MediaWatch: September 1997
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: September 1997
- ABC Morning Anchor Leaves a Legacy of Cheerleading for Socialism and Feminism Joan
- NewsBites: Targeted Droughts
- Admiring Diana but Hitting Mother Teresa
- DNC Chairman Downplayed, National Security adviser Ignored by Nets
- Espy's 39 Indictments? Yawn What Sleaze Factor
- Caldwell's Gospel
- Defining Away Bias
- Janet Cooke Award: "Dumbing Down" the NEA Debate
Admiring Diana but Hitting Mother Teresa
Princess Diana’s death propelled non-stop, laudatory coverage for her life’s work, but ABC was not so reverential toward Mother Teresa when she passed away six days later.
The day Mother Teresa died, September 5, ABC’s World News Tonight led with Mother Teresa, but still spent more time on Diana. Peter Jennings closed the show by saying "it is not possible to compare" Diana and Mother Teresa, but then he did so. His analysis, however, relayed criticism of just one of the two:
"They were both so very famous and each would use their celebrity to advance the causes in which they believed. But whereas Diana has this week been seen by some as a unique example for her generation, Mother Teresa has always been absolutely clear that her work is God’s work. "It is not I who count," she once said, "I am but a small pencil in the hand of God." Mother Teresa was not immune from criticism for using her Nobel acceptance speech to speak out against abortion, for accepting honors from dictators and money without always questioning the sources."
During live coverage of the funeral of Princess Diana, the networks offered comments critical of the Royal family, but avoided airing anything derogatory about her life. ABC News followed another policy with Mother Teresa.
At about 2am ET, in the middle of the September 13 funeral mass, anchor Peter Jennings asked left-wing writer Christopher Hitchens: "Do you think that history is going to judge her more harshly than we have in the week of her death?"
Hitchens delivered a two-minute diatribe: "It will be recalled, for example, that when she got the Nobel Prize for peace, never having done anything for peace or claimed to have done anything for peace, that she said the greatest threat to peace in the world was abortion and she said that contraception was morally equivalent to the murder of abortion. It will be recalled as to how much time she spent with the richest of the rich and the sleaziest of the sleazy with people like the Duvalier family in Haiti whom she went to praise and from whom she received a medal and to whom she said they were lovers of the poor and not only that, even more blasphemously, that the poor loved them, the Duvaliers.
"It will be remembered that she took stolen money from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan and other Catholic fundamentalists who was giving her money that didn’t belong to him and she wouldn’t give it back when asked..."
Hitchens ended by complaining that she showed "a pseudo-humility that was actually very ostentatious, a kind of mock-modesty, and claimed an immunity from criticism which she’s had, in fact, for far too long."
Jennings then seemed sorry that he asked: "I appreciate hearing your point of view...it is a point of view which has been dealt with quite seriously in the Indian press and in the Western press as well in recent days. I was just going to make the point that I wasn’t sure that this was the right occasion for us to continue having a debate about Mother Teresa."
Just how genuine was Jennings’ regret? The Washington Post’s John Carmody reported September 16 that Jennings "stoutly defended the choice of Hitchens." Jennings told Carmody: "I thought it added immeasurably to our coverage. Some of the debate about Mother Teresa very much has focused on reported relationships with the rich."
