MediaWatch: November 1995

NewsBites: Festering Foster

Several new developments renewed questions about White House actions related to the Travel Office firings and the death of Vince Foster. But you wouldn't know it from watching network news. On October 24 the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee released a May 14, 1993 memo from then-White House aide David Watkins in which he said the First Lady told him to replace career Travel Office employees with a private firm partially owned by a friend. That contradicted statements made by White House officials over the past two years. The next day, three handwriting experts asserted that Vince Foster's suicide note was a forgery, thereby implicating White House employees in a grand deception.

With the exception of a brief mention on NBC's Today on October 29 the networks were silent. Today co-host Jack Ford asked Tim Russert about "new questions raised about the death of Vince Foster" which "curiously didn't get much coverage at all, the idea now that some experts are questioning the legitimacy of that suicide note."

Further Festering.

In a November 2 hearing, Senators questioned the First Lady's top aide Maggie Williams and friend Susan Thomases about early morning phone calls placed two days after Foster died. Phone records show Williams called the First Lady in Arkansas and then a call was made from the Arkansas number to Thomases, who then called then White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum. That day Nussbaum reneged on an agreement to allow Justice Dept. officials to examine files in Foster's office. Network coverage: CBS Evening News aired a full story from Bob Schieffer, CNN's World News ran a brief anchor-read item, but no story appeared on the ABC or NBC evening newscasts.

Afraid of Change?

CBS launched two attacks on Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs), which allows Medicare recipients to buy a high-deductible catastrophic insurance policy with government funds. Any remaining money would be used to open a tax-free savings account to pay for medical expenses below the deductible. With the goal of motivating people to spend their health care dollars wisely, recipients are able to keep unspent money.

Linda Douglass warned on the September 28 CBS Evening News that critics insist only "healthy seniors who don't expect to need much medical care would be attracted to the savings accounts. That means those who stay in the traditional Medicare system are likely to be sicker people...By one estimate that could increase Medicare costs by nearly $3 billion over seven years, just the opposite of what Republicans want."

On October 9, Eric Engberg suggested the movement to "anoint medical savings accounts as a miracle solution owes much to one businessman's well-financed political crusade...which could bring rich rewards to his company." Engberg cited a CBS News study that found J. Patrick Rooney and others connected to Golden Rule Insurance gave $1.2 million to Republican campaigns in the last four years. "Gingrich insists he likes MSAs because they work," Engberg conceded. But he quickly added "Democratic opponents smell an influence buy."

HMOs Then and Now.

Back on September 22, 1993, NBC's Jim Maceda listed "myths" about the Clinton health plan. One "myth" was "the specter of managed care, something good for those so-called socialist countries abroad, but not us. But guess what? American health care is already largely managed...Managed care already works in ten states, and, the reformers insist, is saving money."

Two years and one election later, NBC had a different view. On the October 16 Nightly News, the prospect of seniors opting for managed care under GOP Medicare plans was cause for concern. Tom Brokaw asked, "Under the reforms now before Congress, many more would be encouraged to do the same thing, but will they really save money?" Reporter Robert Bazell warned that "experts" expected that use of HMOs would result in "increasing costs for the traditional Medicare program as it covers more of the sickest people, and at least for now, big profits for the companies that run HMOs."

Tax Hike or Welfare Cut?

Lisa Myers' calculator must have been on the fritz when she called a reduction in the Earned Income Tax Credit a tax hike on the poor. In her October 12 NBC Nightly News report, Myers claimed: "Under Republican plans to balance the budget, some 17 million working poor families face tax increases of as much as $7 billion a year." An October 2 Newsweek article noted, "They're about to raise taxes on 18 million families."

In her piece, Myers profiled two women who supposedly would be hurt by the GOP reforms. Myers found a receptionist who earned "barely enough to take care of her two children." Myers went on to say that she was supposed to get back $2,200 through EITC, "but Republicans would cut that by $400, which amounts to a tax increase." Myers interviewed a woman who feared that the GOP would force her out onto the streets: "71-year-old Edith Fader of New York City, and others who live in subsidized housing, face rent increases of about seven percent. She says she already lives on tuna fish and can't pay any more." Myers did not answer the question of how you can call the EITC change a tax increase when many recipients receive more in the refund than they pay in taxes.

Myers and Newsweek also did not mention that the Republicans' proposed $500 per child tax credit relieves the tax burden of many lower income American families. According to the Tax Foundation, a two-earner family with two children making $27,400 will see their income tax liability drop from $3,999 to $3,103. While families earning less than $15,000 will see a smaller payment from EITC, thanks to the child credit, they will still be better off than they were before the EITC became more generous in 1993.

Got Mugged? Blame ABC.

The debate over racism in the wake of the O.J. Simpson verdict provided the perfect opening act for the latest study from the left-wing group the Sentencing Project, which predictably blamed the criminal justice system and not the criminals. On the October 4 World News Tonight, ABC's Barry Serafin passed on the liberal group's report without any critics: "The report says inner cities are targeted for drug arrests...And crack cocaine carries a harsher punishment than powdered cocaine. One answer, says the report, is less money spent on law enforcement and more on prevention and treatment." Michael Fumento gave a different view in an October 25 Washington Times op-ed: "Arrest and conviction data suggest that violence and participation in drug selling are more strongly associated with crack." Serafin indicted the politicians: "But Congress has proposed less money for prevention, more for block grants and prisons. In the meantime the new report reinforces the view held by many African-Americans of an unequal justice system."

Unlike ABC, Tucker Carlson of The Weekly Standard did some digging for the October 23 issue. In a report to one New York locality, the Project recommended ways to let criminals out of jail early, and disdained "setting bond to assure the safety of an alleged spousal abuse victim." They suggested judges not set bail at all, and find "means other than incarceration for providing community safety." Who funds this liberal advocacy? The Clinton Justice Department. But the Project's Marc Mauer told Carlson: "I have a stack of news clippings this high from reporters covering our report, and not a single one of them asked about our funding sources."

"Clinton Knows Everything!"

Former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee's tour for his new book A Good Life included a September 25 stop at the PBS chatfest Charlie Rose. Discussing Reagan, Bradlee complained he "had kind of a magic sway over this country." Sensing sarcasm, Rose invited Bradlee to elaborate: "He had something, didn't he?" Bradlee replied: "He sure did. And it really was stunning because I haven't seen the evidence that he knew that, you know, he knew what was going on. He really didn't. I mean, they didn't bother to tell him, they didn't have to tell him. Interesting, they didn't have to tell him. And yet when he got up and sort of cocked that smile and said, `Well, you newspaper men always get it wrong,' the whole country bought it. And so it's awesome."

Bradlee had a much higher opinion of Bill Clinton: "I think he's an enormously interesting man and I don't think any President I've known has been brighter than he. I've yet to hear him say, `I don't know,' and it seems to me I remember Kennedy saying `I don't know' all the time. Whenever Sarah McClendon would ask him these questions about some dam in Southwest Texas that he'd never heard of he'd say, `I don't know, Sarah, but I'll find out,' but Clinton knows everything. I'm very impressed."

Pugwash Whitewash.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Joseph Rotblat of the Pugwash Institute gave journalists another opportunity to glamorize the strategically incorrect -- those who insisted a defense buildup would lead to disaster, when it led to victory. All three networks honored the choice, but didn't explain that Rotblat dropped out of the Manhattan Project when he learned the bomb might be used against the Soviets. On the October 13 CBS Evening News Dan Rather labeled Rotblat "a little-known, but highly respected veteran foe of nuclear weapons." ABC's Peter Jennings applauded Rotblat as "Person of the Week" that night: "Their purpose was to educate the world to what they saw as a disastrous course."

In the October 23 Time, Senior Writer Michael Lemonick declared: "Too often such courageous behavior is not rewarded." He saluted Pugwash's work in the 1980s: "The Pugwash organization was considered especially influential...when Ronald Reagan began pushing his Star Wars program, it gave scientists an unofficial channel through which to discuss the tricky arms-reduction issues."

Eric Breindel had a different spin on Pugwash in the October 30 Weekly Standard. In 1982, Pugwash met without protest in communist Poland during martial law. In 1983, the supposedly anti-proliferation group condemned Israel's attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility, destroying Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, a position they did not retract after the Gulf War. Breindel wrote the group conducted "an all-out campaign against Star Wars...Happily Ronald Reagan wasn't listening, either to Pugwash or to Mikhail Gorbachev, who advanced the identical argument at the Reykjavik summit in 1986."

FDR and the Reds.

Translated documents recently released by the National Security Agency show many of the warnings about communist efforts to infiltrate the government during the Cold War were true. The documents show Franklin Roosevelt may have been surrounded by KGB spies. On October 13, The Washington Times reported the documents suggest the KGB intended to recruit Eleanor Roosevelt by using the wife of a wealthy American. But, as reporter Bill Gertz wrote, the documents are "inconclusive about whether the KGB ever attempted or succeeded in recruiting the wife of a President."

Another entry is a reference to a KGB spy code-named "Agent 19." The text suggested this agent was a close confidant of FDR's who attended his meetings with Winston Churchill. Analysts believe "Agent 19" was either Vice President Henry Wallace, who later ran for the presidency on the socialist Progressive Party ticket, or FDR aide Harry Hopkins, who was fingered as a Soviet spy by a former KGB officer in 1990. Who covered these stunning historical revelations? Other than the Times, the AP filed a story which the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune picked up. But the rest of the media remained silent on the subject.

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