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The 1,244th CyberAlert. Tracking Media Bias Since 1996
Friday March 15, 2002 (Vol. Seven; No. 43)
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Two Hours Pushing Rosie's Agenda; "Flag Waving" Has "Infected Journalism"; NBC on the Real Arafat; Fonda's Vietnam Revisionism
Lest there be any doubt that O'Donnell's personal views set the agenda for the show which she appeared throughout to talk both about her sexuality and adoption, ABC fawningly titled the program, "Rosie's Story: For the Sake of the Children." ABC nearly turned over its entire broadcast schedule on Thursday to the liberal O'Donnell's cause, with Good Morning America featuring two lengthy excerpts from the Sawyer interview with her as well as a preview of what led the prime time show, the most sympathetic look possible at the subject: a profile of two gay men who have taken into their foster home several HIV-positive kids who no one else wanted, but now the kids face losing the only parents they've ever known since Florida law says they should be adopted by a heterosexual couple. After the second O'Donnell interview segment, actress Rene Russo announced that she was raised by lesbians. Thursday's World News Tonight also ran a clip from the segment with the poster gay parents. On GMA, MRC analyst Jessica Anderson noticed, O'Donnell proclaimed her new mission in life now that she's ending her day time TV show in May, a mission with a political edge which ABC News helped fulfill: "I'm leaving [The Rosie O'Donnell Show] because I feel as though I've done everything I wanted to do. I will continue to raise money and awareness about the rights of children in a country where they have no rights, and that's what my mission and my life is, that's what I've always felt would be my mission in life, would be to help raise awareness of the plight of children in this country." GMA also highlighted the portion of the interview in which O'Donnell declared President Bush "wrong" to say a family with a mom and a dad are better for kids and she invited George and Laura Bush to come stay with her and her partner, an ex-Nickelodeon cable TV channel executive, to prove their fitness. It's hard to provide a thorough rundown for a two-hour show, and I missed a half hour of it, but I think it's safe to say ABC had no intention of delivering a balanced look at the controversial subject. The show began, as noted above, with the most sympathetic case study one could imagine, two gay men in a long term relationship who were willing to take in HIV-positive kids. After lengthy interview segments with O'Donnell, about 45 minutes into the show Sawyer did allow some opponents of gay adoption to suggest why placing kids with heterosexual couples is preferable, but their arguments were immediately dismissed as either naive or just plain wrong by "experts" Sawyer highlighted. The last 20 minutes of the program was dedicated to having kids, from what appeared to be barely six-years-old to their early teens, declaring that they love their gay or lesbian foster parents and that they are just as caring, stable and nurturing as heterosexual parents. As if the kids have any basis of comparison. O'Donnell has an ally at another network for her agenda. On Thursday's Entertainment Tonight, NBC's Matt Lauer asserted: "She's a good friend and I support her 100 percent." A few weeks ago on The View, Barbara Walters and the rest of the show's gang made it clear they don't understand how anyone could oppose letting gay couples adopt. One subject not raised by Sawyer with O'Donnell: Why O'Donnell, a New York City native who tapes her show at Rockefeller Center, lives in Florida, a state without an income tax. Could it be that the liberal O'Donnell who advocates higher government spending is trying to avoid the state income taxes she'd have to pay if she officially resided in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut?
Amanpour made the comments, which FNC's Brit Hume highlighted Thursday night, at a March 13 forum held a day after Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy gave her an award for lifetime excellence in investigative reporting. In the March 14 Boston Globe, Mark Jurkowitz
quoted Amanpour's remarks (ellipses as they appeared in the Globe
story): For the entire Globe story: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/073/living/Post_
Thursday's World News Tonight on ABC illustrated the prevalent media attitude in which Palestinian polemic points are given full legitimacy. Peter Jennings talked with Barbara Walters in Saudi Arabia after she had interviewed the Crown Prince. One of Jennings' questions: "What did the Crown Prince say about the difficult issues of Palestinian rights to return to live in what is Israel today and what did he say about Jerusalem?" NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams set up the March 14 story: "These days you hear the question openly: Can there ever really be a peace deal with the current leaders in charge on both sides? Yasser Arafat, especially, has unique problems, which sometimes tried to solve by saying different things, depending on who is listening." Reporter Andrea Mitchell explained Arafat's
contradictions: "He's been the de facto leader of the Palestinians
for decades, once calling for total war. Now claiming he wants peace. But
which Yasser Arafat are we to believe? Critics say it's hard to tell,
because what he says often depends on whom he's talking to. There are
plenty of examples.
CyberAlert does not usually deal with local news stories, even in major national newspapers, but this one seems so endemic to the newspaper's ethos, that I thought I'd devote a few lines to it. Last week, the Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates in Virginia managed to get the session adjourned before liberal Democrats and liberal Republicans could push through a bill which would have placed on the ballot in Northern Virginia a referendum on imposing a regional sales tax hike to ostensibly pay for more transportation and education spending. This, after state spending has soared 44 percent over the past four years. With that as the background, check out how the
Washington Post, in all of its weekly "Extra" sections dedicated
to news about Northern Virginia localities, approached the situation --
not as a victory which saved residents from a tax hike, but as a failure.
"For N.Va. Area, a High-Stakes No-Hitter: Despite Differences, Hopes
for Salvaging Sales Tax Measure," read the March 14 headline over the
unbylined story, which began: For the entire story:
Meredith Viera, a former 60 Minutes
correspondent, also sat around the couch with Fonda. Walters, who earlier
called in from Saudi Arabia, did not participate in the Fonda segment. Fonda, who in 1972 traveled to North Vietnam
where she posed atop an anti-aircraft gun used to shoot-down U.S. planes
and did a radio broadcast praising the wonderful achievements of the enemy
communist regime over "U.S. imperialists," and who said
Americans should "not hail the POWs as heroes, because they are
hypocrites and liars" who were never tortured, claimed on The View
that all the actions she took during the Vietnam War were in order to save
U.S. soldiers from dying: She added that she was concerned about how the war "put our men in danger" and that veterans are mad at her only because they cannot "face" how their government lied to them. In a widely cited comment from 1970, Fonda had extolled: "It's my fondest wish that some day every American will get down on their knees and pray to God that some day they will have the opportunity to live in a communist society." Many millions died at the hands of communists in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam after the U.S. pulled out to leave Fonda's friends in charge. Fonda came aboard the March 14 The View to promote an anti-war play she is producing in New York City, Necessary Targets, about a New York City psychologist confronting the horrors of war in Bosnia. Fonda ruminated, as transcribed by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: "And then the Vietnam War, like a lot of people, I couldn't avoid dealing with the Vietnam War, and I realized that our government was lying to us. And I grew up believing, my father fought in the Pacific and I believed that our country was on the side of the angels and that we stood for integrity and peace and human rights, and when I discovered that we had been lied to and that tens of thousands of American men had died because our leaders wouldn't admit that they'd made a mistake even though they knew it privately, and now that's all come out. And I realized that if citizens don't become active and involved, they're going to get away with it, and so I've never looked back." That led Star Jones to wonder why people would
still hold a grudge against her: "I've been floored by the number
of e-mails this show received even now from Vietnam veterans, from their
families, that say ask her about this, ask her about that. I know that
you've moved past it and our country has moved past it, but how do
you-" I guess Jane Fonda never joined Ted Turner on any hunting trips. Via a Google.com search, I located a lot of pages with material about Fonda's actions and statements during the Vietnam era, but I cannot vouch for their accuracy, though I have no reason to believe anything below is inaccurate and I've stuck to what sounds familiar. Several sites feature the photo of Fonda atop
the anti-aircraft gun, including: Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, authors of the book, Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, show the picture on the book's cover: http://www.hanoijane.net/ Another site features the following recounting of Fonda's comments about American POWs: When American POWs finally began to return home (some of them having been held captive for up to nine years) and describe the tortures they had endured at the hands of the North Vietnamese, Jane Fonda quickly told the country that they should "not hail the POWs as heroes, because they are hypocrites and liars." Fonda said the idea that the POWs she had met in Vietnam had been tortured was "laughable," claiming: "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed." The POWs who said they had been tortured were "exaggerating, probably for their own self-interest," she asserted. She told audiences that "Never in the history of the United States have POWs come home looking like football players. These football players are no more heroes than Custer was. They're military careerist and professional killers" who are "trying to make themselves look self-righteous, but they are war criminals according to law." END Reprint of Web item That's from: http://www.geocities.com/fateymike/jane.html This Web page has the most stuff about Fonda, but be warned (or encouraged) that it also features a graphic of a man urinating on Fonda and a picture what purports to be a topless Fonda. A man named Grover Furr, who teaches a course about the Vietnam War at Montclair State College in New Jersey, has posted the text of Fonda's 1972 Hanoi radio broadcast. Furr's page for it: http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/fonda.html The text as Furr has it posted: Jane Fonda Broadcast from Hanoi, August 22, 1972 (The following public domain information is a transcript from the US Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas, HR 16742, 19-25 September, 1972, page 7671. From the CompuServe Military Veteran's Forum.) [Radio Hanoi attributes talk on DRV visit to Jane Fonda; from Hanoi in English to American servicemen involved in the Indochina War, 1 PM GMT, 22 August 1972. Text: Here's Jane Fonda telling her impressions at the end of her visit to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam; (follows recorded female voice with American accent);] This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life-workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers. I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well. In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me-the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country. I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam -- these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters. I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets -- schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system. As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly -- and I pressed my cheek against hers -- I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's. One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist. I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives. But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created-being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools-the children learning, literacy- illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives. And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders-and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism -- I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh. [recording ends] END Reprint of Fonda's radio broadcast The audience of ABC's The View heard nothing about what Fonda really said 30 years ago.
"Senator Sam? Sam Donaldson may not be getting any love from his bosses at ABC, but this afternoon he's joining Senate Democrats in a private luncheon in the U.S. Capitol. The bombastic newsman, who is rumored to be on his way out of ABC's weak Sunday political chat show, might be eyeing a run for the Senate in New Mexico, where he raises mohair-producing sheep on his federally subsidized ranch." Maybe George Stephanopoulos can be his campaign manager. -- Brent Baker
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Home | News Division
| Bozell Columns | CyberAlerts |
ABC's
social attitude adjustment agenda, "for the children." In the
worst kept secret in years, on Thursday night Rosie O'Donnell announced
to an ABC audience that she's a lesbian. Her "revelation"
occurred during a two-hour special edition of Prime Time Thursday, a
"special event" in the words of host Diane Sawyer, devoted to
promoting a pet cause of O'Donnell's, allowing gay and lesbian couples
to adopt kids and, specifically, her quest to overturn a Florida law which
bars homosexual foster parents from adopting.
CNN's
Christiane Amanpour complained that the Bush team "is getting a lot
of cover" from journalists because patriotism in the media means
reporters "are afraid of challenging the administration."
In the
midst of the usual media focus on the "cycle of violence" in
Israel and the supposed over-reaction of Israel to terrorist attacks,
Thursday's NBC Nightly News featured a refreshing piece of journalism by
Andrea Mitchell. She documented how Yasser Arafat regularly promises peace
in English while at the very same time urging his followers to murder
Israelis. One example, earlier this year he announced: "Into
Jerusalem we shall go as millions of martyrs as need be."
The
failure to enact some kind of a tax hike or a mechanism to allow one is a
failure to the Washington Post, one requiring an examination of "what
went wrong."
Jane
Fonda's revisionist history enabled by clueless panelists on ABC's The
View. Interviewing Fonda on the March 14 edition of the ABC day time
program created by Barbara Walters, former NBC News reporter Star Jones
was baffled by why Vietnam veterans are still disgusted at Fonda:
"I've been floored by the number of e-mails this show received even
now from Vietnam veterans, from their families..."
Sam
Donaldson for Senate? The New York Post's "Page Six" gossip
column on Thursday included this intriguing item, to which the MRC's
Rich Noyes alerted me: