Anti-Bush Ad Not Rebuked; Lieberman-Cheney Inaugural?; Nets Bought Gore's Global Warming Hype; More Gore Agenda in NBC's Prime Time -- Back to today's CyberAlert

1) All three morning shows today played the Gore ad which ends by asking of Bush: "Is he ready to lead?" But unlike Tuesday morning when of a Bush ad which asked "Really?" after showing Gore insist he's never said anything untrue, the morning shows did not wonder if the ad had gone "too far," been too "harsh," defined "scare tactics" or contradicted a promise to not go negative.

2) Lieberman-Cheney could really occur, Tim Russert outlined on today's Today in offering wild speculation about the result of an Electoral College tie.

3) Media Reality Check. "TV Balances Liberals...with Ultra-Liberals: Networks Push Gore and Nader Line on Global Warming 'Threat,' But Ignore Skeptical Scientists."

4) NBC's Gore agenda in prime time, week #2. Last night's The West Wing featured a subplot in which an insurance company refused to pay for emergency surgery for a gun shot victim because he did not get pre-approval for the life-saving emergency surgery.

5) Letterman's "Top Ten Gallup Polltaker Pet Peeves."

1

All three morning shows today played the new anti-Bush ad from the Gore campaign which lists his supposed policy failures and then ends by asking of Bush: "Is he ready to lead?" But unlike Tuesday morning, when the morning shows criticized a Bush ad which asked "Really?" after showing Gore insist he's never said anything untrue in the campaign, no one today suggested the Gore team went "too far," was "harsh," had utilized "Halloween scare tactics" or had contradicted a promise to not go negative. NBC's David Gregory, however, put equal blame on both sides, asserting the campaign "has turned ugly. Both sides now on television with attack ads."

    -- ABC's Good Morning America, November 2. Diane Sawyer set up George Stephanopoulos to evaluate the ad, MRC analyst Jessica Anderson observed: "I want to ask you about something else because in these remaining days, Al Gore has an ad he's going to roll out, which he hopes will be a clincher kind of ad and change things for him. What is it?"
    Stephanopoulos: "This is the big one. This is finally the ad where he questions whether or not George W. Bush is ready to be President by looking at his proposals and his record in Texas. Let's take a look."
    Ad narrator: "As Governor, George W. Bush gave big oil a tax break, while opposing health care for 220,000 kids. Texas now ranks 50th in family health care. He's left the minimum wage at $3.35 an hour. Let polluters police themselves. Today Texas ranks last in air quality. Now Bush promises the same $1 trillion from Social Security to two different groups. He squanders the surplus on a tax cut for those making over $300,000. Is he ready to lead America?"

    Stephanopoulos was pleased: "This is the greatest hits of the Gore campaign. They believe by focusing hard on the Texas record and then trying to draw this line to George W. Bush's proposals, this is the argument they need to make in the closing days. Bush campaign says no way. Too little, too late."

    Sawyer issued no further comment or question.

    Yesterday, November 1, Stephanopoulos ruminated about the Gore reaction to the new Bush ad: "What they're wondering is, does it go over the line, does it seem too harsh?" Next, Diane Sawyer asked Florida Governor Jeb Bush: "We just heard that ad which ends, 'Really?' about Vice President Gore. Does that go too far for you?"

    -- CBS's The Early Show, November 2. Bill Plante, MRC analyst Brian Boyd noted, set up an ad clip: "Gore is in Pennsylvania today and his campaign has taken the gloves off, releasing a TV spot slamming Bush's record and asking if he's really up to the job."
    Gore ad: "Now Bush promises the same $1 trillion from Social Security to two different groups. He squanders the surplus on a tax cut for those making over $300,000. Is he ready to lead America?"

    Compare Plante to how Diana Olick on Tuesday introduced a clip of Bush's anti-Gore ad: "George W. Bush wrapped up his tour of the West coast with some Halloween scare tactics in the form of a new Republican attack ad."

    -- NBC's Today. David Gregory castigated both sides, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens saw: "The campaign's final mile has turned ugly. Both sides now on television with attack ads in the crucial battleground states. Going negative in hopes of breaking this race open. The Vice President is the latest to strike. An ad hitting the airwaves today that knocks Bush's record in Texas and ends with Gore's central attack against his opponent."
    Brief ad clip: "Is he ready to lead America?"
    Gregory: "The ad in response to one launched by the Bush campaign a day before, challenging Gore's credibility. As the air war intensifies so do the jabs on the stump, Gore claiming Bush's plan for social security investment accounts will rob seniors of their current benefits...."

    Yesterday morning Gregory argued Bush was being hypocritical: "All of this as Governor Bush promised earlier this week that he was going to unite and inspire and not attack during the final week."

    Back to Thursday morning, Today played the ad in full during Matt Lauer's daily discussion with Tim Russert: "Negative ads have been coming from both campaigns in the last couple of days. Bush came out with one and now Al Gore has responded with this one. Let's take a look."
    Narrator of Gore ad: "As Governor, George W. Bush gave big oil a tax break while opposing health care for 220,000 kids. Texas now ranks 50th in family health care. He's left the minimum wage at $3.35 an hour. Let polluters police themselves. Today Texas ranks last in air quality. Now Bush promises the same $1 trillion from Social Security to two different groups. He squanders the surplus on a tax cut for those making over $300,000. Is he ready to lead America?"

    Lauer found the ad successful: "Pushes all the buttons, Tim. Big oil, health care, children, minimum wage and ends with that, 'Is he ready to lead?' Is it effective?"
    Russert contended: "Well it certainly does lay it out very clearly and crisply. And the Gore people have focus grouped these ads to death, Matt. They believe his Texas record makes it vulnerable. The Bush people say no. The interesting thing for me is that closing line that you emphasize, 'Is he ready?' Al Gore has resisted saying those words. He allowed Joe Lieberman, his running mate, and even his wife Tipper to say it. But he kept saying, no, no, I'm staying above the fray. This ad is paid for by the Gore-Lieberman team. Al Gore is now pregnant. He has paid for an ad which challenges whether or not George W. Bush is competent, has the capacity, is ready to be President."

2

President Lieberman and Vice President Cheney? Entering wild speculation mode about the most extreme scenario, Tim Russert this morning laid out how an Electoral College tie could lead to President Joe Lieberman picking Dick Cheney to be his VP.

    MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens picked up on the political science "what if" session on today's Today prompted by Matt Lauer wondering: "Couple of quick scenarios. The split election. More possible now than before?"
    Russert: "Isn't it something? Not since 1888. But if you look at Bush's margin in the popular vote and Gore keeping it competitive in the Electoral College, could we have a situation where one candidate wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College? What if each candidate got 269 electoral votes, Matt?"
    Lauer: "Yeah what are the chances of that?"
    Russert: "Well, remote, but it is possible! You could take a calculator and figure it out in 30 seconds. It then goes to the House of Representatives where a candidate would have to have 26 state delegations of Congressmen vote for him. If you didn't get 26, if there was a deadlock it would go to the Senate where the Senate would elect a Vice President who would become acting President. If the Senate, the new Senate is 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans, guess who breaks the tie? Al Gore. Joe Lieberman becomes Vice President and acting President. Then what does he do? Because the Senate becomes 51-49 Republican then, because the Connecticut Governor replaces Lieberman with a Republican and if Lieberman then becomes President and he wants a Vice President confirmed by both houses he gets a Republican Vice President, Dick Cheney. Lieberman-Cheney. Isn't that what people asked for after that debate?"

3

This afternoon's Campaign 2000 Media Reality Check titled, "TV Balances Liberals...with Ultra-Liberals: Networks Push Gore and Nader Line on Global Warming 'Threat,' But Ignore Skeptical Scientists." For this report distributed by fax today, Rich Noyes, Director of the MRC's Free Market Project, showed how reporters relayed Al Gore's global warming fears last week without noting how the study he cited is questionable and was leaked early so Gore would have fresh ammunition.

    To view this Media Reality Check as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file:
http://archive.mrc.org/realitycheck/2000/pdf/fax1102pm.pdf

    The pull-out quote in the middle of the page:

    The Viewpoint the Networks Excluded
    "Imagine the cost if we had rushed to do what Gore proposed in his book Earth in the Balance? Gas prices would be as high as they are in Britain, where we have witnessed the first riots created by global-warming taxes and where we may also witness the fall of a government because of unpopular global-warming policies." -- climate expert Patrick Michaels, "An October Environmental Surprise," The Washington Times September 22.

    Now the Thursday Afternoon, November 2, Media Reality Check:

Does this sound balanced to you? Last week Al Gore trumpeted a leaked UN report on the alleged perils of global warming, so the CBS Evening News showed him pledging "to protect the environment with all my heart and soul." Balancing Gore on the October 26 newscast: Ralph Nader, the only other candidate who thinks global warming is a real threat requiring immediate government intervention in the free market.

"Al Gore is suffering from election year delusion if he thinks his record on the environment is anything to be proud of," Nader twitted from Gore's left. The only other on-camera source in John Roberts' report: a Greenpeace spokesman, who said of Gore: "The promises are great, the rhetoric is great. Keeping the promises, doing what you say -- that's our concern."

CBS never told viewers of skeptical scientists whose insistence on proof is plainly irritating to those who impatiently wish to start re-shaping American society right away. Instead, the pols, activists and journalists conducted a closed discussion that treated the UN paper as irrefutable.

"Earth's average surface temperature could rise from 2.7 to almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 10 years -- that's according to a draft report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," asserted Natalie Pawelski, host of CNN's weekly Earth Matters.

"Eleven degrees may not sound like much of a change, but to put it into perspective, consider this: the Earth's average global temperature today is only about nine degrees warmer than it was during the last Ice Age," Pawelski hyped, but allowed "some observers are wondering about the timing of this report, leaking out so close to the presidential election."

Observers are doing a lot more than "wondering." Weeks ago, climate expert Patrick Michaels warned that Gore would cynically seek an "October environmental surprise," and -- right on schedule -- the heavily political UN document found its way to the public a month early. "A copy of the summary was obtained by The New York Times from someone who was eager to have the findings disseminated before the meetings in The Hague," related Andrew Revkin, the Times reporter who received the leaked document.

TV reporters haven't talked about the still-to-be-officially-released report's flaws, but "fourteen international experts gathered on Capitol Hill in June to review the report. They unanimously agreed it contains systematic errors and omissions bordering on scientific fraud," revealed Cato Institute scholar Steve Milloy in a Sunday New York Post op-ed. Further, according to an editorial in today's European edition of the Wall Street Journal, "The vast evidence and models compiled by over 100 scientists, and casting doubt on the evidence of human-enhanced greenhouse effect, were ignored."

Two questions for the networks: Are you unable to track down any of the numerous experts who disagree with the Gore-Nader-Greenpeace view of the environment? And will you seek to discover whether it's really the Earth or the Democrats' campaign that's in such peril that it is crucial to pump out a sloppy summary report a few weeks ahead of schedule?

    END Media Reality Check

4

NBC's Gore agenda in prime time, week #2. Last night's The West Wing featured a subplot in which an insurance company refused to pay for emergency surgery for a gun shot victim because the ambulance took him to an "out of network" hospital and he did not get pre-approval for the life-saving emergency surgery.

    As reported in the Monday CyberAlert Extra in an item by the MRC's Rich Noyes, which the Wall Street Journal editorial page picked up on Wednesday, last week The West Wing and two other NBC dramas illustrated liberal Al Gore points about the evils of businesses which he pledges to remedy:
    "NBC's Triple-Play: In Two Days, Three Dramas Pushed Plot Lines Which Echoed Gore Campaign Themes." A fresh MediaNomics article documented the in-kind contributions last week to Gore by The West Wing, Law & Order and ER in showcasing plots with greedy pharmaceutical companies, an uncaring HMO which led to a murder and a doctor fired for caring for an uninsured patient.

    For details, go to:
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2000/cyb20001030_extra.asp#4

    Wednesday night, November 1, The West Wing took up the health insurance plight of presidential aide "Josh Lyman," played by Bradley Whitford, who was shot and critically wounded at the end of last season in the shooting of the presidential party as they walked to limos which, it turned out, was aimed not at the President but was committed by skinheads trying to kill the black boyfriend of the President's daughter.

    Anyway, in last night's episode Josh read aloud from a letter: "They're still saying I owe them $50,000 and that 'failure to pay will result in a negative report on your credit.'"

    Exasperated, he asked: "They're referring me to insurance code 4336. You know what that means?"

    Later, aide "Sam Seaborn," played by Rob Lowe, explained what he was working on for Josh: "The hospital was out of network and therefore they're claiming responsibility for only 20 percent of a life saving medical procedure. Also didn't get the procedure cleared beforehand."
    A bewildered "Toby Ziegler" responded: "His lung was collapsed and blood stopped flowing to his brain. He was supposed to dial-up the automated 24-hour customer care service line?"
    Sam: "Keeps up like this he's going to have to sue these people."
    Toby, sarcastically: "I like a country where you can sue the insurance company but not the people who shot you."

    That's quite a stretch from reality. I really doubt any reputable insurance company covering federal workers would require pre-approval in such an emergency situation.

5

From he November 1 Late Show with David Letterman, the "Top Ten Gallup Polltaker Pet Peeves." Copyright 2000 by Worldwide Pants, Inc.

10. When boss says you can't go home till you find a Pat Buchanan voter
9. Response sheet has boxes for "yes" and "no" -- but not "bite me"
8. Every Christmas, the same gift from Gallup: a crappy Radio Shack calculator
7. Looking at pie charts all day makes you really, really hate pie
6. Whenever he slips in the polls, George W. Bush threatens to have you executed
5. The hourly calls from Nader asking, "Am I winning yet?"
4. Knowing after November 7th, only question you'll be asking is, "Regular or unleaded?"
3. Letterman always answers the door naked
2. When wife complains about your "5% margin of error"
1. All them numbers is confusin'

    And from the Late Show Web page, some of the "extra" entries which didn't make the final cut:

-- Telling your co-workers you actually found a Buchanan supporter, and no one believes you
-- When date informs you there's a 0% likelihood of sex
-- There just aren't enough polls focusing on hot chicks 18-22
-- Boss getting suspicious when all the "homes" you've called start with 1-900
-- Having to report that Hillary's winning -- Brent Baker

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