MediaWatch: September 1989
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: September 1989
- Study: Reporters Write Left, Not Right
- Study Bites: Opinion Journalists Follow a Slightly Different Pattern
- NewsBites: Doom But Not Boom
- Revolving Door: Palestinian Connection
- Reporters Addicted to Tax Hikes
- Your Tax Dollars at Work for PBS
- Janet Cooke Award: The ABC's of Day Care
Your Tax Dollars at Work for PBS
CUBA'S LAPDOG LAPHAM. PBS generated an angry response from the public when it decided to broadcast the unabashedly pro-Palestinian Days of Rage. PBS has not learned from its mistake, however, as can be seen in the choice to air "America's Century," a six-part series written and narrated by Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham. The expressed purpose of the series is to chart America's rise as a superpower, and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis is one the issues examined when the series airs this fall.
Among the "experts" appearing during the show, according to a Los Angeles Times article, is leftist author Noam Chomsky who declares that "it's taken for granted that we have a right to ring them [the USSR] with missiles but they don't have a right to put a few, a few missiles in Cuba." Lapham agrees with this Soviet apologia and continues "the U.S. staked the life of the human race. The risk...expressed the arrogance of power." Hard as it is to believe, Lapham claims other parts of the series will be even more controversial.
