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 Pre-Coup Media Misinterpretations
WAS THE COLD WAR OVER?
Before the coup, reporters often talked about the potential threat of a coup against Gorbachev, but some reporters did not question what military or diplomatic implications a coup would have. For many, the liberation of Eastern Europe meant the cold war was over, and the Soviet threat was no longer important. But the coup proved a very real threat remained.
Boston Globe defense reporter Fred Kaplan exemplified this cavalier attitude in a dismissive "news analysis" on May 21, 1990: "One can imagine [Gorbachev] thinking something like this: 'Look, the cold war is over. Who cares how many cruise missiles you have or how far they can fly? There isn't going to be a war. These weapons aren't going to be used. Let's cut a deal and move onward to the new age.'" Less than two weeks later, on June 2, Kaplan added: "It simply no longer matters who has how many of what; such bean-counting exercises contribute little to a real-world calculus of power."
The coup also exposed the phony public-relations campaign waged around the world by the leadership of the KGB. On September 8, 1989, even Washington Post reporter David Remnick's highly skeptical news article on Vladimir Kryuchkov's publicity blitz nevertheless echoed the earlier stories on "closet liberal" Yuri Andropov: "Like Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev before him, Kryuchkov has taken the personal route, talking of his fondness for Bellini's opera Norma. He swoons over the piano mastery of Van Cliburn, and hints that he would arrange a Moscow apartment for the pianist if he would only come here more often. Then he sighs over his exhausting workday at Dzerzhinsky Square: 'The KGB Chairman's life is no bed of roses.'"
In an August 2, 1990 Prime Time Live feature on the KGB, Diane Sawyer assured viewers: "The officers of the KGB, in fact, decided reform was necessary long before Gorbachev came to power." The September 9 Newsweek reported that "sources in Western intelligence" told them that "the masterminds of the coup were KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, 67, and Oleg Baklanov, 59, a leader of the Soviet military-industrial complex."
