MediaWatch: September 1991
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: September 1991
- Labeling Left and Right
- NewsBites: Clubbing Clearance
- Revolving Door: Free-Market Teaching from Dukakis?
- Reporters Undergo A "Liberation Conversion"
- More Attacks on Reagan, Bush, Conservatives
- More Pre-Coup Media Misinterpretations
- Janet Cooke Award: Satisfied Soviet People
Reporters Undergo A "Liberation Conversion"
"WITCH HUNT" WARNINGS
After decades of giggling at terms like "captive nations" and "evil empire," insisting that communist subjects actually preferred dictatorship to democracy, and sympathizing with Gorbachev as his troops murdered Baltic separatists, the media have undergone a sudden "liberation conversion." Several reporters attacked the new post-coup democratic leadership and defended the liberties of the communists who had denied them to everyone else.
Some media figures even insisted that it was wrong to throw the coup plotters out of their positions of power. On CNN's Capital Gang on August 24, National Public Radio news anchor Linda Wertheimer complained: "A purge is a purge, and even if it's Boris Yeltsin conducting the purge and the coup plotters who are purged, I think that's a setback for the Soviet Union, because in a country where people can't walk out of office and into their own homes and expect not to be shot or arrested, that's not a country that's really free." In fact, no one has been shot since the coup except those who died defending the Russian Parliament building.
Tara Sonenshine, Editorial Producer of ABC's Nightline, wrote an op-ed in the September 6 Christian Science Monitor titled "Witch Hunting in the Soviet Union." She claimed the "witch hunt" began with persecution of the coup plotters: "The most prominent member of the newly depicted coven of witches includes the members of the Emergency Committee." By Sonenshine's reasoning, the Nuremberg trials were a "witch hunt," therefore Nazi criminals should not have been prosecuted.
On Good Morning America August 26, former New York Times reporter Hedrick Smith also presented the democrats as more dangerous than the communists: "There is a danger that the forces of democracy, as they are called, will now go too far. There is a spirit of revenge in the air."
CBS News consultant Stephen Cohen took the same line on CNN's Crossfire August 23: "There is a grave danger stalking the streets. It's witch hunting." When asked by co-host Pat Buchanan if he was bothered by people surrounding Communist Party headquarters, Cohen answered yes and even complained about statues of Lenin being torn down: "I was bothered by that scene ....I was bothered by the scenes of the crowds moving through the streets looking for symbols upon which to wreak their vengeance." Cohen told Buchanan: "Now you are lending your voice on a kind of witch hunt. You will see a bloodbath in Russia like you have never seen before." Worse than Stalin?
