Why CBS This Morning Is In Third Place
Co-Host Harry Smith: "This mornings Big Story: the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and the Republican majority will take on Medicare this week, hoping to cut the growth in spending for the program, but their proposed cuts are so deep they have the President threatening a veto....The question is, will the cuts or the reduction in spending that you all are talking about, can you do it all with increasing the premiums?"
Newt Gingrich: "Let me start and say to you, I dont know how to win this discussion, OK? No, no, no, its important, its very important, there are no cuts."
Smith: "All right, who said cuts?"
Gingrich: "You just said cuts."
Smith: "Reducing the level of spending."
- Exchange on CBS This Morning, September 19.
Why Face the Nation Is In Third Place
Host Bob Schieffer: "Pat Robertson, who is really the head of that group, said his plan is for the Christian Coalition to take over the Republican Party in all 50 states. How does that sit with you?"
Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.): "What really concerns me is the converse of that, is that how little religious activity you have going on in the Democratic Party. That is something we should be worried about."
Schieffer: "Oh, come now."
Lott: "We welcome people of all faiths in the Republican Party."
Schieffer: "I simply must challenge you. Youre not saying that the Democrats are not religious?"
Lott: "No, but Im saying they seem to have a religious intolerance. They seem to be saying that people of religious faith should not be involved. Thats what upsets me."
Schieffer: "I dont believe Ive ever heard that. Im not here to be a spokesman for the Democratic Party by any stretch of the imagination, I mean, they wouldnt have me, but I dont believe Ive heard anyone say that."
- Exchange on CBSs Face the Nation, September 10.
Another Intolerant Convention
"Do you think the fact that the Christian Coalition did not invite Arlen Specter to its convention, in fact, supports his assertion, allegation, that there is intolerance practiced by the religious right?"
- CNN anchor Gene Randall to Lamar Alexander on CNNs Inside
Politics, September 8.
"The Christian Coalition is holding its big political confab this weekend, has invited all GOP presidential candidates except one, Arlen Specter, the lone non-Christian candidate. Senator Specter, to be sure, has little support in this group, which he has assailed. But as the Simon Wiesenthal Center noted the other
day, to exclude only one aspirant could create the impression it has something do with his faith."
- Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt on CNNs
Capital Gang, September 9.
Extreme Reaction to Losing Moderates
"Packwoods forced resignation, however, leaves the institution he loves in shambles, with its approval ratings falling, many of its centrists deserting, and a showdown over the budget and taxes looming."
- U.S. News & World Report Atlanta correspondent Jerelyn Eddings, September 18.
"Sen. Bob Packwoods resignation is only one of the changes that could produce a sharply different Senate next year: more conservative, more partisan, and even more polarized....changes on the Republican side of the aisle could be just as critical, leaving fewer GOP moderates, more hard-line conservatives and a Senate where compromises are far harder to reach."
- U.S. News & World Report Senior Writer Steven Roberts, next page.
Bob Packwood: Losing a Gifted Champion of Women
"We begin tonight with U.S. Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, a man who championed womens rights on the floor of the Senate and sexually terrorized members of his own staff."
- NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, September 7.
"The irony of this is that Packwood, for all his human failings, was just coming into his own as a truly gifted fiscal legislator whose issues, favorite issues, were coming up, where he had a middle-of-the-road position that was ideally gated to make compromises and achieve lasting results."
- Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas, September 9 Inside
Washington.
"No one says that Bob Packwood wasnt good, quote, on the issues...as far as many womens groups are concerned, he was on the right side of the abortion issue, the correct side of the abortion issue, and other womens issues."
- CNNs Candy Crowley on Crossfire, September 7.
Powell: Last Chance to Block Far Right Extremists
Bryant Gumbel: "But could a moderate Republican survive in a system that favors those who flirt with the far right?"
Tim Russert, Washington Bureau Chief: "Ah! Good question!"
- Exchange on Today September 18.
"Let a representative of the mushy middle speak....An awful lot of people are turned off by these parties because they have become so ideologically extreme. And a mushy middle person does have appeal."
- National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg, September 16 Inside
Washington.
Oppressive Men Still Ruining America
"Americas poorest women share the problems of Third World women - hunger, unsafe water and unsound housing, medical care they cant get or cant afford. Despite Americas advanced medical
technology, the rate of infant mortality in the United States is twice the rate in Japan. Unlike their counterparts in Canada and most of Europe, American women do not have guaranteed health care. And unlike their counterparts in Europe and even much of Latin America, American women are not as educated about birth control....American women are still underrepresented among those who enforce the law, who make the law. In the U.S., an undemocratic 11 percent of our national lawmaking seats are held
by women."
- ABC reporter Beth Nissen on the U.N. womens conference in Beijing, September 3
World News Tonight.
"Our talk radio describes a nation tuned out to foreign realities, convinced that it has lost its freedoms to a `feminazi culture and a repressive government. These verbal bomb-throwers encourage the paranoid fantasies of the Unabomber on the left and the Oklahoma City bombers on the right."
- CNN Reliable Sources panelist and former Wall Street Journal reporter Ellen Hume in a
USA Today column, September 8.
No Wonder She Embraced God: Shes a Ninth-Grade Dropout!
"She was a ninth-grade dropout thrust at random into the headlights of a divisive social movement - but she was a powerful symbol. Its no wonder, analysts say, she flipped over last week from the complex, intellectual ideology of the abortion rights movement to the security of a fundamentalist faith dedicated to `saving babies."
- Los Angeles Times staff writer Lynn Smith on Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe), August 15.
More of That Harsh Media Spotlight
"Maybe they just should have named the magazine John. After all, thats why scores of journalists showed up to see and hear the usually silent crown prince of Camelot....From the child saluting his fathers coffin to People magazines `Sexiest Man Alive, Kennedy has lived his entire life in a harsh media spotlight."
- Reporter Jacqueline Adams on John F. Kennedy Jr. launching George, September 8 CBS
This Morning.
- L. Brent Bozell III;
Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Geoffrey Dickens, James Forbes, Steve Kaminski, Gesele Rey,
Clay Waters; Media Analysts
- Kathleen Ruff; Circulation Manager
- Gene Eliasen; Intern