1) The
disclosures keep coming in newspaper stories, so many that it's hard to
keep track of them all. But that's not a problem for those who rely on the
TV networks for their news. The networks have an easy to follow policy:
ignore everything. At least that's what has happened over the past few
days.
The April 11
CyberAlert noted that Monday through Thursday last week the Today show
hadn't mentioned any fundraising or Hubbell developments. Not even Hillary
Clinton's UFO comment on Thursday could budge "America's most-watched
morning show" as the blackout continued Friday.
Last week's
CyberAlerts detailed how the networks ignored:
-- a Los Angeles Times story on how a White House lawyer wrote
"monitor cooperation" next Web Hubbell's name on a 1994 memo.
-- a Washington Times report that two weeks before Hubbell left Justice
Hillary Clinton was formally notified that he was under investigation.
-- a New York Times story headlined "A Wider Circle at White House
Knew of Effort to Help Hubbell."
-- and at night only the CBS Evening News mentioned a Washington Post
story on how the White House passed on classified intelligence information
to the DNC.
Here's a list of
weekend disclosures and how they weren't covered by the broadcast
networks.
-- In a piece
that aired Friday on both Inside Politics and The World Today, CNN's
Brooks Jackson discovered a connection between a donation and a favorable
federal ruling for the donor. Jackson also explained how the Democrats
avoided disclosure laws by getting contributors to donate to state parties
instead of the national party. Jackson reported:
"Legal
publisher West Publishing was selling out to a Canadian rival. But West's
Vance Opperman needed Clinton administration's approval. The Justice
Department's antitrust division was threatening to sue. Only now is the
full story beginning to emerge, buried in once secret documents recently
released by the White House. June 4 last year, a secret ledger sheet at
the Democratic National Committee lists Opperman for eight contributions
adding up to $155,000 -- not directly to the national party, that would
attract national attention. The ledger shows the donations directed to
states....Opperman's company already had such a huge share of the legal
publishing business that smaller publishers implored the Justice
Department to protect them and consumers...."
"On June 19,
the Department of Justice announced an agreement allowing the sale. The
DNC knew Opperman's 155,000 was coming before the administration approved
the deal. But money was delivered just after: $25,000 to the New Jersey
Democratic Party July 8; $11,000 to Rhode Island July 5..."
-- "Boosts
From Above Aided Huang's Rise Up the Ladder," declared a Saturday Los
Angles Times headline. In the April 12 story reporter Alan Miller
recounted how Commerce Dept. and DNC officials found John Huang's
qualifications wanting for the top jobs he got, but their concerns were
over-ruled from above.
-- "Padres'
Owner Also Hired Hubbell," read another Saturday LA Times headline.
Reporter David Willman's disclosed:
"The owner
of the San Diego Padres baseball franchise was among those who hired
Webster Hubbell after he resigned his high- ranking Justice Department
position three years ago....In an interview, [Padres owner John] Moores
said Friday that in 1994, he paid Hubbell an advance retainer $18,000 on
the basis of a recommendation from Truman Arnold, a longtime friend of
President Clinton....Moores said that Hubbell ultimately did not provide
him with an accounting of any services he provided..."
-- "White
House Knew in '94 that Hubbell Was Focus of Inquiry," declared a
Saturday New York Times story. Reporter Stephen Labaton asserted that when
Hubbell resigned "the administration knew that Hubbell had already
emerged as a crucial witness in several politically sensitive
investigations of President Clinton and the First Lady. Shortly before his
resignation, Hubbell was interrogated by federal regulators from the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. about the role he and Mrs. Clinton had
played in the 1980s, when they represented a savings and loan association
that ended up accused of corruption."
-- "DNC
Diverted Controversial Donations: FEC Reports Don't Show Tobacco, Gambling
Checks to State Parties," announced a front page story in Sunday's
Washington Post. The story overlapped CNN's Friday report and an April 3
USA Today story ignored by the networks. The Post's Charles Babcock and
Ira Chinoy explained:
"Democratic
National Committee officials channeled millions of dollars in campaign
donations to state Democratic parties last year, effectively hiding big
contributions from tobacco, gambling and other special interests.
Contributors' checks routinely were sent to DNC headquarters before being
passed on to the state parties, but documents show that DNC officials kept
meticulous records of the donations so that donors and fundraisers
received credit."
So, Friday,
Saturday and Sunday brought more evidence that the White House knew
investigators were asking Hubbell about his Madison years with Hillary,
thus giving a motive for hush money; another donor admitted paying Hubbell
for no work; and it's revealed that the DNC hid big donations and got
around limits by diverting funds to state parties. What kind of broadcast
network coverage did all this generate?
Nothing Friday,
Saturday or Sunday night on ABC, CBS and NBC (there was no CBS Evening
News in the east Sunday night.) Zilch also on CBS's Sunday Morning and
NBC's Sunday Today. The Post story on state party diversion got one
sentence from Cokie Roberts during an interview with a GMA/Sunday host.
On World News
Tonight/Sunday, ABC's Karla Davis put together a piece on how Newt
Gingrich and Dick Armey were pressuring Attorney General Janet Reno to
name an Independent Counsel on Monday, the deadline day for a decision. As
viewers saw newspaper headlines scroll by, she explained: "The
scandal is fueled by almost daily reports of suspect foreign
contributions, convoluted bookkeeping and money-laundering by the
Democratic National Committee..."
Among the
headlines: the Sunday Post story on diversion. But Davis didn't say a word
about it. She concluded her piece by noting attention to Clinton's
fundraising "is almost certain to intensify this week. The DNC is
scheduled to release thousands more campaign documents as soon as
tomorrow."
Intensify?
Something must be intense before it can be intensified. And fundraising
coverage has been anything but intense on the TV networks.
3) At the top of
Friday's Today, Katie Couric plugged an upcoming segment: "Glamour
magazine has designated today as Ask Your Boss for a Raise Day because
today, three and a half months into 1997 marks the day when women's
earnings finally catch up to what a man made in 1996, which really
stinks."
A little more
than a half hour later, Couric introduced her guest, Glamour Senior Editor
Jill Herzig:
"Glamour
magazine has designated today as 'Ask Your Boss for a Raise Day.' That's
because today is the day women's earnings finally equal what men made in
1996. In other words, it takes a women more than 15 months to earn what a
man makes in 12. So, this month's Glamour says it's time for women to get
greedy, or really seek parity."
Herzig claimed:
"For the last decade women have earned 71 cents for every dollar a
man earns doing exactly the same work and over a 30 year typical career
span that adds up to a quarter of a million dollars, a huge amount of
money. And this disparity exists in almost any field you can name. For
example, on an assembly line a women earns $306 doing exactly the same job
that a man earns $396 dollars for."
Couric reiterated
her guest's assertion: "And it's important to point out this is less
pay for the very same work."
Interesting that
equal pay for equal work is Couric's standard. In the union world usually
advocated by liberals it's seniority, not performance, that matters most.
Friday night
Peter Jennings relayed the politically-charged liberal numbers to a bigger
audience. Jennings intoned on the April 11 World News Tonight:
"From an
organization called the National Committee on Pay Equity today, a study on
how salaries compare for men and women. It says that in order to earn what
the average man earned last year, 1996, the average women has had to go on
working through the first three months and two weeks of this year,
including today. Put another way, last year women earned only 71 percent
of what men made and it hasn't changed in five years."
Really? Only by
the reasoning of liberals that compares all women to all men when
obviously men have worked more years on average and don't take time off
for children. Among men and women with equal education and experience pay
is nearly identical.
Last year the
Independent Women's Forum released an illuminating analysis of male vs.
female pay scales. You can read the report at: http://www.iwf.org/womens-figures.html
Here are three
points from the IWF analysis:
-- "Occupation, seniority, absenteeism, and intermittent work-force
participation are all critical variables in accounting for pay
disparities. In other words, those who assume that discrimination is
solely to blame for wage differences are drawing unsubstantiated
conclusions."
-- "Over
time, women's wages have been steadily rising relative to men's wages. The
National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data show that, among people ages
twenty-seven to thirty-three who have never had a child, women's earnings
are close to 98 percent of men's. Economist June O'Neill notes, 'When
earnings comparisons are restricted to men and women more similar in their
experience and life situations, the measured earnings differentials are
typically quite small.'"
-- And counter to
NBC's claim that nothing has changed in ten years, and ABC's that there's
been no improvement in five, IWF noted: "Women's gains in the
American economy and in the corporate world have been remarkable. The Korn/Ferry
executive search firm found in a recent study that, during the past
decade, the number of female executive vice-presidents more than doubled
and the number of female senior vice-presidents increased by 75
percent."
But why deal in
reality when you can paint a simplistic picture of oppressed women
mistreated by corporations.