MediaWatch: September 21, 1998
Table of Contents:
NewsBites
Tiny Cup of Joe
Senator Joseph Lieberman’s blistering
remarks on the floor of the Senate September 3 may have marked
the beginning of the end of the Clinton presidency. But you
wouldn’t have known it watching TV news that night.
Lieberman, a thirty-year friend of Clinton’s, opened the floodgates for dissatisfied Democrats by castigating Clinton for his "immoral" behavior. Yet CBS Evening News gave only 20 seconds to Lieberman. NBC Nightly News gave it 19 seconds. Both broadcasts also skipped similar comments from Democratic Senators Bob Kerrey and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Only ABC’s World News Tonight and FNC’s Fox Report presented longer segments and with soundbites from Lieberman, Kerrey, and Moynihan.
By the following morning, Today seemed intent on making up for NBC’s earlier inattention, running several stories on Lieberman and his fellow disenchanted Democrats. ABC’s Good Morning America aired a full story on the three Senators. But CBS ran only a brief mention on This Morning.
Ducking Donna
White House reporters described the
President’s September 10 meeting with his Cabinet as an
encounter group of sorts. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said they "emerged
from an emotional one hour session, saying the President had
pleaded for their forgiveness. They say he was on the verge of
tears." Few picked up on the more intriguing story about Health and
Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala’s sharp exchange with
Clinton.
None of the network news shows that evening reported anything about Shalala. Later, on ABC’s Nightline, Ted Koppel mentioned: "Donna Shalala was, according to one participant in that White House meeting, much angrier. Speaking of the President she said, ‘He betrayed me.’ When the President promised to improve as a person, she told him to say it is one thing, to demonstrate it is another, to which the President replied, ‘If people had felt that way in 1960, Nixon would have been elected President.’"
The next morning, The Washington Post described Shalala’s "unexpectedly ‘harsh’ assessment" in a front-page story. But none of the network morning shows mentioned Shalala in their reports on the meeting. On that evening’s Nightly News, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell relayed the incident and a comment from Shalala saying, "his response to her was pointed, but not testy, when she told him leaders are judged by good behavior, not just good policy." That aired again the next morning on Today, but the other networks kept quiet.
Stafford Smears
Why just focus on Clinton when you can impugn past Presidents? On NBC’s September 11 Dateline
special, Jane Pauley teased: "Tonight some presidential tales
you may not have learned in school. Whispers of things amiss
with presidential mistresses are as old as America itself. Even
including the father of our country? The man who could not tell a
lie? Rob Stafford reports on the gossip and the skeletons hanging in
the White House closets."
Stafford began by claiming: "41 men have been President of the United States and 14 of them, fully a third, have been targets of gossip about sexual misconduct and extramarital affairs. For the most part, though, the public never heard the allegations until after the Presidents had died. What’s unique about President Clinton’s current problems is they are being debated while he’s still in office."
Stafford started by muddying George Washington: "There were stories that the secret love of his life was his best friend’s wife. Some say Thomas Jefferson had secret affairs with married women before he was President. And historians still debate whether he fathered children with one of his slaves."
Without a scintilla of evidence they broke their marriage vows, Stafford advanced rumors about more recent (GOP) Presidents: "Before he settled down into his political career and his marriage with Nancy, Ronald Reagan was quite a man about Hollywood. And stories even surfaced about George Bush and a longtime government employee." Stafford worried: "But the assault on President Clinton’s character has taken on an entirely new dimension which gives rise to concern over the very office that he occupies."
