MediaWatch: September 1990
Table of Contents:
NewsBites: Boycott Bias
BOYCOTT BIAS. Time's August 27 "Grapevine" section asked the question "Who's Boycotting Whom?" Noting that "the shop-till- you-drop tendencies of America's consumer society have lately been checked by an activist counterimpulse," Time's list included left-wing boycotts only: the National Organization for Women's campaign against Esquire magazine; "peace groups" boycotting Folgers for importing coffee from El Salvador and thereby "fortifying the right-wing regime;" black groups' refusal to hold conventions in Miami to protest the city's failure to honor Nelson Mandela; gay groups' ban on Philip Morris-owned Miller beer, since the company contributed to Jesse Helms' re-election campaign; and Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH trying to pressure Nike into hiring more minorities. Newsweek gave the Nike story two pages the same week.
Notably excluded by both magazines: The Christian Action Council's successful boycott of AT&T, and its current boycott of American Express and 41 other companies (including the New York Times Company) which fund the abortion lobbyists at Planned Parenthood. The council did, however, spur debates at both Today and CBS This Morning.
JUDD SLINGING. Political candidates are all style and no substance, reporters commonly complain. But on Prime Time Live, ABC's Judd Rose was not interested in substance when he looked at the Texas gubernatorial race. His August 16 story, "Texas Crude," repeatedly mocked the style of Republican candidate Clayton Williams, portraying him as a southern buffoon.
Diane Sawyer's lead set the tone for the piece: "The man now swaggering down Main Street is running first and foremost as a cowboy and making a lot of Texans ponder that old Will Rogers saying, 'Things aren't like they used to be, and probably never were.'"
Skillfully skirting the issues, Rose attacked Williams for being out of touch. "Williams' critics worry that he hankers a little too much for the old ways, that his mistakes reveal a disturbingly narrow view of the modern world. For instance, in an age when candidates routinely court the gay vote, Williams has no use for gays, and no apologies."
"It's a dirty campaign and getting dirtier all the time," Rose reported. Among his examples: Williams criticized Richards for accepting money from gays and Jane Fonda. "Why not?," Rose asked sarcastically, "It works. In 1988 the Bush campaign linked Michael Dukakis with Willie Horton...The rest is history. And as it happens, the White House is keeping an active hand in this campaign."
DOVE DRIVEL. Time Editor-at-Large Strobe Talbott continues to attribute the collapse of communism to the forces of appeasement and disarmament. In a July 30 article, Talbott declared: "It would do [German Chancellor Helmut] Kohl no harm to acknowledge a debt to a courageous and controversial predecessor. In 1969 Willy Brandt launched his Ostpolitik of reconciliation and rapprochement with the East. It was the first major sustained breakthrough of the cold war in Europe. Brandt went a long way toward allaying Soviet fears by signing a renunciation-of-force treaty with Moscow." No doubt the Soviets quaked in fear of a German invasion before then. To Talbott, Brandt's "most important" decision came when he "formally recognized the German Democratic Republic."
Staff Writer Lisa Beyer tried to polish Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's record on the same issue. "Genscher's renegade view of the Soviets, once derided by his allies as being 'soft' on communism, has proven visionary." Thankfully, the Germans have a better understanding of the Cold War's end than Time does.
GOOD SAMARITAN REPORTING. The political motives of an American group in El Salvador escaped New York Times reporter Lindsey Gruson in his August 15 article, "Suspicion Keeps a Hospital From Salvadorans." Gruson detailed the efforts of Medical Aid for El Salvador to get hospital equipment into the country. The only background on the group's sympathies came from Medical Aid associate director Jody Williams, who asserted, "We favor neutrality and we're in favor of a negotiated settlement to the war. We don't support the guerrillas."
Funny how Gruson never mentioned group founder Bill Zimmerman's explanation of the group's goals: "Medical Aid for El Salvador has two purposes. One is to deliver medical assistance for the alleviation of the suffering in El Salvador, and two, to protest the involvement of our government in the struggle, because that involvement is creating more victims in need of medical care." Zimmerman was also the founder of Medical Aid for Indochina, which sent aid to the Vietcong, North Vietnamese, Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge during the Vietnam War.
TAXACHUSETTS TAXERS. The Massachusetts Miracle toted by Governor Michael Dukakis during his 1988 presidential campaign is well over. But liberal Democrats whose tax-and-spend policies culminated in July with a huge $1.2 billion hike in gasoline, sales and income taxes were not to blame. In fact, according to a July 28 NBC Nightly News story, Dukakis and his political allies are the state's saviors.
Reporter Stephen Frazier blamed the downturn on cutbacks in defense spending, before asking "the Governor and some economists [to] put the changes in perspective." Dukakis claimed "that kind of white-hot economic growth couldn't be sustained indefinitely." A local economist insisted: "This state, contrary to popular opinion, is not a particularly high-tax state."
That settled, Frazier showed video of people rallying for a tax repeal referendum which would return taxes to their 1988 level. Turning again to a Democrat, Frazier warned: "That would throw the state budget way out of balance, the Speaker of the Massachusetts House said today." Frazier concluded: "He hopes the referendum fails, and, he said, when people realize it could mean even deeper cuts in programs for the elderly and safeguards for the environment and in education, they'll stick with the budget that was passed today." What about those opposed to more taxes? Frazier didn't talk to any of them.
SDI SKEPTICS. Much of the media have jumped to the conclusion that an impenetrable shield against incoming missiles is a scientific impossibility, though the scientific community is far less conclusive. Time reporter Bruce Van Voorst dismissed any progress in the SDI program in his August 13 article bemoaning investment in SDI: "After seven years of research, it is clear that no antimissile system can provide the impenetrable shield against incoming missiles that Ronald Reagan envisioned in 1983."
NBC Nightly News reporter Henry Champ concurred in his August 4 piece on Star Wars cutbacks: "Senators today finally turned their backs on a dream of the Reagan era: that somehow a space-age security blanket could hover above the world, an impenetrable network of American lasers and missiles." Champ pretended SDI funding has never been cut by Congress, noting "It was the first time Star Wars suffered cutbacks since its inception and followed months of severe attack from various government agencies and the scientific community."
SPIES LIKE US. Introducing her August 2 Prime Time Live interview with KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, Diane Sawyer wanted to clear up any misconceptions about the Soviet secret police. "It's most difficult for most Americans to understand a government organization that monitors everything, that has tentacles reaching into all aspects of Soviet life. But keep in mind the KGB is like a combination of the CIA, the FBI, of the National Security Agency, the Secret Service, and the Coast Guard, too."
"From Lenin to Stalin to Gorbachev, it's members have been a proud corps of the national elite, intelligent, talented, and fully in control," Sawyer swooned. As to whether their talents lie more with torture or terrorism, Sawyer did not specify, but she did give them credit for their political enlightenment: "The officers of the KGB, in fact, decided reform was necessary long before Gorbachev came to power."
MUTING MANDELA'S MARXISM. Since most reporters have ignored the symbiosis of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC), they faced an interesting problem when Nelson Mandela addressed the first SACP rally in 40 years on July 29.
The ANC magazine Sechaba declared in 1985 that "the ANC and the SACP are two hands in the same body...they are two pillars in our revolution." In How to be a Good Communist, Mandela explained: "The aim is to change the present world into a communist world where there will be no exploiters and exploited, no oppressor and oppressed, no rich and poor." ABC's Richard Sergay ignored all the evidence, declaring: "While Mandela made it clear today the ANC is not a communist movement, he said for decades they have shared an important goal, a negotiated settlement."
NBC reporter Charles McLean took a similar line on Sunday Today: "Although not a communist himself, Mandela will address today's rally and speak in support of his allies in the Communist Party." Andrea Mitchell continued the trend on the Nightly News." [Mandela] said his African National Congress is not communist, but would fight for the party's right to exist," Mitchell announced as the camera showed Mandela singing the communist anthem, the "Internationale," as he stood next to SACP leader Joe Slovo.
CALIFORNIA DREAMING. Project Censored, Sonoma (CA) State University's yearly list of the top ten "undercovered" stories of the year, has just released their 15th annual report. The 15- judge panel, which included three major media representatives, took a decidedly loony leftish line on what was "censored."
The top ten included critiques of U.S. foreign policy ("The Holocaust In Mozambique" and "Guatemalan Blood on U.S. Hands") and the depredations of American capitalism ("The Chicken Industry and the National Salmonella Epidemic"). Even juicer topics were selected for the 15 runner-up stories, such as "The U.S. Is Poisoning the Rest of the World With Banned Pesticides"; "The U.S. Presence Is Destroying the Environment in Central America"; "Faulty Computers Can Trigger World War III"; "U.S. Congress Ignored Soviet Plea for Nuclear Test Ban"; "The Oppression and Exploitation of Native Americans," and our favorite, "Media Reliance on Conservative Sources Debunks Myth of Liberal Bias." But none this year matched a 1987 winner: "Oliver North's Secret Plan to Declare Martial Law."
The project's panel of judges included Newsweek Senior Writer Jonathan Alter, PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers and former Washington Post editor Ben Bagdikian, as well as left-wing media gurus Noam Chomsky, George Gerbner, Frances Moore Lappe, and Herbert Schiller.
BYE-BYE LIBERTIES. Here's another helping of stories from the William Brennan Fan Club. On July 23, USA Today reporter Tony Mauro claimed: "Brennan was the engine who, more than any other individual, drove the court in the last 30 years to declare new rights, to protect new minorities, to bring more of the dis-favored into the safe harbor of the U.S. Constitution." In the August 2 Christian Science Monitor, Managing Editor Curtis J. Sitomer hailed Brennan as a hero for his "philosophy of individual rights and fundamental choice which government cannot, and should not take away or abridge," which was "the hallmark of Justice Brennan's more than three decades on the Supreme Court." Sitomer warmly recalled: "In his early years on the bench, Justice Brennan's liberal voice blended with those of former Chief Justice Earl Warren and Associate Justices Hugo Black, William Douglas, Abe Fortas, Arthur Goldberg, and [Thurgood] Marshall as keepers of the flame of individual rights."
RECOMMENDED EDUCATION. Last month's MediaWatch included highlights of David Shaw's Los Angeles Times series on the pro- abortion agenda of the major media. Shaw revealed that Jack Rosenthal, editorial page editor of The New York Times and Meg Greenfield, who fills the same slot at The Washington Post, were unaware of the police brutality suffered by Operation Rescue protesters. To them and other journalists cocooned from reality, we recommend some good reading.
In the August 23 U.S. News & World Report, Senior Writer John Leo gave first-hand accounts from members of Operation Rescue who suffered at the hands of police. Though some still feel physical pain a year later, Leo noted their story is rarely given media attention since "journalists, who are generally unsympathetic in the first place, tend to assume that cries about brutal treatment are just part of the show." After an account by an elderly woman bloodied by police assault, Leo concluded: "There are many such horror stories...[Operation Rescue's] occupation is very much like that of a civil-rights sit-in. Would we want pain holds used on Martin Luther King, or would we shout about on-the-spot torture doled out to stop an unpopular political movement?" Hopefully, the media can help answer that question.
