who divorced his ailing first wife, the avowed enemy of dirty politics who bounced 22 checks at the House Bank, and runs a big-dollar political action committee that won't disclose its contributors." Engberg concluded: "Gingrich himself, bombastic and ruthless, would be the most dramatic change imaginable, a change the administration can only dread."
On the Nov. 4 World News Tonight ABC's Jim Wooten said the Georgian's "slash-and-burn rhetoric against Democrats has made him the poster boy for political resentment and rage, and he's proud of it."
Time's November 7 cover story argued: "Gingrich has been perfecting his ability to disrupt the majority and move the opposition into an increasingly radical position on the right." Richard Lacayo found Gingrich less intellectual than obnoxious: "His ideas, which don't often come to grips with the particulars of policymaking, may be less important than his signature mood of righteous belligerence."
Newsweek took the attack to another level with an article on Gingrich's personal life titled "How `Normal' Is Newt?" Reporter Mark Hosenball explained: "The answer is just as normal as many Americans -- at least the ones who see their marriages fail, change their views and don't always practice their professed beliefs." Hosenball unearthed such scoops as his student protests at Tulane in favor of "obscene" pictures. Newsweek captioned an old photo: "RADICAL GEEK." NPR's Sunni Khalid remarked on C-SPAN's Journalists Roundtable Oct. 14 that Gingrich was "looking at a more scientific, a more civil way of lynching people."
After all this, NBC's Tom Brokaw and CNN's Bernard Shaw asked on election night if Gingrich would "moderate" his tone. The next morning between 5:30 and 10, CNN employed the words "partisan bomb-thrower" three times, "combative" three times, and "fierce partisan" once.
