Five items today:1. The revelation of John Huang's frequent white house visits led Thursday's Good Morning America, but were not mentioned at all on Today or This Morning.2. Wednesday's NBC Nightly News did not include a word about Huang, but ABC and CBS did air stories on him. 3. ABC's Jeff Greenfield explores whether liberal bias may explain why scandals don't hurt Clinton. 4. Five days before the election CNN bumped Inside Politics back a half hour in order to show.... 5. The November 4 edition
of the MRC's Notable Quotables.
1) "DNC
Fundraiser Huang Visited White House Often: Log Shows Him There 78 Times
Since July '95" declared the front page story in the Thursday,
October 31 Washington Post. The Washington Times headline
read: "Huang Frequent White House Visitor: Also Got Unusual
Security Clearance Waiver." Tuesday morning
on Good Morning America Gibson had wondered why there wasn't more coverage
of questions about Democratic fundraising, suggesting that "if
Republicans had done this the press would be killing them." (See last
quote in Notable Quotables below.) The question remains for the other
networks, but Thursday morning Gibson's reporting addressed his concerns. But that was it. Williams said nothing about fundraising, instead reporting that "in Las Vegas he [Clinton] hit Dole on the tax cut plan. He reminded the audience about Dole's role, along with Gingrich, in shutting the government down during the winter." Next, NBC aired a story from Lisa Myers on what will happen if Democrats win Congress. She began by noting that Dick Gephardt says "Democrats are more moderate than two years ago." She reported that "long time liberals who claim to have signed on to the new centrist agenda" would get the committee chairmanships. But she compared that to reality, asking Congressman Charles Rangel: "Are you committed to balancing the budget in six years?" Rangel shot back: "No." On World News Tonight, Jackie Judd explored the latest on the John Huang front, noting the Republicans have asked if donors "were front men to donate money that came from illegal sources, and did large contributions influence foreign policy." On the CBS Evening News Thursday, Dan Rather stated: "President Clinton's strategy to deal with the pre-election attacks is keep moving, change the subject and have aides handle damage control. Case in point: Questions about John Huang, the Democratic fundraiser with easy access to heavy money interests in Asia. It now turns out Huang also had much easier access to the White House itself than was previously disclosed." Later in the show in a "Follow the Dollar" segment, a week after ABC did it, Linda Douglass examined John Huang's trail. Here's the end of
Greenfield's piece: Indeed, though the American Lawyer piece has been out for a week, as far as I know this is the first network mention. - Brent Baker 5) The November 4 edition of Notable Quotables, the MRC's bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media. Back issues can be read in the News section of the MRC web site: www.mediaresearch.org [1]. To subscribe by snail mail for $19, send an e-mail to MRC Circulation Manager Pete Reichel and he can send you a sample issue and order form: preichel@mediaresearch.org [2] November 4, 1996 (Vol. Nine; No. 23) Gun to Our Heads The Bad News is
Really Good, Good News Really Not "The government is out with its final official report on economic growth before the election. And it indicates a dramatic slowdown. In the third quarter of the year the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of just 2.2 percent, that is less than half the growth rate of the second quarter. It didn't take long for the presidential candidates to put their own spins on today's economic numbers." - Dan Rather, Oct. 30 CBS Evening News. vs. "Just one week before the election and the Bush administration says the U.S. economy has turned the corner and started expanding again, but there is some doubt about the accuracy of the figures, and even if they are accurate, they may be too little too late to help President Bush because it was also announced today that consumer confidence in the economy continues to fall." - Rather on the October 27, 1992 CBS Evening News. The GDP figure was later revised upward to 3.9 percent for the 3rd quarter. "The economy was slow, but steady going in the last quarter. Many economists were encouraged by that because it means inflation is under control and interest rates will stay low. But, Bob Dole has another vision." - Tom Brokaw, October 30 NBC Nightly News. vs. "The President [Bush] tonight finally has an economic number that he can brag about, but at the same time consumers were checking in today and they're yet to be persuaded that this economy is turning around." - Tom Brokaw, NBC Nightly News, October 27, 1992. Relaying Democratic Spin as
Fact Cheap Shot NBC: No Big Deal, Republicans
Just as Bad "In a year when you talk about, corporations who give $25,000 chunks of money, why are people particularly outraged when people with last names like Cabrera and people from India and Korea and Indonesia and China all of a sudden get, there just seems to be a lot of foreigner bashing as a subtext in some of the criticism." - NBC News reporter Gwen Ifill on PBS's Washington Week in Review, October 25. Cabrera is now serving a 19-year sentence for smuggling 6,000 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. "Beyond the tedium of the day to day campaigning, there's another much more alarming development this year - money. Huge amounts of money pouring into both parties, raising very serious questions about influence and conflict of interest." - Tom Brokaw opening the October 29 NBC Nightly News. "Of course Republicans, including Bob Dole and Jesse Helms, have also tapped into foreign fundraising. And none of these investigations will produce answers until months, or years, after election day." - Andrea Mitchell concluding her October 29 NBC Nightly News story. "On campaign finance, White House officials admit that both sides are dirty. The best defense: Republicans do it too." - Jim Miklaszewski, October 29 The News with Brian Williams on MSNBC. Dole Was Okay When He Raised Taxes "Dole knows better. Columnist Matthew Miller has even fancifully suggested that the Senator's 15 percent tax cut proposal is really part of a secret Dole plan to have radical tax-cutting decisively repudiated at the polls. That way, the death of his political career can give life to the principle of fiscal responsibility that he devoted so many years of that career to advancing. If only." - Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, Oct. 21. "One of the roles of a journalist is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. But after the debate ended, not one network news anchor or commentator noted the oddness of two presidential candidates hankering for tax handouts. Like Clinton and Dole, the anchors and television pundits earn more than 99 percent of all Americans. If those same TV commentators made say, $35,000 a year, they might have been more struck by Dole and Clinton's bantering." - U.S. News Senior Writer David Whitman, October 21. "By 1985, Reagan's economics had plunged the country into debt. Dole's all-out fight to lower the deficit became the defining battle of his career." - Actress Blair Brown narrating Frontline on PBS, October 8. "Just a year later, when he saw that supply-side economics had ballooned the deficit, Dole worked hard to raise government revenues by closing tax loopholes, and pushing through what was then the argest tax increase in history." - Ken Bode narrating "Bob Dole's Odyssey" in CNN's Democracy in America, Oct 20. Charles Should Be In Charge - L. Brent Bozell III,
Publisher; Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors - Brent Baker [3] |
