MediaWatch: November 1996
Table of Contents:
Media Highlight Brinkley
But What About Them?
David Brinkley's election night comments that President Clinton is "a bore" and that his acceptance speech delivered "goddamned nonsense" generated wide newspaper coverage. Brinkley apologized to Clinton during a This Week interview, but other reporters have never apologized or been condemned for comments about conservatives. NBC's Bryant Gumbel called Pat Buchanan "Mr. Puke-anan" on the Feb. 20 Today. In 1994 he asked House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt: "You called Gingrich and his ilk, your words, `trickle-down terrorists who base their agenda on division, exclusion and fear.' Do you think middle-class Americans are in need of protection from that group?" On David Letterman in 1987, Sam Donaldson advised how to measure President Reagan's success in an upcoming press conference: "I think he is going to have to pass two or three tests. The first is, will he get there, stand in front of the podium, and not drool." Just after the 1994 election Donaldson asked Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich on This Week: "A lot of people are afraid of you. They think you're a bomb-thrower. Worse, you're an intolerant bigot. Speak to them." On a January, 1995 Sunday Morning John Leonard declared: "From the pronunciamentos out of Washington, you'd think the new Congress were a slash-and-burn Khmer Rouge." NPR/ABC reporter Nina Totenberg issued a death wish on Inside Washington in 1995 after Sen. Jesse Helms said too much is spent on AIDS research: "I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind, because if there is retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."
