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2-for-1, Hillary & Bill?; Reno Ignored; Geraldo's Viagra; Bill Maher's Liberal Diatribe 8) How is it best to assess ABC's "Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus"? >>> Now online, the June 26
edition of Notable Quotables, the MRC's bi-weekly compilation of the
latest outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media.
Amongst the quote headings: "This Summer, The End Is Near!";
"Clarence Thomas = Aunt Jemima"; "Republican Fairy Tales
and Lies"; "More Federal Funding for Tubas"; "Making
Excuses for Albert"; "Making Trouble for George W." and
"We Don't Have a Vacation Czar?"
Bryant Gumbel hosted
CBS's The Early Show on June 28 from WTVH-TV, the CBS affiliate in
Syracuse, where he moderated a town meeting with Hillary Clinton for most
of the first hour. About 45 minutes into the show he raised the issue of
independent counsel Robert Ray's report on how Hillary did have a
"role" in the travel office firings. After she dismissed the
relevance of the report and claimed it matched what she's said all
along, New York resident Gumbel hoped he'd get a two-for-one deal if she
wins, just like in 1992: She answered that "he has a lot of expertise on important issues" and will try to help. Gumbel followed-up: "So he will be a kitchen adviser?" Gumbel went onto press her about whether she wants to run for President. She insisted she does not and will not. +++ Watch a clip of this exchange. Later today the MRC's Kristina Sewell and Andy Szul will post a RealPlayer clip. Go to: http://www.mrc.org [7] The wackiest question of
the morning came from an audience member a few minutes earlier: That question must have made fellow central New Yorkers proud. And she didn't even get the rules correct as all left on the island get a vote. Personally, I'd vote Lindsay off, but Hillary called it a "very interesting question," arguing she brings more experience to the table. That question was a bit unusual, but not much wackier than Tom Brokaw's assessment of Hillary's campaigning skills. On Tuesday night's Late Show he acknowledged to David Letterman that many refuse to consider her, including many Democrats, as "she doesn't get over 50 percent" in the polls, but he then insisted: "Now she's a very skilled campaigner. She's demonstrated that already." When and how?
On Tuesday afternoon Attorney General Janet Reno appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was grilled about intransigence on appointing anyone for the first time since the disclosure of Conrad's position. But not a syllable about Reno's testimony ran on ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News or MSNBC's The News with Brian Williams. FNC's Fox Report, in contrast, led with it at 7pm ET and CNN's 8pm ET The World Today ran a full story, MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth observed. On Special Report with Brit Hume FNC's David Shuster revealed: "This week Reno is scheduled to meet with prosecutor Robert Conrad, the fourth administration official to recommend an outside investigator take charge of the fundraising probe. According to investigation sources, Reno cut off weekly meetings with Conrad in April after he interviewed Gore and concluded that the Vice President had been misleading." So what did broadcast network and MSNBC viewers learn about instead? ABC led with an AAA report on how 8,000 car crashes a day are caused by distracted drivers. Anchor Kevin Newman warned: "ABC's Tom Foreman tells us about the growing danger of Americans driven to distraction." CBS and NBC began with a report from the Department of Transportation's Inspector General about how airline service has not improved six months after the airlines promised to correct their practices. All four networks carried full stories on a FEMA report which claimed coastal erosion will destroy one of four homes, 90,000 of them, over the next 60 years. ABC's Ron Claiborne tied the problem to a liberal cause: "Some erosion is natural, the result of the surf pounding the shore day after day. But the pace of erosion has accelerated, primary from rising sea levels due to global warming." MSNBC viewers were treated to an excerpt from Dateline about the "claymation" production of the movie Chicken Run and NBC Nightly News watchers got a Dateline excerpt about the dangers of driving while sleep-deprived. A promo at the end of a NBC Nightly News ad break promised: "Gore versus Bush. Decision 2000. Only on NBC." The next story: a look at a new immunization for chicken pox.
In a June 26 World News Tonight story Judd explained a Supreme Court decision: "They are the most well-known and the most controversial words in law enforcement today. Critics have long argued that the guilty have gone free because they were not read their Miranda rights before confessing to a crime. But the Supreme Court, despite its conservative leanings, voted seven to two to uphold Miranda. Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote, 'Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture.'" So far, so good. But in concluding her story, Judd asserted: "The majority did concede that sometimes Miranda does lead to the guilty going unpunished, but they refused to undo what an earlier court established as a constitutional right against self-incrimination." That "earlier court" would be the authors of the Bill of Rights.
As transcribed by MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens, Sanders announced: "Ciancio has taken a low profile while his cousin Donato Dalrymple enjoyed taking credit for the rescue at sea last November. In fact that was Donato's first fishing trip ever. The two spotted an inner tube in the water. Something was inside." Intermixed with comments
from Ciancio, Sanders told his story on the June 27 piece: "After the
rescue Sam ignored most reporters while his cousin, Donato, became known
as the fisherman, the boy's savior....But now this New York native, owner
of a Florida roofing company, is setting the record straight. This after
an ugly falling out with his cousin, Donato." Sanders added: "Today Sam says he is secure in his belief that what's best for Elian is to be with his father Juan Miguel even if that means growing up in a communist country. Sam is a father of two children himself, 17 year old Brandon and his youngest Juliana, four years old. Adopted from Romania." Sanders concluded: "This morning a simple question from the real fisherman who wonders if Elian heads home to Cuba as early as Wednesday what will be the lasting impact of this fight that began 216 days ago?"
Introducing a June 26 Rivera Live interview with Jesse Jackson, Rivera opined: "The late Gary Graham, now being called the new martyr of the anti-death penalty movement. As you know he was executed by the state of Texas last Thursday. Nearly two decades after he was convicted of fatally shooting a man in a Houston parking lot. The two eyewitnesses that never testified at his trial insist he was not the shooter. No physical evidence ever tied him to the crime. The gun found in his possession was not the murder weapon. His legal representation was a bad joke. And to his final moments Graham consistently swore that he was innocent. As he took his last breath Gary Graham was looking at my next guest, Reverend Jesse Jackson, who has bitterly described what he witnessed as state organized murder while calling for something I endorse with every bone in my body, a national moratorium on the death penalty." At one point, in following up a question about what Graham told Jackson, Rivera queried: "No, not that day, I want to know the day he was being murdered, killed, sorry." And MRC news analyst
Geoffrey Dickens caught this odd analogy espoused as Rivera wrapped up the
show: What's "insane" is for NBC News to use Rivera as a reporter, as they did last week on Today when Rivera checked in from the execution site.
You can view the June 27
Media Reality Check as fax recipients see it by clicking on the Adobe
Acrobat PDF version posted by MRC Webmaster Andy Szul: For the HTML version,
and a link to Adobe's free download page for the Acrobat reader, go to: Otherwise, here's the text of the Media Reality Check: For most people, higher gas prices are a nuisance. For TV reporters they're an opportunity for hyperbole and finger-pointing. "All across America these days, a fill-up can seem more like a stickup," announced CBS's Cynthia Bowers on the June 7 Evening News. "Drivers in Chicago feel their pockets are really being picked." "Helping fuel the rise, new EPA guidelines went into effect last week requiring 16 cities with poor air quality to sell cleaner-burning reformulated gas," reported Bowers. "It costs more to refine and, with supplies tight, prices are soaring." Three weeks ago, that was also common knowledge in Chicago and Milwaukee, where it cost more than $2.00 a gallon for a government-mandated cocktail of gasoline and ethanol not sold anywhere else in the U.S. But rather than face the music, the Clinton administration began promoting the idea that the higher prices were really an oil company scheme to rip-off consumers. "These prices that are currently out at the pumps are not acceptable, and that is why we want to meet with the oil industry to determine what are the causes of this," the EPA's Robert Perciasepe told CBS's Bowers on June 9. While oil industry officials continued to protest their innocence in soundbites, reporters stopped suggesting that regulations were to blame and started looking for government to find the real culprits. "The EPA suspects price gouging," ABC's Dean Reynolds warned on June 12, "and agents were out looking for it today." In the same vein, "The White House has now put the oil industry on notice," stated CBS's Bob Orr on June 12. "If any evidence of price gouging surfaces, regulators will come down hard." From June 1 to June 12, four stories on the ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC evening newscasts spent more than 30 seconds discussing the EPA's rules as a probable cause. From June 13 to June 26, only two such stories appeared, compared with 16 that promoted the idea that "price gouging" was at fault. The assumption that business, not government, was to blame for motorists' misery took hold at all of the networks. "Who are the gougers?" wondered ABC's Bob Jamieson on June 21. "Gasoline station operators say they are not. The oil companies say they are not. It is now up to the Federal Trade Commission to decide who's telling the truth." Who needs an investigation? According to Jerry Taylor, director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute, "We know exactly who's responsible for these prices." "[The Clean Air Act] forces refiners to dedicate their facilities to distilling one kind of gasoline or the other. It's very costly and time consuming to retool refineries...so it's extremely difficult for refiners to react quickly to shortages. Today, gasoline supplies in the Midwest are about 25 percent below normal, and refineries are having a hard time making up the difference," Taylor wrote on June 22. "Hence, the price increase." That's what Bowers and most other journalists were reporting before the EPA offered up its unproven "price gouging" theory. Should reporters have been so accepting of the Clinton administration's version of events? "Al Gore's best shot at being elected President is to have people think the economy is in wonderful shape," argued ABC's Cokie Roberts on June 20. "One Democratic Congressman said to me today, 'This administration has got to turn over every stone to fix this.'" Maybe someone should ask whether the investigation of Big Oil is really a political fix-it job. END Reprint
The aforementioned Rich Noyes alerted me to a Reuters story dispatch about the June 23 event in Los Angeles and I could not find any other stories anywhere about Maher's liberal diatribe. Here's an excerpt from the June 24 Reuters report by Steve Holland, which began with a questionable premise: Democratic fundraisers featuring President Clinton are typically polite affairs with plenty of criticism of Republicans but not usually below-the-belt attacks. Then along came comedian Bill Maher of ABC's Politically Incorrect show. Republican George W. Bush, Maher said on Friday night, was "drunk until he was 40." "This guy is not that bright. I asked him recently, 'Have you ever had an SUV?' And he said, "No, but it's a good idea to get tested.'" All this was by way of raising $75,000 for the Democratic National Committee in one of 10 money-raising events Clinton is attending in three days to bring in about $4 million.... Maher usually dishes it out to all sides in his comedy routine, but on Friday night, as the headline act for a DNC reception, he gave high praise to Clinton and blasted Republicans for pursuing various scandals against him and his wife, Hillary. "History will show itself to be grateful for the effort and the fortitude and, I hope, mindful of the sacrifices that he has made," Maher said. "I know politics is rough for everybody's who's in it, but this man has taken more crap and been more gracious about it than anybody who has nuclear weapons should ever be asked to," he said. "I mean, we know they're jealous of him. I like him and I'm jealous of him. But you know, you can imagine what it's like for some pencil-necked freshman Republican geek from East Nowhere?" Maher asked. Clinton, he said, "had the strength to fight the battles that this country needed to have fought" with one hand while he "beat off the harpies who hated him succeeding with the other." The crowd roared its approval.... END Excerpt
Or, should we accept ABC's premise that it is proper to scrutinize the tenets of religious faith and treat the program just like any other news show and thus analyze it against whether it delivered a fair and balanced presentation of the range of views espoused by credible Biblical and historical scholars. The more reactions to it I see from those familiar with Biblical scholarship, the more I'm coming to believe it also failed on the latter standard. -- Brent Baker [10]
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Bryant
Gumbel asked Hillary Clinton on Wednesday morning "if we vote for
you" do we "get two for the price of one" and benefit from
Bill Clinton's "expertise"?
Last
week pundits speculated about the impact on Al Gore's campaign of the
revelation that another chief of the Justice Department's public
integrity section, Robert Conrad, had concluded a special investigator
should be appointed to probe Gore's 1996 fundraising activities. But how
much impact can it have if the networks don't show up to the story?
Not
until the late 1960s did Americans earn "a constitutional right
against self-incrimination," ABC's Jackie Judd insisted in
confusing the Fifth Amendment right of a person to not "be compelled
in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," with the
Miranda decision mandating that the police inform those they arrest of
that right.
The
morning before what will likely be Elian's last morning in the United
States, NBC's Today featured a story recounting fisherman Sam
Ciancio's attacks on his cousin and fellow rescuer of Elian from the
ocean, Donato Darymple. NBC reporter Kerry Sanders asserted: "Sam
Ciancio says it was more than a love of publicity that caused his cousin
to take up the fight to keep Elian in the United States. Ciancio claims
influential Cuban Americans promised there would be rewards for
anti-Castro comments."
Monday
night Geraldo Rivera called for a national moratorium on the death
penalty, slipped and referred to Gary Graham's execution as a
"murder" and wrapped up his CNBC show by comparing the wish to
impose the death penalty to a middle-aged man's desire to use Viagra.
From
June 13 to June 26, after the White House began blaming "price
gouging" for high gas prices in the Midwest, only two network evening
stories on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC focused on EPA-mandated reformulated fuel
as the cause, "compared with 16 that promoted the idea that 'price
gouging' was at fault," Rich Noyes, Director of the MRC's Free
Market Project, determined. His analysis of network coverage appears in
the latest Media Reality Check fax report, "Changing the Subject to
Big Oil-Bashing: Networks Turned on Oil Companies After EPA Declared
Itself Innocent on Midwestern Gas Price Hikes."
At
a Democratic fundraiser last weekend featuring Bill Clinton, Bill Maher,
host of ABC's very politically correct Politically Incorrect, uttered
what Reuters described as "below the belt attacks" on George W.
Bush and claimed Clinton's opponents are "jealous" of him and
he "'had the strength to fight the battles that this country needed
to have fought' with one hand while he 'beat off the harpies who hated
him succeeding with the other.'"
Final
note: I haven't forgotten about Monday's two-hour ABC special, Peter
Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus. I'll try to put something
together on it for the next CyberAlert as I try to decide how to approach
it, especially since we'd like to encourage the networks to spend more
time on religious issues. Is it best to argue that network news should not
undermine religious faith by holding it to modern scientific standards and
thus declaring as false gospel stories about Jesus's life that are at
the foundation of Christian faith, in which case the show was out of
bounds.