MediaWatch: November 1995
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: November 1995
- Chopping at the Competition
- NewsBites: Festering Foster
- Revolving Door: Gergen: Still a Clintonite
- Media vs. a Balanced Budget
- Gramm Should Die?
- The 800-Word Antidote
- Networks Ignore Foley, Gephardt Nipping at Newt...Again
- Janet Cooke Award: Mainstreaming the Million Man March
Media vs. a Balanced Budget
Under GOP House plans spending per Medicare recipient will soar from $4,800 to $6,700 by 2002, or six percent per year. Considering this slight slowing of the previously planned increase a "cut," reporters spent October aiding liberal efforts to turn people against the GOP plan to balance the budget.
Indeed, The Washington Post reported October 29 that polls for the House leadership "showed that the public reacted negatively when told that Republicans would cut Medicare, but positively when informed that spending would increase but at a slower rate."
On the October 12 Good Morning America, news anchor Morton Dean claimed "The Republican plan would cut $270 billion in Medicare spending over seven years." Opening the October 14 Today, Giselle Fernandez promised "we're going to get to the very latest on Republicans' plan to slash the Medicare budget." Five days later on CBS This Morning news anchor Jane Robelot said Democrats were attacking the bill "which slashes $270 billion in Medicare spending." That night, NBC's Tom Brokaw referred to "big cuts in Medicare." Linda Douglass insisted on the October 20 CBS Evening News that the President "promised to veto the Republican plan to cut Medicare."
Newspapers were no better. Under the October 15 Philadelphia Inquirer headline "GOP's Budget Plan Is Seen as Cutting Poor to the Quick," Knight-Ridder's David Hess falsely asserted: "The biggest single cut in the budget-balancing drive would be $270 billion in future spending for Medicare."
The scaremongering work-ed. Today aired a story October 20 from Miami in which reporter Kerry Sanders observed "senior citizens gathered around the big screen TV to watch the House vote on Medicare cuts. They did not like what they saw....there's concern about the planned cuts." After four soundbites predicting disaster, he concluded: "Seniors say they'll show their anger by voting against Republicans in 1996."
A New York Times poll provided respondents with misinformation and then trumpeted the result on page 1 on October 26: "Americans Reject Big Medicare Cuts, A New Poll Finds." The poll asked which people preferred, "balancing the federal budget" (27 percent), "or preventing Medicare from being significantly cut" (67 percent).
But Medicare isn't the only budget issue on which reporters could not pass a second grade math quiz. Today co-host Jack Ford asserted that the budget included "huge cuts in social programs." The day before Halloween Robelot announced the "plan would slash spending." But as Tim Russert noted on Meet the Press October 29, under the seven year plan overall "spending goes up 22 percent."
