MediaWatch: November 1996
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: California's Clock
NBC's Maria Shriv-er and CBS's Jane Robelot laid into the California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209, after it passed by a wide margin on November 5. The measure banned the state from awarding preferential treatment to anyone on the basis of race, sex, or religion -- to liberal reporters, an obvious step backwards. Shriver tossed Jesse Jackson a loaded softball on election night: "Affirmative action was a hotbed issue in this country, still a big race on that subject going on about that in California. Did you feel at times like we've turned back the clock on some of these issues?" On CBS This Morning the next day, Robelot attacked initiative sponsor Ward Connerly for touting an end to preferences: "But that's sort of living in an ideal world. I mean it's nice to say it on paper. If you look around at corporate offices in America and in CEO's offices, you're gonna see very few minorities and few women. Are we really ready to backtrack on civil rights now, or on affirmative action?"
Gore vs. Gingrich
Rarely have the media's double standard
toward the two parties been more evident than in the Today
show's interviews in the first week in October. On October 8,
substitute co-host Matt Lauer hit Newt Gingrich with six ethics
questions, including: "Do you envision any circumstances, Mr.
Speaker, under which you might be forced to resign based on the
investigation?....So if the ethics committee comes back and
says Newt Gingrich was not truthful with us in supplying information?"
Gingrich responded: "I don't think they can say that." Lauer
eagerly countered, "If they did, would you consider resigning?"
The next morning, substitute co-host Ed Gordon tossed bouquets
at Al Gore: "Many can see that you have indeed been the most
powerful Vice President in our history. You satisfied with the
role that you played for four years?" And: "The debate is
coming up. What do you want people to come away with, after
they watch you and Jack Kemp? What should they know about Al
Gore?" Gordon also asked: "You want to be the best second guy
you can. You're there to help the President. Now having said that, do
you want the job in 2000?"
Cuddling Carolyn
The national media have never been in
love with the National Rifle Association, so when anti-gun
Democrat Carolyn McCarthy beat freshman Republican Rep. Daniel
Frisa in New York, media praise soon followed. The morning
after the election, McCarthy made the talk show rounds. On the
November 6 Today, Katie Couric went straight to the NRA: "What do
you think the lesson is for the National Rifle Association? Of
course, one of the cornerstones of your campaign was to
maintain the ban on assault weapons in this country." Over on
Good Morning America, ABC's Joan Lunden claimed: "McCarthy
turned her rage over the availability of assault weapons into
political activism and last night this ultimate outsider, a
former nurse and homemaker, defeated incumbent Daniel Frisa."
After McCarthy, who has never held political office, made some broad
comments about various government programs, Lunden praised her:
"Sounds like you really educated yourself too. Are you at all
daunted by this task that lies before you?" On November 8,
World News Tonight picked McCarthy as the Person of the Week
because, as anchor Peter Jennings put it: "We have chosen her
because the people who chose her were so impressed by her
notion of public service." McCarthy was the first politician
selected as Person of the Week this year.
Hating Helen
GOP freshman Rep. Helen Chenoweth won
re-election despite being targeted by the Democrats, labor
unions, environmentalists and...Tom Brokaw. On the October 24
NBC Nightly News, Brokaw chose Chenoweth's Idaho congressional
race as the subject of his "In Depth" report on big money from
special interests. Brokaw opened: "From sunup til late night, the
sounds of politics are in the air in Idaho like a migraine headache
with a voice track. And this is why: Helen Chenoweth, a
controversial first term Republican Congresswoman." When
Chenoweth claimed: "I don't have a clue why they would target
me. I come from an innocuous state. I'm just a plain-spoken
Western woman," Brokaw countered: "Not exactly. In her first
term Chenoweth was a cheerleader for the New Right. Voting against
an increase in the minimum wage, trashing traditional environmental
organizations. She was a hard-liner on gun laws. So, she is a
target of big labor and conservationists." While Chenoweth was
labeled as a "hard-liner" and portrayed as extreme, her
Democratic opponent Dan Williams drew no labeling from Brokaw,
nor was he depicted as being beholden to special interests,
despite the thousands of dollars big labor and liberal
environmentalists spent on his behalf.
Return of the Gorbasm
NBC's Tom Brokaw has put Mikhail
Gorbachev in his personal pantheon of heroes. On the PBS talk
show Charlie Rose May 2, Brokaw paid homage: "I think Gorbachev
is a great man in the 20th century because he forced his
country to look at the hypocrisy and the fraudulence of communism and to
begin slowly to make a turn away from it. He can still light
up any room that he walks into." Brokaw refused to call Ronald
Reagan a great man: "You can look at the economics of
Reaganism, for example, or some of the bombast of his foreign
policy, and find all manner of flaws in there."
Five months
later, on MSNBC's InterNight October 29, Brokaw interviewed
Gorbachev, proclaiming: "It's likely that your view of Mikhail Gorbachev
depends on your point of view. From the perspective of the
West, the former President of the Soviet Union of course was a
courageous, far-seeing prophet whose reforms set in motion the
collapse of the Soviet dictatorship and the end of the Cold
War." At interview's end, Brokaw gushed: "Perhaps one day we'll
see you again in political office in Russia. We know that
you've devoted your life to peace and to changing your country
and those of us who have gotten to know you count ourselves
among the privileged."
Willie Horton Stalks Cyberspace
For eight years reporters
regularly insisted Republicans used racial issues, as
symbolized by the Willie Horton ad, to divide America in order
to win the 1988 presidential campaign. But this year, raising
Willie Horton suddenly had become a symbol of toughness for one
politician. In a VP debate preview piece posted October 8 on the CNN
website AllPolitics.com, reporters Bob Franken and Marc Watts
applauded the use of Willie Horton by Al Gore in 1988: "Gore
can also fire off the tough question. In 1988, as a Senator, he
first raised what became known as the `Willie Horton issue'
with Michael Dukakis during a primary debate." A dimmer view
was advanced by CNN in a February 1992 special on race and the
presidential campaigns. CNN reporter Ken Bode sounded off about
the pro-George Bush independent expenditure ads featuring Willie
Horton: "David Duke's exploitation of white working class fears about
blacks echoes a theme from the 1988 election. This is the
Maryland State Penitentiary. Inside resides the most
politically notorious convict in America. William Horton, Jr.,
the focal point of a major national campaign designed to
exploit white fear of black crime....The Horton case
illustrates the readiness of political leaders to exploit the
racial divide."
Peter's Slippery Science
Scientific studies usually get a
respectful hearing -- unless reporters disagree with the
results. Take Peter Jennings on the October 11 World News
Tonight: "There was a study released at Penn State University today
that you may hear a lot about this weekend. It purports to show a
connection between women who have had abortions and the risk of
developing breast cancer. And if you see it around, remember
this. It is not original research, but an analysis of 23
earlier studies. And the National Cancer Institute says those
individual studies were actually inconclusive, and because of
that, various other scientists say today the Penn State report
is flawed." Some criticism of the study attacked the author,
Joel Brind, who is personally opposed to abortion.
But in the past Jennings has had no such doubts about the validity of meta-analysis, a method of research which draws conclusions by combining data from other studies. In a syndicated column, Reason magazine Science Editor Michael Fumento pointed out that a 1991 report, by Dr. Stanton Glantz, an anti-smoking activist and founder of the American Nonsmoker's Rights Foundation, found a "30 percent increased risk," the same factor of increase as found in the recent breast cancer study. On January 9, 1991 Jennings had no disclaimers for the secondhand smoke study: "A new warning today about the dangers of passive smoking, breathing someone else's cigarette smoke. A report in the American Heart Association journal Circulation says passive smoking kills an estimated 53,000 people every year."
Civil Rights or Social Programs?
Opening an October 20
New York Times story reporter Steven Holmes declared: "In his
nearly four years in office, President Clinton has amassed a
civil rights record rivaling that of any President in the last
30 years." His proof? Clinton "stoutly defended the government's
affirmative action role."
But the newspaper's style manual apparently contains a broad definition of the phrase "civil rights." Holmes laid out what he considered to be Clinton's 1992 campaign promises concerning civil rights: "Work to pass the Motor Voter bill" and "support statehood for the District of Columbia." Plus two items with no relation to discrimination or voting: "Require every employer to spend 1.5 percent of payroll for continuing education and training," and "expand the Earned Income Tax Credit." Expanding the definition let Holmes give Clinton credit for two "civil rights achievements" that passed, Motor Voter and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Depraved Clinton
Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan
Thomas had a change of heart on the credibility of Paula Jones.
Prompted by former New York Times Supreme Court reporter
Stuart Taylor's November article in The American Lawyer, on the
November 3 Inside Washington, Thomas explained: "There are two
friends of Paula Jones that she spoke to right after the alleged
incident....Taylor has gone back and talked to them and they paint a
pretty bad tale." Back on May 7, 1994 Thomas disparaged Jones
as "some sleazy woman with big hair."
Taylor found that "the evidence supporting Paula Jones's allegations of predatory, if not depraved, behavior by Bill Clinton is far stronger than the evidence supporting Anita Hill's allegations of far less serious conduct by Clarence Thomas." In the three weeks after the article appeared it didn't get a sentence in Newsweek or the other newsweeklies. Other than a brief citation as an example of media bias by ABC's Jeff Greenfield on the October 31 World News Tonight, it drew not a second on the networks.
Only One House?
Clinton has saved America's cities from
the evil Reagan years, ABC News argued before the election.
Over video of a building being torn down, on the October 14
World News Tonight ABC's Dean Reynolds asserted from Detroit:
"Twenty five housing developments have started here since the
Clinton Administration took office." Following a soundbite from Detroit
Mayor Dennis Archer, Reynolds charged, without rebuttal, "A
decade ago during the Reagan era, according to the Mayor, only
one new house was built in the entire city."
