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
Janet Cooke Award: Satisfied Soviet People
If elections were held in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party would win by a landslide, because the Soviet people want "security" and "order," not freedom. Sound like Pravda before Gorbachev? Actually, it's American network news before the August coup.
Nearly everyone was surprised by the coup, but when reporters spent the preceding years claiming that the Soviet people did not aspire to freedom, that they were fully satisfied with communism or only wished it were harsher, they were not only wrong: they were insulting the many thousands who resisted the coup, repudiated the Communist Party and demanded freedom and democracy. For their misstatements, the journalists quoted here all share the September Janet Cooke Award.
On March 4, 1986 CBS Evening News reporter Bernard Goldberg announced that "The Soviets call it a worker's paradise. Americans call it a police state. And we think if only the Iron Curtain were lifted, they'd be at the border in a New York minute. Well, we'd be wrong." Instead, "Freedom to most Russians is living in a country where the unemployment rate is zero, where state health care costs nothing, where nobody is homeless and crime is not epidemic....Security is one of this nation's highest ideals. Not freedom, security. They may look like us, but they are not like us." He concluded: "They have made a deal with their rulers: Take care of us from cradle to grave, and we will be satisfied."
CBS continued this string of lucid analysis with reporter Bruce Morton, who told the country on November 12, 1986 that Soviet workers "are satisfied people" who are "less free than workers in the West, but more secure." Dan Rather followed up on July 17, 1987: "Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy."
ABC reporter Walter Rodgers naysayed freedom for the Soviet people on December 23, 1986: "The problem is many Soviets don't want Western-style human rights, which they tend to equate with anarchy."
Then-CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Stuart Loory wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal published on February 3, 1986: "I can say without reservation that if the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were to submit itself to the kind of free elections held in South Vietnam in the 1960s or El Salvador in the 1980s, it would win an overwhelming mandate. But that's not saying much. If suddenly a true, two-party or multi-party system were to be formed in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party would still win in a real free election. Except for certain small pockets of resistance to the communist regime, the people have been truly converted in the past 68 years." Reached in Moscow by MediaWatch, Loory disavowed the quote: "Let's not get into that. Obviously that's out of date." But when asked if he believed he was right at the time, he responded "That's correct." Loory is now a CNN Vice President and the Turner Broadcasting System's Executive Director of International Relations.
Even after Eastern Europe was liberated in late 1989, reporters still insisted the Soviet people preferred totalitarianism. In a February 9, 1990 column, USA Today founder Al Neuharth asserted "Marx and Lenin are still revered heroes. Never mind that communism as they conceived it didn't work. Most Soviets don't want to dump it, just improve on it." Two days later, Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes calmly pronounced: "Many Soviets viewing the current chaos and nationalist unrest under Gorbachev look back almost longingly to the era of brutal order under Stalin."
On May 24, 1990, CNN Moscow reporter Steve Hurst assured viewers: "Soviet people have become accustomed to security if nothing else. Life isn't good here, but people don't go hungry, homeless; a job has always been guaranteed. Now all socialist bets are off. A market economy looms, and the social contract that has held Soviet society together for 2 years no longer applies. The people seem baffled, disappointed, let down. Many don't like the prospect of their nation becoming just another capitalist machine."
In the last issue of 1990, Time reporter Bruce W. Nelan predicted: "There may be even more significant backers for a crackdown: the general public. After five years of waiting for perestroika to bear fruit, most Soviet citizens have lost faith. Appalled by the disintegrating economy and the sharp rise of violent crime, convinced that the country is falling into the hands of the black market mafia and fearful that the dissolution of the union will bring deeper chaos and poverty, they are ready to sacrifice -- or at least postpone -- the pursuit of lofty democratic goals so that order can be restored."
As in Eastern Europe, reporters wrongly believed that what the people were willing to say publicly represented their true views, as if they could speak freely without fear. But don't expect any apologies. These reporters are counting on the public's short memory.
