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CBS Stressed Bush's Unfitness; Landlord Gore Finally Mentioned; "Gasbag" Limbaugh; Philbin for Bush -- Extra Edition [1]
World News Tonight viewers did not hear about the ABC News/Washington Post poll until about half way through Tuesday's newscast, but in contrast to CBS, ABC's Peter Jennings listed areas where Bush is preferred, pointing out how "the public trusts Mr. Bush to hold down the size of government," prefers Bush "for holding down taxes" and believes Bush is the best to "give the country a fresh start." Here's how the ABC, CBS and NBC evening shows handled the latest presidential poll numbers on Tuesday night, October 10: -- ABC's World News Tonight led with the ongoing
violence in Israel. Peter Jennings compared Bush's standing in the ABC
News/Washington Post poll to where he was a week earlier before the first
debate: An on screen graphic showed Gore ahead with women 52 to 43 percent and Bush favored by men 54 to 37 percent. Jennings continued: "Finally this week, asked which candidate can best give the country a fresh start: 54 percent of registered voters say Mr. Bush, 33 percent say Mr. Gore." -- CBS Evening News began with, as Dan Rather dubbed it, the "Firestone-Ford fiasco." He later cited the latest CBS News poll, apparently
sans the New York Times, which put Gore ahead 43 to 42 percent. Rather
stressed areas where Gore had a more commanding lead: -- NBC Nightly News led with the campaign. Tom Brokaw announced: "One month from today, American voters will be at the polls choosing the next President of the United States. And with four weeks to go this election could not be any closer or more difficult to predict. The advantage, which is always slight, is now shifting back and forth week to week. According to the MSNBC/Reuters daily tracking poll, Al Gore was up six points a week ago, a lead that gradually narrowed to one point yesterday and vanished today as George Bush overtook him. Bush up one point 43 to 42 percent, which is of course inside the poll's margin of error."
NBC's story, as well as a brief ABC item, raised the subject of Gore's "exaggerated" claims and "credibility concerns," a topic ignored by the CBS Evening News which followed up its poll numbers with a piece on what Dan Rather described as "the unlimited shoveling of cash into political parties by the special interests is a growing concern." Anthony Mason highlighted how major corporations are "so tired" of demands for donations for politicians "that major corporations including Time Warner, General Motors, and Honeywell have sworn off giving soft money. An association of executives called the Committee for Economic Development has called for radical campaign finance reform, signing up nearly 300 corporate leaders." After running down ABC's poll numbers listed in item #1 above, World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings noted that Bush spent the day in Tennessee where "he accused the Vice President of being the candidate of Washington and claimed that Mr. Gore would spend away the nation's surplus." As for Gore, Jennings briefly reported that he
"was campaigning in Florida and ABC's Terry Moran asked him today
if he was sensitive about the charges that he exaggerated or embellished
during last week's debate." The NBC Nightly News actually aired not one but two campaign stories after Tom Brokaw led the show with the poll numbers. Checking in from the Bush campaign, David Gregory
asserted, as transcribed by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: "Tonight there
is an exuding confidence coming from this Bush campaign, somewhat
unexpected, but renewed today with that slight edge you referred to...a
reflection, aides assert, of the fact that there is growing credibility
concerns for the Vice President, concerns and problems that Bush will
eagerly try to exploit during tomorrow night's debate and beyond." Up next, Claire Shipman looked at how Gore is targeting Florida: "Experts agree that Bush can't win without Florida, and it was supposed to be easy for him. But now the polls are extremely tight, and the Gore campaign is on the offensive predicting an upset victory here. Al Gore in Bradenton, Florida today, confident he'll be only the second Democrat in two decades to win the state....He and running mate Joe Lieberman have been to Florida ten times since labor day, erasing a fifteen-point Bush lead. And today a substantial new ad buy by the DNC, $850,000, attacking Bush on issues like environmental pollution." After a clip of the ad which asked, "imagine
Bush's Texas record in Florida's everglades," Shipman noted that
Gore now leads in the Sunshine State 46 to 43 percent. She observed:
"For a long time, Florida has leaned conservative, but it can be
unpredictable. George Bush's father barely won here in 1992, and Bill
Clinton took the state in 1996. Still Bush's brother is a popular
governor here." Back to reporter David Gregory's reference to Bush's "taunting" of Gore over his rental property. That's the first broadcast network evening show mention of Gore's landlord performance, though Gregory did not really explain Bush's point about the complaints by Gore's former tenant. In early June when the story first broke, while FNC ran full stories, ABC and CBS never mentioned it. CNN's Inside Politics ran a brief item with video and NBC's Today gave it a few seconds without video. To remind yourself of the issue, check out two past CyberAlert items with accompanying RealPlayer clips of FNC stories: -- Monday night, June 5, FNC's Special Report with
Brit Hume and Fox Report both carried
full stories by David Shuster on the condition of the Al Gore-owned rental
home occupied by a family and Gore's promise to resolve the situation
without evicting them: -- The Mad Mayberrys. Only the Fox News Channel
bothered to update viewers on how the Mayberrys, the family renting the
run-down house from Al Gore, gave up on him and moved to Ohio after he
failed to fulfill his promised repairs:
Despite Gore's assurance his attitude applies to
his whole campaign, Brit Hume observed on Special Report with Brit Hume
Tuesday night that the anti-Bush blast is still featured on Gore's Web
site. Indeed, the Web site still has up the October 8 "Statement By
Mark Fabiani, Gore/Lieberman Deputy Campaign Manager for
Communications." It begins: Check out the entire statement at: Picking up on an old Gore claim uncovered last week
by the DrudgeReport, Hume later relayed: The latest column by MRC President L. Brent Bozell examines how the Gore "exaggerations" have become news despite the best efforts of many in the media as the MRC's Tim Graham dug back to old examples and found the media hardly jumped on his past bloopers. Here's an excerpt: The furor that ultimately followed does not prove that the media love to pick on Al Gore, as hardcore Gore partisans in the press like Time's Margaret Carlson suggest. It proved something quite different -- that liberal media spin does not always win the day, especially when millions of Americans have seen the politician's spiel for themselves. Instead, the furor and sudden plunge in Gore's polls proved that alternative media outlets, from talk radio to the Internet to newspaper columnists to Republican researchers, have a power all their own to overcome the spin the liberal media prefer. Nearly every Gore gaffe that's become part of the campaign talking points was originally ignored by the major media, which attempted to strangle the mistakes and embarrassments in the crib. Now that they're resonating, liberals are huffing and puffing about how Gore's gaffes aren't really gaffes. He didn't really say he "invented the Internet," they complain, he "took the initiative in creating it." The real point here isn't the complete lack of distinction between "inventing" and "creating" the Internet. It's that Gore said this on March 9, 1999, to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, and Blitzer didn't even blink. He didn't follow up. His eyebrows didn't even move. He just asked another question. The statement went completely unreported on television for ten days. END Excerpt To read the entire Creators syndicate column, go to:
The next night on Crossfire, broadcast from The
George Washington University, MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth noticed an
audience member asked about the question. Shaw defended his approach:
I thought liberals deplored mean-spirited personal attacks? As for the taped Limbaugh interview, it aired in two parts over the October 10 and 11 Today shows. Katie Couric introduced part one on October 10, as transcribed by MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens, by stressing Limbaugh's conservatism: "On Close Up this morning, Rush Limbaugh. He's the most popular radio talk show host in America. One of the most influential political voices in this country. As the race for the White House tightens his staunchly conservative views carry great currency with the right. But Limbaugh rarely sits down for TV cameras. So when he sat down recently with NBC's Lisa Myers he wasted no time in expressing his opinions." Myers got right to Gore's lies in the first debate, but soon challenged Limbaugh: "But how can you say the, the lie is deliberate? I mean if it's so easy to check why would anyone deliberately lie about it? You're gonna get caught!" She followed up: "Rush, are you saying that in your view Al Gore is an even bigger liar than Bill Clinton, that's a really harsh statement?" She later asked him to defend his assessment that the private sector experience of Bush and Cheney make them better qualified to be President: "You've said that Al Gore is not qualified to be President. He's been in public office for 24 years. House, Senate, Vice President. You may disagree with his views, but experience Al Gore does have." She followed up: "But George Bush only has six years as Governor of Texas. The only business in which, at which he was a success was running a baseball team. What makes him more qualified than Al Gore?" Myers later let Limbaugh expound on how he thinks Clinton made soccer moms think he cared more about them than do their husbands, but that Gore reminds women of their first husband whom they divorced. +++ See how a major media outlet treated Limbaugh. Wednesday morning MRC Webmaster Andy Szul will post a RealPlayer clip of a portion of the Today interview. Go to: http://www.mrc.org [7]
Clayson began the October 10 interview, as observed by MRC analyst Brian Boyd, by asking: "You advised your father on the first debate, how are you going to advise him for this one?" She next inquired: "After last week's debate critics accused your father of exaggerating the facts. They also criticized those long sighs when George W. Bush said something that he didn't like. Are we going to see a different Al Gore tonight?" Clayson wondered: "The Democratic National Committee is coming out with a series of new ads that attack Governor George W. Bush, his record in Texas. Let's listen to a couple....Karenna, as an advisor to your father did you support him going negative?" Clayson then arrived at her unusual line of inquiry: "Social Security, as you know, is a big issue in this campaign and there are a lot of young people not unlike yourself who say that they want to take some of their own money and invest it themselves, instead of putting it in a so-called lockbox, like your father recommends. What are your feelings about that? Do you not want to have that kind of option yourself?" But Clayson ended with a softball: "I know you've been out on the campaign trial night and day, Karenna, how are you juggling being a new mom, and a wife, helping your dad these days?"
On Tuesday's Late Show, David Letterman asked
Regis Philbin, host of ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and his
own syndicated morning interview show on which Bush recently appeared: Audience reaction inside New York City's Ed Sullivan Theater: Absolute silence. Maybe it was stunned silence. -- Brent Baker [8]
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George
Bush has moved ahead of Al Gore in the ABC and NBC polls cited Tuesday
night, but only NBC led with the development. The CBS poll had Bush behind
by one point and anchor Dan Rather stressed his bafflement with how Bush
could be faring so well given "that on the question of dealing wisely
with an international crisis, Gore is a full ten points up on Bush.
Gore's lead is even bigger on the question of being prepared for the
presidency."
Tuesday
night, of the broadcast networks, only NBC aired a full story on the
presidential campaign, thus uniquely noting how Jimmy Carter's Attorney
General endorsed George W. Bush as NBC also relayed Bush's
"taunting" of Gore over his tenant problems, a subject ignored
for over three months by NBC Nightly News. NBC also showed viewers an
edited clip of Bush's "meandering and labored attempted to give an
undecided voter a reason to support him."
FNC's
Jim Angle asked Al Gore if he agreed with a statement by one of his top
campaign aides that George Bush is incapable of making policy
pronouncements without "bumbling and babbling." Gore took the
high road, insisting: "I wouldn't say it that way."
Friday
night on Crossfire CNN's Bernard Shaw defended the bizarre racial
profiling question he posed as moderator of the VP debate when he asked
both candidates to pretend they were black. During the October 5 debate
Shaw proposed:
An
actual devil's advocate question to a liberal from CBS's Jane
Clayson. Interviewing Karenna Gore-Schiff Tuesday morning, the Early
Show co-host tossed the usual softballs, but she also threw a curve
ball, asking Gore-Schiff if she wouldn't want for herself the Social
Security private investment option proposed by Bush.
One
celebrity for Bush. Virtually all of Hollywood may back Al Gore, but
to disapproval from a New York audience a New York-based celebrity on
Tuesday night affirmed his preference for Bush.