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
More Attacks on Reagan, Bush, Conservatives
BILL MOYERS, MUDSLINGER
PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers stooped to character assassination in a September 1 Washington Post Magazine interview with Eric Alterman. Moyers played his own race card, charging President Bush "and his kind hated the right wing, yet he caters to it now. I followed his trail through the South in the 1984 election, and what I heard was George Wallace refined, making sure the good ol' boys knew he was one of them keeping 'other people' in their place. There's a mean spirit in him that often acts the bully and usually towards those weaker than him."
Later, Moyers added: "The right gets away with blaming liberals for their efforts to help the poor, but what the right is really objecting to is the fact that the poor are primarily black. The man who sits in the White House today opposed the Civil Rights Act. So did Ronald Reagan. This crowd is really fighting a retroactive civil rights war to prevent the people they dislike because of their color from achieving success in American life."
Moyers also insisted that the Reagan recovery destroyed the standard of living: "I was with a group of construction workers recently who were bemoaning their diminished standard of living between 1980 and now. 'How many of you voted for Reagan?' I asked. Every one raised his hand. They were betrayed." He complained: "Ronald Reagan will be up on Mount Rushmore and George Bush will be carved into the stadium at Texas A&M before the next generation wakes up and says, 'Who did this to us? Who stole our standard of living?'"
