MediaWatch: September 1991

NewsBites: Clubbing Clearance

CLUBBING CLARENCE. Two days before the Clarence Thomas hearings began, NBC's Sunday Today told viewers they were providing the pros and cons of Thomas. Their pro-Thomas argument consisted of one question in a profile of Rep. Gary Franks (R-CT) in which Garrick Utley presented Franks as dishonest: "Like Clarence Thomas, Gary Franks went to Yale under an affirmative action program. Yet today, he battles against the Democratic civil rights bill in Congress, echoing the President's insistence that, even though it outlaws quotas, it is a quota bill."

But when they turned to the anti-Thomas side, Sunday Today gave NBC reporter Bob Herbert two minutes to deliver an unopposed editorial: "Who is this guy, Clarence Thomas, and why should we want him on the Supreme Court? I can't think of any good reasons. The man is not distinguished and he doesn't seem to have a heart." He concluded: "Let's be straight about this. Clarence Thomas is a tool of the rich and powerful. His supporters include Dan Quayle, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms. Even David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader, is crazy about Clarence Thomas. Make no mistake, old people, poor people, black people, women, forget about it. Clarence Thomas is not your friend."

FLOUTING THOMAS. As his hearings approached, The Boston Globe continued its one-sided reporting on Clarence Thomas. "The Constitution envisions the Supreme Court as the neutral arbiter of disputes between the executive and legislative branches of government, but Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas has often expressed a one-sided view on the issue," reporter Walter V. Robinson began an August 15 "news" story. He quoted legal scholars Cynthia Farina and Erwin Chemerinsky, who called the idea of an encroached executive "troubling, almost silly." Robinson didn't make room for a conservative legal scholar to defend Thomas.

When the liberal People for the American Way finished its search for Thomas travel "scandals" during the Reagan years, the Globe was the first paper to report it on September 7.

Robinson didn't give readers the source of the report until the eighth paragraph, after the story had jumped from the front page to page 17. Washington Post staff writer Ruth Marcus, in contrast, started her September 8 story with the partisan source of the report. People for the American Way knew where to send its press release.

WICHITA WAILING. Guess which side CBS News came down on in the Wichita abortion controversy. In an August 5 Evening News segment reporter Scott Pelley found time to quote anti-Operation Rescue Judge Patrick Kelly, Peggy Jarman of the Pro-Choice Action League and Kevin Wray, a member of a group upset by police overtime costs, but had no time for anyone on the pro-life side.

CBS reporter Bruce Morton, in an August 17 Evening News commentary supporting civil disobedience, nevertheless took a swipe at the protesters. "Some, on videotape, have seemed to want to scuffle with police," Morton claimed. But the videotape playing as he spoke showed protesters being wrestled to the ground by police officers, and he did not mention that no one has been charged with fighting the police. "Some have sent their children toward police lines and barricades and cars. The civil rights people never stooped to that." But his own videotape showed teenagers protesting. Are these "children" old enough to get free condoms in school but not old enough to protest abortion?

DEREGULATION DOUBTERS. The announcement that Pan Am sold most of its major routes allowed ABC's Bob Jamieson to perpetuate airline deregulation myths on World News Tonight. On August 12 he reported, "Some industry analysts say the real problem is the 1978 deregulation...designed to promote competition, lower fares and better service. But critics say deregulation has done just the opposite." Bunk, according to two sources Jamieson ignored, the Air Transport Association (ATA) and the Brookings Institution.

Jamieson claimed: "A single carrier now dominates airports in 16 of our largest cities," and that "fares are 27 percent higher at these airports." But ATA studies show competition is increasing in the airline industry, with average prices at two-thirds of the nation's hub airports declining between 1984 and 1988. In fact, the Council of Economic Advisors calculated consumers have saved a whopping $100 billion since 1978 due to cheaper ticket prices and service improvements.

Jamieson ended by claiming "Deregulation has cost the loss of 40,000 jobs this year alone." Actually, since deregulation, the airline industry has boomed, setting new traffic records for five consecutive years, with annual traffic soaring from 275 million passengers in 1978 to 447 million in 1987. There are 39 percent more people now employed by the airlines than before deregulation.

WHERE'S WELD? Notably absent from media reporting on governors grappling with budget problems is Massachusetts Republican Governor William Weld. Maybe that's because Weld has balanced his state's budget not by raising taxes, but by cutting spending. Meanwhile, California Governor Pete Wilson and Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker receive accolades for their tax-and-spend tendencies.

In the March 12 issue, Time magazine's Priscilla Painton seemed encouraged by more state taxes, noting, "In Connecticut, where the idea of a state income tax has been practically banned from political discourse, incoming Governor Lowell Weicker, Jr. has boldly called for one." In the July 15 Time, reporter Jordan Bonfante nearly canonized Wilson: "On one side are die-hard anti-tax conservatives. On the other are moderate pragmatists like Wilson....Putting his state on the road to fiscal sanity would burnish Wilson's credentials as a can-do politician with the guts to cast aside ideology for the sake of better government." On the August 25 Fox Off the Record, Boston Globe reporter Michael Frisby declared: "My star of the week is Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker. He forced the legislature to institute an income tax for the first time in that state."

But according to columnist Warren Brookes, Weld has cut $770 million from the state budget and slashed the state payroll by 7,000 employees, while 1992 should see a net surplus in state coffers, all without tax increases. But no reporters are making Weld a "star of the week."

SCHOOL REFORM BLUES. Curiously, network reporters seem convinced that federal education spending is on the decline. "Educators faced with doing more with less say...in the end improving standards will take money," asserted CBS reporter Mark Phillips on September 3. Phillips' only experts were three educators demanding more money, and he ignored all other solutions, concluding: "And money, or the lack of it, seems to be making a big difference in the education of those going back to school this week." The same night, NBC's Andrea Mitchell finished her report: "With federal cuts, states and cities just don't have money, parents are copping out and kids are falling further and further behind."

But the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that education funding has been rising steadily since 1985. President Bush's 1992 budget called for a 4 percent increase, a hike of almost $1.2 billion. But more spending didn't stop Scholastic Aptitude Tests from slipping last year in verbal scores and, for the first time in 10 years, in math scores.

Phillips and Mitchell failed to mention the President's 1992 budget included $690 million to implement education reform strategies. Both House and Senate Democratic leaders have stalled the President's spending pro-grams until liberal alternatives can be offered.

JUDGING JESSE. Conservatives may have fallen out of their chairs when they read Gloria Borger's latest story in the August 26/September 2 edition of U.S. News & World Report subheadlined, "Jesse Helms is right: Move in outside judges." Outlining the debate over whether judges should be brought in to review Senate ethics cases, Borger did what few reporters have done -- she agreed with Helms. "Members of Congress often fail miserably when passing judgment on their own. They would do better to pass the buck instead -- handing ethics rulings over to retired judges or to former members not interested in re-upping or lobbying."

Borger concluded, "Senators Dennis DeConcini of Arizona and Donald Riegle of Michigan, two of the members most involved with Keating, got off with rebukes for poor judgment. Their defense: This is the way Washington works. Now Cranston is looking to avoid censure with the same argument, one that Helms refuses to accept. The committee is still wavering. Any reputable panel of outside judges would have dispensed with the matter long ago."

LABOR PAINS. When Labor Secretary Lynn Martin announced results of a Labor Department study on the so-called "glass ceiling," the level at which women are no longer promoted, CBS reporter Wyatt Andrews quickly blamed the administration for being soft on business. On the August 8 Evening News, he asserted "Business groups...were delighted with Martin's handling of this today. And why not? She proposed no new laws or regulations. In fact, Martin refused to name any company by name, cited no one for discrimination, but did say she got nine of those secret companies to sign promises they wouldn't do it again."

Andrews concluded his report: "The political pattern here sounds just like the controversy over the civil rights bill. Here again is an administration loudly trumpeting the evils of discrimination, while still opposing moves that might make it lucrative for victims to sue."

Ken Prewitt of ABC's Good Morning America offered a different spin on August 26: "And the Feminist Majority Foundation says the old boy network has held women to just 2.6 percent of the top jobs in corporate America. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that's because women didn't enter the corporate world until the 1970s and are jut now becoming eligible for the top jobs."

CENSORSHIP SNAFU. You'd think that after all of the media posturing against "censorship" by the Department of Defense during the Gulf War, news executives would be the last to practice censorship, right?

Wrong. During the war, CBS' Walter Cronkite fumed: "Sanitizing the war for the purpose of keeping American morale, interest in the war, support for the war high is almost criminal."

Funny how times change. In the August 28 New York Post some local news chiefs claimed it is justifiable to edit and censor anti- Semitic comments made by the Reverend Al Sharpton and other radical black activists during the recent rioting in New York. WCBS-TV news director Dean Daniels explained, "We are cautious to air anything that is attacking a group of people. We feel pressure not to make a bad situation worse." And WNBC-TV news director Bret Marcus reasoned, "While we are journalists we are also citizens of this community who are trying to encourage peace and a lessening of tensions."

MISSING MANDELA'S MONEY. Last month, MediaWatch described how the networks avoided African National Congress (ANC) President Nelson Mandela's trip to Cuba to celebrate the anniversary of Castro's revolution. They did, however, air 22 stories on the "Inkathagate" scandal, in which the South African government supplied $90,000 to the two-million-member, pro-democracy, anti- apartheid Inkatha Freedom Party and more to Inkatha-affiliated unions. Reporters also discussed South African aid to Namibian anti-communist parties.

But Namibia, through its self-proclaimed Marxist President, Sam Nujoma, gave one million rand ($390,000) to its ANC comrades on January 31 of this year. Although the story appeared on the wire services, none of the networks carried a single story on this substantial source of ANC funding.

On the July 20 CBS Evening News, reporter Martha Teichner charged that the Inkatha revelations "raise questions about South Africa's real commitment to end apartheid." Teichner didn't ask whether Mandela's acceptance of aid from Nujoma and Castro raised questions about the ANC's commitment to democracy and freedom.

CLOAK THE RICH. Here they go again. Last month ABC's Cokie Roberts and CBS' Bruce Morton sang the usual refrain that passes for analysis about the 1980s. In a September 4 Evening News "Eye on America" segment, Morton asserted, "In fact the rich have gotten richer and the middle-class is shrinking. The question is can the Democrats make that case against a popular incumbent President?" No, the question is: can Morton add? As columnist Warren Brookes recently explained, the share of those making $50,000 or more, in constant 1989 dollars, has jumped from 21.6 percent in 1981 to 29 percent in 1989. The middle-income shift was 58.6 percent to 52.9 percent, but the lower-income share fell from 19.9 to 18 percent. So the middle-class did shrink. People moved up!

On the discussion segment of This Week With David Brinkley August 18, Roberts took the tax fairness track: "The rich are paying smaller taxes than they were at the beginning of the 1980s, when you paid 70 percent on unearned income and 50 percent on earned income. Now that is way down from there, so rich people are paying less." Well, not exactly. Again, Brookes showed that when the tax rate for the rich dropped, their money came out of shelters so the amount collected by the IRS from the upper ten percent leaped by nearly 70 percent in real terms from 1981 to 1988.

ALL WET ON WETLANDS. President Bush's decision to reconsider the definition of a wetland drew easy condemnation from environmentalists, and from their supporters at the networks. On World News Tonight, ABC reporter Ned Potter predictably focused his August 9 report on criticizing Bush: "The White House says not all wetlands are genuinely valuable. Business groups say that's a step in the right direction." Potter concluded: "George Bush gets reminded on days like this that he pledged to be the environmental President. He's likely to face stiff opposition from some Congressmen who says he's just caving in to business."

But on August 11, NBC Nightly News reporter Henry Champ went beyond the usual black hat-white hat story and presented a tide of wider public opposition to wetlands policy, and the facts behind their outrage at government intervention with their property: "Suddenly thousands of people who thought themselves bystanders saw themselves as victims: vacation homeowners, retirees, rural homeowners. For example, even though the Maryland coast is dotted with farms centuries old, building lots were now being reclassified as wetlands. This wooded lot, with housing on both sides, couldn't get a building permit -- all because the new Army Corps of Engineers regulations said land with any amount of water lying on the surface for seven consecutive days, or land with moisture found 18 inches below surface for the same seven days, was to be called wetlands." Potter should call Champ for reporting lessons.

SACRED SAGAN SCORCHED. Remember how the oil fires in Kuwait could cause a worldwide catastrophe? On January 20, Carl Sagan, the astronomer and self-appointed climatologist, told Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes about the fires' possible consequences: "That means the obscuration of the sun over large areas, maybe some ten percent of the northern hemisphere will last into the growing season." Wallace set Sagan up: "And people could conceivably starve." Sagan agreed: "You might have massive agricultural failures in the United States as a result of this."

More than seven months later, the fires still burn, but have had a miniscule impact on global climate, the sun has not been obscured, and massive agricultural failures have not occurred in the United States. Sagan compared the impact of the fires to the volcano at Mount Tambora in 1815, but that volcano is much like Mount Pinatubo this year. That eruption, with a force many times the Kuwaiti fires, did cause a global cooling. With Sagan now proven brazenly wrong, will the media continue to consult him for his opinion? Unfortunately, his disproven "nuclear winter" theories didn't stop him from appearing in January.

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