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Bush's "Harsh Words"; Networks Wrong on Who Leaked; Ad-Packed CBS Hit Ratings Low >>>
Conventions 2000 issues of Media Reality Check and accompanying videos.
The conventions are over, but the MRC's analysis lives on accompanied by
RealPlayer video clips which demonstrate the bias. To read all the
articles in the 18 twice-daily issues and/or to view the issues as Adobe
Acrobat PDF files,
-- World News Tonight
anchor Jack Ford opened Friday's show: What were the "harsh words"? This was the toughest thing from Bush that reporter John Yang showed: "My opponent said his first legislative proposal would be for campaign funding reform. That's fine, although he's a little short on credibility on the issue." Apparently Al Gore's assertions about how Bush would return the country to the "faded days and rusted ways of the old guard" and "they're for the powerful, we're for the people," are not harsh. -- Michel Martin in the roundtable portion of Sunday's This Week: "George [Stephanopoulos] and I were working some early morning hours, as well as some late night hours, and every time we drove to the Staples Center, or even in Philadelphia, we'd drive by people living in cardboard boxes on the street. And it was a continuing reminder that there are uses for money that could be, I just found it disturbing to continually drive here and think to myself 'okay several hours from now I'm going to be eating some free shrimp paid for by somebody else' and I do think it's worth noting that the cost of these events are upwards of $20 million each. I'm not sure they need to be four days long." George Will countered with the obvious: "Well, no one's living in a cardboard box because the Democrats and Republicans are holding big conventions. Those are severable problems."
-- Front page, top right headline on August 5: "Gore Links Bush Bid to 'Old Guard.'" The subhead: "GOP Ticket Assailed as a Return to 'Rusted Ways'" Now compare that to the August 19 headline in the same top spot on the page: "Nominees Hit Trail as Race Narrows." The subhead: "Bush Criticizes Gore in Tenn.; Democrats Embark on River Tour" -- An August 5 story on page A12, labeled "analysis," carried the headline: "From GOP Ticket, a One-Sided View." The subhead: "Bush, Cheney Speeches Take Great Liberties" Compare that to an August 19 story not tagged as "analysis" which ran on page A8: "In L.A., Truth-Stretching Was Mostly in Check." Subhead: "Gore Fudged on Bush's Tax Cut Plan, But Clinton Made Party's Most Questionable Economic Claim"
Friday's Today, for instance, dedicated an entire 7am half hour interview segment to the grand jury news. Co-host David Bloom's first question to Clinton hack Paul Begala: "The White House spokesman Jake Stewart said yesterday, quote, 'The timing of this leak reeks to high heaven.' Do you agree?" Naturally, he did. But on Saturday, Today didn't mention the reality of who leaked until the 8am news at the top of the second hour. News reader Gina Gaston gave it 17 seconds. Today's 7am half hour segments looked at McCain's cancer, the submarine rescue, controversy over boys on a girls softball team and a CIA exhibit of spy stuff from TV shows and movies. Thursday night CBS's Dan Rather naturally delivered the most loaded language, outright accusing Bush-affiliated people. He referred to it as a "carefully orchestrated story leak" about what the "Republican-backed special prosecutor Robert Ray" is up to. In a Web posting, Rather slimily noted how Ray is overseen by a three-judge panel which "features two federal judges backed by the Jesse Helms wing of the Republican Party." More on Rather below, but first a quick review of NBC and ABC on Thursday night: -- NBC Nightly News led with the grand jury revelation and suspicions about Republican leakers, but Friday night anchor Brian Williams didn't get to the update until several stories into the show and then he only gave it 23 seconds. -- "The timing of
the leak stunned the Gore campaign," ABC's Linda Douglass relayed on
Thursday's World News Tonight. She then led into a supporting and
unchallenged soundbite: "Officials believe it is a dirty trick,
hatched by aides to President Clinton's nemesis, former Independent
Counsel Kenneth Starr." The next night ABC's Bob Woodruff acknowledged: "After all this finger pointing, it turns out this was not a Republican dirty trick after all. It was not even coming from the independent counsel's office. In fact, it came from a federal judge...." -- Now back to Dan
Rather. On the August 17 CBS Evening News, in a formulation he repeated
during CBS's prime time convention coverage, Rather intoned: In prime time and on the Evening News Gloria Borger then passed along the Gore spin with a warning about Ken Starr: "One top Gore adviser portrayed it as what he called a quote 'grand Republican strategy to tie Al Gore to President Clinton.'" She added: "The hope of the Gore campaign is that this leak will fire up their troops and backfire against the Republicans. How? By tying George W. Bush to Kenneth Starr." The CBS News Web site,
as of Sunday night, still featured Dan Rather's Thursday
"Notebook" essay titled "Low-Road Politics: Clinton Grand
Jury Leak Carefully Orchestrated." For all the talk by both parties and major candidates about keeping this presidential campaign on the high road, it seems low-road politics remain very much in fashion. Once again, we are reminded that with politicians, especially, you need to watch their feet as you listen to their words. All of which comes to mind in light of the leak revealing that Ken Starr's successor, Independent Counsel Robert Ray, has empaneled a new grand jury to look at evidence that President Clinton broke the law while giving testimony on his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in the Paula Jones lawsuit. You don't have to be a cynic to note that this has all the earmarks of a carefully orchestrated, politically motivated leak. The Republican-backed Robert Ray is sponsored by a three-judge panel that must periodically decide whether Ray's investigation should continue. This panel features two federal judges backed by the Jesse Helms wing of the Republican Party. Any reporter who's spent time on the police beat learns to look for motive. So you ask yourself -- what group has the motive to see that such a leak would occur at such a time, hours before Gore is set to accept his party's nomination in the most important speech of his political life? None of which is to say that George W. Bush is behind the leak, directly or indirectly. We certainly have no information that he is. But candidates themselves hardly ever are, as their hands must remain clean and their deniability plausible. (You may want to review some of the more unpleasant tactics used by Bush backers against John McCain in South Carolina earlier this year.).... END excerpt To read all of Rather's
rant, go to: Friday night on the CBS
Evening News Jim Stewart insisted: Make that the White House, Democratic Party officials AND the news media "were in agreement that it had to be a Republican that leaked the news..."
An except from the Drudge item: They're calling it Black Night at Black Rock after A.C. NIELSEN overnight ratings show CBS NEWS finishing dead last in viewership for coverage of Thursday's Democratic National Convention finale. CBS sank to a 3.1 rating/5 share for Thursday night coverage, trailing ABC 7.3/12; NBC 5.5/9. The numbers stunned CBS executives in New York, several of which thought there must have been a technical glitch at NIELSEN, according to insiders. CBS viewership levels have collapsed more than 1000% from conventions held in the 1980s. The results were said to be especially disappointing for CBS NEWS legend Dan Rather, who has quietly told associates how this week marked his last convention as anchor.... At one point during CBS's primetime coverage [from 9 pm to 9:30 ET] the network only managed to snag 4% of households using televisions! The embarrassment of trailing nearly all over-the-air network broadcasts -- CBS slightly edged WB -- has led for calls inside of the network for a change in direction at CBS NEWS.... "[CBS NEWS President] Andrew Heyward is the Dog House," said the executive. "But I really think it would be quite unfair to put the full blame on him. We had a very weak lead in [BIG BROTHER], and there is a feeling that we have just become too complacent, over all, in our political coverage. And our stable of talent is not really where it should be." END Excerpt The Drudge Report address: http://www.drudgereport.com [6] I'll suggest a better reason: crappy coverage. From 9 to 9:30pm ET Thursday CBS provided no more actual convention coverage than did NBC -- and NBC was showing a Will & Grace repeat. While ABC delivered a series of live interviews with people on the floor and interviews in the booth with major Democrats, CBS viewers never got a flavor of the event and so could not have been drawn in. Instead, CBS offered non-stop commercials interrupted by boring pre-taped pieces: -- 9pm ET: Rather welcomed viewers; Bob Schieffer previewed Gore speech; Ed Bradley summarized Gore's challenges of overcoming a negative image and showing there are differences on issues like Medicaid; Rather/Borger on the "Republican" leak. -- 9:05: ad break -- 9:07:45 Ed Bradley on the Democratic "money trail" and how $350,000 bought access to suites. Bradley provided CBS's one and only floor interview of the night, asking Senator Russ Feingold about how he's called fundraising "legalized bribery." -- 9:10:20 ad break -- 9:15 Re-run of taped Phil Jones story, which already aired on the Evening News, about corporate donors paying for parties and how the Democratic Party's second biggest donor didn't come to LA. -- 9:17:45 ad break -- 9:22: Pointless taped piece by Andy Rooney on "what is a Democrat?" Featured a series of soundbites from delegates. -- 9:25:30 ad break -- 9:27 Taped piece by Sandra Hughes on protests, police response -- 9:30: ad break -- 9:34: brief shot of Tipper Gore dancing to drums; John Roberts in booth with Rather talking about Tipper -- 9:36 Tipper speaking from podium -- 9:38:30 Cut off Tipper to run taped profile of Al Gore by John Roberts -- 9:47 Roberts ends; Gore soon walks across floor to give address. Maybe a few more would have stuck with CBS, despite Dan Rather's false cheap shot about who leaked news about the "Republican-backed special prosecutor," if the network hadn't decided to cram most of its usual 9 to 11pm ad inventory into the first 34 minutes of its broadcast. -- Brent Baker [7]
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Quote
of the Weekend, or at least the best one-line quip. Syndicated columnist
Jack Germond on Inside Washington talking about the lengthy kiss Thursday
night between Al and Tipper Gore: 
Bush
not Gore "harsh" according to ABC and an ABC reporter was most
disturbed about all the money spent on the conventions when she had to
drive by the homeless on her way to downing free shrimp.
A
tale of two Saturdays. The Saturday after the GOP convention the
Washington Post delivered a negative front page story about the Republican
ticket's first day of post-convention campaigning and inside ran a piece
detailing all the supposed errors made in the speeches by the two
nominees. But two weeks later, on the Saturday after the Democratic
convention, the Post offered neutral and approving stories on those two
subjects.
CBS
News hit an "all-time low in convention ratings" on Thursday
night the Drudge Report noted in a Friday posting brought to my attention
by MRC Communications Director Liz Swasey. Maybe it has something to do
with the fact that CBS didn't show any of the actual convention in its
first 45 minutes and devoted 12 minutes of the 9pm ET half hour (and 16 of
the first 34 minutes) to commercials.