FNC: Spy Scandal "Getting More Serious"; CBS: It's No Big Deal
1) CNN and FNC noted how
Carter condemned Clinton, but not ABC, CBS or NBC. No Chinagate on ABC or
NBC. CBS made time for 20 anti-police protestors. An anti-gun control
parent got a soundbite.
2) FNC: "The China
nuclear spy scandal just keeps on getting more serious." Carl Cameron
revealed an investigation of spying at two more labs under Clinton and an
FBI official says to Reno: "Bull."
3) "Many of the [Cox]
report's scary findings are open to question," insisted CBS News
reporter Eric Engberg in a "Reality Check" he ended by scoffing
at how China only has a few missiles.
4) MSNBC's Brian Williams
relayed: "This is only gonna matter if God forbid, there is one very
dark day that sees the use, the all out use of thermonuclear weapons on
this planet and so why worry?"
5) Fred Barnes pointed out how
Dan Rather was "slobbering all over Hillary Clinton" which
demonstrates "liberal bias in the press.... what if it had been the
wife of some Republican President?"
6) Geraldo Rivera: "Starr
finally revealed to be the zealot that I believe him to be," declared
Rivera who claimed Starr is a "legal terrorist" who "has
perverted the judicial system."
7) In an A&E special
Friday on Kosovo, Harry Smith told Today, a refugee proclaims:
"America is God, Bill Clinton is our savior."
>>> May
31 edition of Notable Quotables, the MRC's bi-weekly compilation of the
latest outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media, is now
online thanks to the MRC's Kristina Sewell and Sean Henry. Quote
headings include "Spinning Away the Cox Report," "A Little
Media Help on Gun Laws," "The Today Gephardt Playbook,"
"Rubin: Greatest Since Hamilton," "China Channels
Hillary," "Hillary's Dignity, or Dependency?" and
"Larry King's Disarming Deity." To read the issue go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/nq/1999/nq19990531.html
<<<
>>> Read
about and watch CNN's story on "Unintended Consequences: With
Ratings System in Place, TV More Offensive Than Ever," a Special
Report from the MRC's Parents Television Council released on Wednesday.
CNN has posted a story about it with a link to the study as well as video
of CNN reporter Jeanne Meserve's story on it which you can play via
either RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. Go to: http://www.cnn.com/US/9905/27/tv.ratings/
<<<
1
In a New York Times op-ed former President Jimmy Carter, a fellow
Democrat, denounced Clinton's Kosovo policy, but only FNC and CNN
noticed. Not a word about it Thursday night on ABC, CBS or NBC though all
featured at least two stories on the implications of the indictment of
Milosevic on war crimes.
On FNC's Fox
Report Wendell Goler relayed how "Former President Carter called
President Clinton's Kosovo policy flawed in a separate editorial, saying
'our destruction of civilian life has now become senseless and
excessively brutal.' Mr. Clinton's aides won't criticize the former
President though some are frustrated by his lack of support..."
Over on CNN's
The World Today David Ensor noted: "President Clinton is also facing
criticism of the alliance air campaign from one of his predecessors."
Carter on Larry King Live: "We need to
explore other ways to get the Kosovars back home, safe and protected and I
don't think that destroying the entire nation of Yugoslavia, including
Kosovo, is the best way to do it."
ABC and NBC also
ignored any and all developments on the Chinese espionage front. Instead,
ABC provided a hurricane season preview, a look at a new topographic map
of Mars, the NASDAQ vote for night trading and "A Closer Look"
at how corporate recruiting of college graduates is dissuading many from
going to grad school and a study showing that the economic boom is now
benefitting young black men without college degrees. NBC also previewed
the hurricane season and offered a "LifeLine" piece on a study
about how going to the closest hospital is not always the best choice when
having a heart attack since hospitals with a higher volume have a better
survival record.
The CBS Evening
News and CNN's The World Today ran short items on how the Senate passed
some new security measures. CNN reported that Attorney General Janet Reno
said she agreed with the decision by people below her to reject the
FBI's wiretap request for Wen Ho Lee while CBS anchor Bob Schieffer told
viewers that Reno blamed her aides for not letting her in on debate about
whether to approve the wiretap request. CNN added a story about how
Chinese-Americans are concerned about a public backlash against them.
Fox News Channel
watchers were informed that "the China nuclear spy scandal just keeps
on getting more serious" as the intrepid Carl Cameron revealed
investigations of spying during the Clinton years at two more nuclear
labs, how an FBI official denounced Reno's attempt to blame FBI Director
Louie Freeh over the wiretap rejection and that 80 House members called
for Sandy Berger to be fired. (See item #2 for details.) In contrast, CBS
Evening News viewers were treated to an Eric Engberg piece on how
"Many of the [Cox] report's scary findings are open to
question." (See item #3 for details.)
Back to what else
the networks covered Thursday night, May 27:
-- Coincidence of
interest in an unused airport. CNN's The World Today, FNC's Fox Report
and NBC Nightly News all decided to run stories about the waste of federal
taxpayer money to build Mid-America Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois, (near
St. Louis) which opened in November 1997 but remains unused with no
airlines serving it.
-- Anti-gun
control Columbine parent. CBS, CNN and NBC featured a soundbite of Darrell
Scott telling a congressional committee more gun control won't solve
anything. In a story about the House Democrats blasting Republicans for
recessing without passing more gun laws, reporter Wyatt Andrews observed:
"But at this House subcommittee today, the father of Columbine victim
Rachel Scott said the Democrats missed the point."
Darrell Scott: "Eric and Dylan would not
have been stopped by more gun laws or metal detectors. No amount of laws
can stop someone who spends months of planning this type of
massacre."
Tom Brokaw
introduced NBC's In Depth segment with a bite from Scott: "Finding
fault for the Colorado school shooting and a new battle over who's
responsible. In Congress today Darrell Scott, whose daughter Rachel was
killed, said only the shooters were to blame and more gun laws, he said,
would not have stopped such a well planned massacre."
-- It still takes
only a few more leftists protesting than would fill a phone booth to
generate a network story. CBS ran a full report from Sandra Hughes on an
anti-police brutality protest in Los Angeles consisting of a group of,
maybe, 20 from what the camera showed. One sign proclaimed: "Stop
Police Brutality." At the bottom it gave credit: "Socialist
Workers Party." Hughes hit Clinton from the left: "Crime is down
nationally and many credit that to President Clinton's efforts to put
100,000 new police offers on the streets. But some say their inexperience
can have fatal consequences." The "some" being the ACLU.
She allowed a FOP official to disagree, but if Clinton didn't put
100,000 cops on the street, which he did not, how could his
"efforts" be blamed for 100,000 more cops are doing when they
really don't exist?
2
Fox Report anchor Paula Zahn announced Thursday night: "The China
nuclear spy scandal just keeps on getting more serious. Fox News has
exclusive new information about two more investigations into stolen
secrets."
Carl Cameron
outlined his exclusive:
"FBI counter-intelligence sources have told
Fox News about two more previously undisclosed open investigations into
Chinese nuclear espionage at the national labs during the Clinton
administration. Sources say both the Argonne National Labs in Illinois and
Idaho and the Sandia National Lab in New Mexico have been compromised and
that both weapons secrets and detonation technology have been passed to
China since 1993."
Cameron proceeded
to report a development skipped by the other networks, how 80 House
members led by Republicans Clifford Stearns and J.D. Hayworth demanded the
resignation of National Security Adviser Sandy Berger for not properly
informing Clinton of espionage. They also want Reno to go for rejecting
wiretap request for Wen Ho Lee, Cameron added in leading into the dispute
over the wiretap:
"Reno suggested the ball was dropped by FBI
Director Louie Freeh for not consulting her directly."
Reno at her daily media briefing: "I think
that in all of these matters where there's something serious, where
there's a disagreement, where Director Freeh disagrees with the
findings, I think it should be discussed at my level."
Cameron: "At the FBI a furious
counter-intelligence source accused Reno of scapegoating Freeh unfairly,
saying quote: 'Bull, we appealed the Justice rejection three times'
unquote."
Cameron's piece
appeared an hour earlier on Special Report with Brit Hume, but in reverse
order with Berger/Reno first followed by the news of the Argonne and
Sandia spying.
3
After spending the year largely ignoring revelations about Chinese
espionage and running its Tuesday night story on the Cox Report second to
a gun control report, then ignoring Cox on Wednesday, on Thursday night
CBS delivered a hit piece. Instead of exploring all the many facets and
angles the show has yet to cover, CBS decided to give air time to a
"Reality Check" piece by Eric Engberg to undermine the Cox
Report's credibility, an approach matching the White House spin about
how the espionage is really not that big of a deal.
Back on April 8
when the New York Times ran a leak from the Cox Report about how China had
obtained neutron bomb knowledge, the CBS Evening News ignored the
disclosure. But Thursday night Engberg happily picked up on the supposed
lack of proof.
Engberg began:
"As the release of the Cox Report again demonstrated Washington's
love of a good spy story, the consensus gelled: Chinese agents have stolen
something. But after that many of the report's scary findings are open
to question.
"Were actual weapons plans among the
purloined secrets? The report takes the worst case view: Probably. But a
blue ribbon panel of outside experts advising the CIA looked at the same
question and decided there is just no way to know. The same group
concluded the Chinese spying 'has not resulted in any apparent
modernization of their deployed strategic force or any new nuclear weapons
deployment.'
Norman Dicks: "We lost something here. They
may take advantage of it. They haven't done it yet."
Engberg: "Did the Chinese steal the key to
building a neutron bomb? Cox talks darkly about a theft, but like all the
spy talk it's pretty murky."
Chris Cox: "The people who did this have not
been apprehended. We know we're having a great deal of difficulty
finding suspects. We don't even have any real open cases."
Engberg dismissively concluded:
"The Cox Report says China uncovered the
secrets of seven U.S. nuclear warheads, but the intelligence evidence is
unclear. It may be as low as four, two of which are obsolete. Amidst all
the voices raised in alarm there is a bottom line: Unlike many of the
things in the Cox Report there's no argument here. Number of strategic
nuclear weapons? U.S.: six thousand, China: less than two dozen."
How many millions
could a dozen well-targeted nuclear missiles kill? Just because they
don't have more now doesn't mean they won't in the future to say
nothing of two real dangers Engberg ignored: China passing on nuclear
weapons know-how to a few rogue nations. Would Saddam Hussein with three
intercontinental nuclear missiles not worry Engberg? And even if China is
well out-numbered missile wise they can still use what they have to
threaten the U.S. If China moves in on Taiwan and tells the U.S. President
they will lob four missiles at Los Angeles and two at Seattle if the U.S.
comes to Taiwan's aide will a President risk it just because we could
nuke every Chinese city?
+++ Watch CBS
undercut the Cox Report. Friday morning the MRC's Sean Henry and
Kristina Sewell will post a clip in RealPlayer format of Engberg's
story. Go to: http://www.mrc.org
4
None of this matters anyway because until we use them they don't matter.
Here's a gem of brilliant reasoning caught by MRC analyst Mark Drake in
a question from MSNBC anchor Brian Williams on his show The News with
Brian Williams Tuesday night, May 25, to House Select Committee on
Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss:
"Congressman, I heard someone ask
rhetorically today that 'Look. This is only gonna matter if God forbid,
there is one very dark day that sees the use, the all out use of
thermonuclear weapons on this planet and so why worry?'"
Why bother having
a military since until you have a war it doesn't matter.
5
Dan Rather's liberal bias. The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes picked up
on the May 27 CyberAlert item detailing how "Dan Rather slobbered all
over Hillary Clinton" in his Wednesday night 60 Minutes II interview.
On Thursday's Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC Barnes remarked:
"Dan Rather didn't exactly live down his
tough guy image there. I mean here he is slobbering all over Hillary
Clinton. And I always wonder again, people think that I harp on this
liberal bias in the press, but what if it had been the wife of some
Republican President who was going to carpet bag in some state and run for
the Senate. I think the national press corps would be on the
warpath."
Indeed, and no one
harps more about liberal bias than the MRC so we are always glad to have
company.
CBS News has now
posted a semi-complete transcript of the 60 Minutes II interview -- it's
of the interview and does not include many of he intros and segues from
Rather quoted in the Thursday CyberAlert. For the CBS transcript, go to: http://www.cbs.com/flat/story_156516.html
To read the
CyberAlert analysis of the interview and to play a RealPlayer clip of it,
go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/1999/cyb19990527.html#4
6
Remember Geraldo Rivera. It's been a while since CyberAlert quoted the
sometime NBC News reporter and constant CNBC host, but Ken Starr's
decision earlier this week to not re-try McDougal and Steele brought out
his hatred and vitriol. "Starr finally revealed to be the zealot that
I believe him to be," declared Rivera who claimed Starr is a
"legal terrorist" who "has perverted the judicial
system." MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens caught some of his rhetoric
announced on CNBC's Rivera Live on May 25. Rivera started by connecting
the police officer in New York City, who admitted sodomizing Abner Louima,
with Starr:
-- "But aside
from wretched Officer Volpe, guess who else chickened out today? None
other than Ken Starr. That's right the wild man of Whitewater is finally
being washed, washed, washed right out of our hair. The special prosecutor
today telling federal judges who presided over the Susan McDougal and
Julie Hiatt Steele cases that he will not, repeat, not retry those two
tortured targets of his relentless crusade to get the President. We'll
have much more on Starr's long, overdue recognition of real life later
in the program."
-- "A bit
later, Starr finally surrenders. I'll tell you that and try to restrain
my glee."
-- "If Susan
McDougal and Julie Hiatt Steele were happy at the end of their respective
trials which both ended at least in part with deadlock juries they must be
ecstatic today at the news from Washington. Their longtime nemesis, the
legal terrorist who has haunted them for years today waived the white
flag, threw in the towel, came out with his arms raised, squealed, 'No
mas, no mas, no mas!' Ken Starr informing the federal judges who oversaw
the McDougal and Steele cases that he would not, repeat not retry either
of the two women who he had accused of obstructing his investigation of
the President. The special prosecutor said, 'Retrials raise important
questions of resource allocation...the jury's inability to reach a
unanimous verdict is a reality that we have taken seriously.'
"Resource allocation? Doesn't that make
you sick? The announcement brought the special prosecutor a lot closer to
winding up his endless, flawed, ultimately failed probe into Bill
Clinton's sex life. An inquiry that cost more than $40 million tax
dollars, produced the first impeachment ever of an elected U.S. President,
strictly along partisan lines. But despite Mr. Starr's attention to
resource allocation the self-righteous, independent counsel must have
finally realized that this country voicing its opinion through the Steele
and McDougal juries was simply fed up. Wouldn't stand for any more of
his inquisition. All that's left on his plate now two trials involving
that poor guy, another witness he's accused of being uncooperative. The
presidential friend, the big old sap, former Justice Department official
Web Hubbell."
-- "Why
didn't this guy see the obvious? Isn't it all very clear to everyone
with eyeballs that this man has perverted the judicial system, he bent it
to his own political will, and he's been stung big time by it."
-- "But when
we talk about hyperbole, Julian Epstein, I think of all those stories
about how big Whitewater was, how potent Whitewater was, how Whitewater
was really going to bring the Clintons economic corruption crashing down
around their ears. And then it was the sex and it went on and it went on
and it went on and now is Starr finally revealed to be the zealot that I
believe him to be."
-- "A legal
terrorist. Ken Starr is a legal terrorist."
7
Bill Clinton as "savior"? Thursday morning Today brought aboard
Harry Smith, a former CBS News reporter and host of This Morning who used
his CBS platforms to espouse his liberal views, to plug his Friday night
A&E special, Human Tragedy: The Faces of Kosovo. The show airs May 28
at 9pm and 1am ET. Smith left CBS earlier this year to become host of
A&E's Biography series.
Smith told Today
co-host Matt Lauer how his trip to Kosovo impacted him: "I've seen a
lot of horrible things over the last 20 years. I've been in war
situations, I've seen men blown to bits, I've seen people die. And it
wasn't until I came back and about two days ago I was sitting an edit room
and I just started weeping uncontrollably and I came home a couple of
nights ago and I turned to my wife and said, 'I don't know if anything
like this has ever happened to me.' It shakes you, it really, it changes
you."
MRC analyst
Geoffrey Dickens picked up on this final exchange. Matt Lauer: "Real
quickly. Do you think these people have an idea that they are not being
forgotten. Do they understand the scope of the attention to this
situation?"
Harry Smith: "You would be amazed at how
much they thank America. How much, one guy turns to us, he says, 'America
is God, Bill Clinton is our savior.'"
I think that guy will soon be very disappointed
when his "savior" Clinton follows polling numbers and abandons
him in order to make sure the war does not hurt Gore's campaign. --
Brent Baker
3
>>>
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