Harken, Halliburton and Hype

Bankruptcies, corporate misdeeds and a tumbling stock market have led to another media overreaction. Big business is bad, the media have decided, and more government regulation is needed to tame the beast and protect the “little guy.” 

This simplistic spin has influenced almost every corporate corruption story since Independence Day and the business-bashing media frenzy has even expanded to include the past business operations of both the President and the Vice President.

The following Spotlight is a compilation of MRC’s documentation and analysis of the coverage. The links and articles start in early July when President George W. Bush’s Harken Energy stock sale became a major news story.

Bush and Harken Energy
Cheney and Halliburton
Judicial Watch Transformed
Congress and Corporate Corruption
Could Clinton be to Blame?
Against the Grain

President Bush and Harken Energy
A Closed 12-Year Old Investigation Suddenly Becomes News

• The story breaks. Bush described as “partner-in-chief with big business,” by CBS News’ Wyatt Andrews and ABC’s Claire Shipman claimed the Bush administration’s “decidedly pro-business stance on tax issues and regulatory issues” led to questions about the decade-old Harken Energy stock sale [1].
  
  

• The crux of the issue: Bush was cleared of wrongdoing in the Harken Energy stock sale by a 1990 Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, but that’s not important [2]. “Never mind that Mr. Bush was cleared,” CBS’s Andrews told viewers. “His opponents will charge this champion of personal sponsibility once failed that standard himself.”
  
  

• A chance to push for more government regulation of business. A Media Reality Check described how the media used the Harken Energy controversy [3] to encourage Bush to increase regulatory controls over business.
  
  

• The media’s favorite United States Senator, John McCain of Arizona, weighed in on corporate corruption and CBS rushed to cover it [4]. At the same time, ABC’s Peter Jennings highlighted how Bush has been accused of taking part in “the same corporate excesses that he is now condemning.” But ABC also ran a story about how an expert believes the loans from 15 years ago “were completely legal and proper.”
  
  

• Actually, there’s nothing there in either case but it is causing political trouble. ABC’s Nightline conceded there was nothing wrong [5] in either the Harken or Halliburton case but maintained that it was a legitimate political problem for the President.

[6]

The Blame Game
The Media Focus on Dick Cheney’s Days at Halliburton

• Business Week story about how Halliburton accounting procedures were within the norm was neglected by all three networks [7] as Dan Rather expressed “growing concern about the corporate connections, past and present, of both President Bush and Vice President Cheney.”
  
  

• During Campaign 2000, the media demanded Cheney sell his Halliburton stock to avoid a conflict of interest. Two years later, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank questioned both the timing of the sale and the profit it generated. This glaring inconsistency was examined in a Media Reality Check [8].
  
  

• CNN’s Bill Schneider decided Cheney’s “closest parallel” in scandal was Spiro Agnew [9], Richard Nixon’s number two man who resigned in disgrace in 1973.
  
  

• Vice President Cheney’s corporate career caused the stock market to drop? On the CBS Evening News, Joie Chen claimed “anxious small investors” were blaming the VP for their stock losses [10].

[6]

The Transformation of Judicial Watch
Former “Conservative” Group Filed Suit Against Vice President Cheney and Halliburton and Becomes Credible News Source

• The “conservative” ideological tag – always applied to the group in the past [11] – was dropped in favor of “watchdog,” “legal advocacy group,” and “legal activist group.”
  
  

• FNC’s Brit Hume commented that the networks never paid much attention to Judicial Watch [12] when it was filing suits against former President Bill Clinton. Plus, a look back at how various Judicial Watch suits against the Clinton administration were covered by the networks.
  
  

• ABC News website column even noticed that the formerly “conservative” Judicial Watch had suddenly become a mainstream watchdog organization [13] to network news divisions.
  
  

• More on the miraculous transformation as the former “conservative watchdog” became a “public interest” group to CBS News. FNC illustrated the contrasting descriptions with video [14].
  
  

• When he filed suits against former President Bill Clinton, Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman was portrayed as a “menace” by the national media [15]. His suit against Dick Cheney has changed all that, though.

[6]

Let’s Have Congress Fix Corporate Corruption!
Senate Bill on Corporate Corruption Will Have to be Reconciled with the “Weaker” House Bill and the Networks Expressed Concern

• CBS’s Bob Orr claimed “with some Republicans and the accounting lobby already promising a fight [16], it’s unclear at the moment how tough the final reforms will be.”
  
  

• Is anyone else listening? FNC reported that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan had told the Senate there was no need for additional federal regulation [17] to fix the corporate problems. The other networks ignored that part of Greenspan’s testimony.
  
  

• Still worried about that House bill. CNN anchor Aaron Brown worried the Senate bill on corporate corruption would have to be reconciled [18] with “far weaker bill that passed the Republican-controlled House.”
  
  

• A media disagreement. NBC’s Tim Russert thought quick congressional action in the form of Maryland Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes’ bill was essential to reassure investors. Meanwhile, over at Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume doubted anyone was going to make decisions based on the Sarbanes bill [19].

[6]

Could Clinton be to Blame?
Some Journalists Asked if the Former President was Responsible While Others Blamed Republicans

• FNC’s Brit Hume openly wondered if the corporate excesses and misdeeds, all of which started in the 1990s, could be blamed on the former President. Co-panelist Juan Williams disagreed, insisting it was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s fault [20].
  
  

• Surely he was kidding. Former Washington Post reporter and Clinton biographer David Maraniss, during an appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball, claimed that the public would probably turn to Clinton to save the country from corporate wrongdoing if it could vote for him [21].
  
  

• It wasn’t Clinton’s fault, according to U.S. News and World Report’s Gloria Borger. She talked to the former President’s Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, and he assured her that it was “absolutely ridiculous” to blame Clinton [22]. Borger did pass along that Rubin believed Bush’s “trillion-dollar tax cut” has cut made corporate problems worse.

[6]

Against the Grain
Media Reports That Provided Contrary Views

• A different view of regulation [23]. A “bidding” war between the Senate and House to see who could pass the most restrictive regulations would probably scare investors rather than assure them, CNBC's Ron Insana said on Today. On Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer noted there were “300 criminal codes for fraud and misrepresentation” and more regulations probably won’t stop criminal behavior.
  
  

• CNN’s Brooks Jackson explained the Harken case and the subsequent SEC investigation that cleared Bush of any charges of wrongdoing. Referring to a particular AP story on Harken, Jackson said it was typical of the “thin reporting” on the topic [24].
  
  

• Media companies such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Viacom, Disney and General Electric (the owners of the Big Three broadcast networks) have participated in the same accounting practices and stock option plans that their editorial divisions have criticized [25].
  
  

• Congress is supposed to clean up the corporate mess? CNN took a look at Congressional accounting procedures and found them wanting [26]. According to correspondent Jonathan Karl, Congress does things “not even WorldCom can pull off.”