Executive Producer Who Decried Liberal Bias Leaves World News Tonight
Page One
Friend of Bill Takes Over at ABC
Less than a year after naming Emily Rooney Executive
Producer of World News Tonight, ABC replaced her in early January with
Rick Kaplan, a Bill Clinton friend who twice helped rescue his
presidential campaign.
In a September 27 Electronic Media story Rooney
stated: "I think we are aware, as everybody who works in the media
is, that the old stereotype of the liberal bent happens to be true, and
we're making a concerted effort to really look for more from the other,
without being ponderous and lecturing or trying to convert people to
another way of thinking."
The Washington Post attributed her removal to
"clashes" with Peter Jennings and to creating a "chaotic
atmosphere" by having stories "edited and re-edited by three
or four different editors." But the Post's Ellen Edwards also noted
"she raised a further ruckus this fall when she said in
interviews... that the broadcast would take a closer look at
conservative views in order to counteract the `liberal bent' of the
media."
Rooney's exit may not eliminate the effort she began.
Last fall, Jennings conceded in TV Guide that the American Agenda had
"revolved around a liberal axis," but promised to "pay
more attention to what conservatives are saying."
But Kaplan, Executive Producer of Prime Time Live
since 1989, advised Clinton in 1992. When the Gennifer Flowers story
broke in February, "Clinton called Kaplan for advice," Los
Angeles Times reporter Tom Rosenstiel recounted in his campaign book
Strange Bedfellows. On the way to the airport, Clinton made another call
to Kaplan and the "night ended for Kaplan at 4am, when Clinton
called one last time."
Rosenstiel reported that Clinton "was considering
doing 60 Minutes. If you do, Kaplan said, it should be with Mike Wallace
or Morley Safer or Ed Bradley. Otherwise tell them forget it....[Voters]
are going to remember that you stood up to Mike Wallace."
Two months later as Clinton's campaign floundered in
New York, aides suggested an appearance on the Don Imus show. "The
appearance was clinched," CNN producer Matthew Saal recalled in the
January 1993 Washington Monthly, "when Rick Kaplan... called the
radio show host to see if he could get the pair together. The answer was
yes."
Kaplan's closeness has impacted coverage. In a March
11 Prime Time Live story, Sam Donaldson explained that he added a
positive remark at the end of a pre-election Clinton interview because
Kaplan said "the overall [interview] atmosphere was too
tough." In the March 21 Washington Post Magazine, David Finkel
quoted Kaplan as he watched Donaldson's interview: "I'd just like
to do this one over again...I'm getting angry watching this...You didn't
treat Bush this way."
Revolving Door
Talbott Promoted at State
Time's Number 2
As the year ended, the Clinton Administration
nominated Strobe Talbott, Ambassador-at-Large to the former Soviet
Republics, to the number two State Dept. slot. The new Deputy Secretary
served as Time's diplomatic correspondent until becoming Washington
Bureau Chief in 1985. Four years later he took the Editor-at-Large
title.
Talbott's thinking matches the liberal world view. A
January 1, 1990 essay carried this headline: "Gorbachev is helping
the West by showing that the Soviet threat isn't what it used to be --
and what's more, that it never was."
On the September 21, 1991 Inside Washington, he
asserted that Reagan made zero difference in the Cold War: "The
difference from the Kremlin standpoint...between a conservative
Republican administration and a liberal Democratic administration was
not that great. The Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War ended almost
overwhelmingly because of internal contradictions and pressures within
the Soviet Union and the Soviet system itself. And even if Jimmy Carter
had been reelected and been followed by Walter Mondale, something like
what we have now seen probably would have happened."
Indeed, Talbott opposed Reagan's successful policies.
In the May 21, 1984 Time, he insisted: "The Reagan Administration
has made a bad situation worse in two ways: First, by convincing the
Soviet leaders that the U.S. no longer accepts military parity as the
basis for relations with Moscow; second, by challenging the legitimacy
of the Soviet regime, calling the USSR an `evil empire' doomed to
fail."
Talbott even suggested there was little difference
between the Gulf War and Soviet soldiers quashing the liberation of the
Baltic states, writing in the January 28, 1991 edition: "There was
a bizarre similarity between what Gorbachev and Bush felt compelled to
do last week. Each was resorting to force in the name of law and
order."
On the home front, Talbott's a true FOB. After the
1990 G-7 economic summit, he wrote: "The U.S. has the lowest tax
level of any country among the seven represented in Houston last week.
That is a distinction that should inspire neither pride nor optimism in
America."
During the 1992 campaign Talbott used his position at
Time to help his friend and Oxford roommate, Bill Clinton. In the April
6 edition, in the midst of Clinton's draft evasion scandal, Talbott
declared the time had come for "full disclosure," and asserted
Clinton came to London in the fall of 1969 unsure whether he'd be
drafted. But days after the magazine came out, Cliff Jackson, a former
Friend of Bill, produced a letter documenting how Clinton had received a
draft induction notice in April of 1969, proving Talbott wrong.
In the fall of 1992, Jackson wrote a letter to Time
Managing Editor Henry Muller: "I know that Strobe was one of the
chief architects of Bill Clinton's scheme to avoid his draft
notice." Jackson continued: "I have a crystal clear
recollection of Strobe and Bill standing in my office door at Republican
State headquarters in the summer of 1969 and discussing the plan,
devised by Bill with the able assistance of friends, to kill his draft
notice and secure a deferment." Muller refused to publish the
letter, and the media have ignored Jackson's story.
Page
Three
Fascists, Communists on "Right"
Russian Labels Blur
In her Newsweek column of June 12, 1989, Washington
Post Editorial Page Editor Meg Greenfield wrote: "Every time there
is a confrontation in the world, we manage to dub the good guys liberals
and the bad guys conservatives and pretty soon that is common
currency." Nowhere is that statement more accurate than in the
media's characterization of the 1991 communist coup and the 1993 success
of fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
On the August 22, 1991 World News, CNN's Gene Randall
characterized the coup as an "ill-fated right-wing junta."
Likewise, an August 26 story by Los Angeles Times reporter John-Thor
Dahlburg referred to "the right-wing coup."
Two years later labeling remained ubiquitous. On the
December 13 World News Tonight, ABC's Mike Lee delivered the following
one-liner: "The big winner is the ultra-conservative Liberal
Democratic Party." Only in the media would the words
ultra-conservative and liberal appear back-to-back. On the next night's
CBS Evening News, Dan Rather declared: "Russia's next presidential
election isn't scheduled until 1996, but the right wing now has a power
base in parliament." The December 15 Today featured NBC's Bryant
Gumbel referring to Zhirinovsky as "the popular new darling of the
Russian right."
Yet it was NBC's Bob Abernethy who had the worst time
distinguishing between the two events. In 1991 he referred to the
communist coup as "the hard-line right." This year he
described the fascists as "Zhirinovsky and his far-right
ideas," "the right-wing extremism of Zhirinovsky," and
"Russia's right-wing extremists."
Ironically, the same media that consistently label
both communists and fascists as right-wing cried foul when it came to
the labeling of Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party. In the December
13 Washington Post, the same Fred Hiatt who two years earlier reported
on "the failed right-wing coup" by communists, alerted his
readers to "Zhirinovsky's misleadingly named Liberal Democratic
Party." On the December 14 Nightline ABC's Ted Koppel commented:
"His party, the Liberal Democrats, which may be the biggest
misnomer since Adolf Hitler called his party the National Socialists,
Zhirinovsky's party won and won big."
NewsBites
Bryant Confesses
Today co-host Bryant Gumbel rarely lets an opportunity pass to
deride Reaganomics. But on the PBS talk show Charlie Rose
January 4, Gumbel expressed a lack of confidence:
"I always feel least qualified when I'm dealing with economics...for the
life of me, it's just not one of those things that adheres to me. I'm
not very good at it, and I don't feel wholly comfortable arguing about
it." Lack of knowledge didn't hold Gumbel back when he falsely claimed
in 1989: "Largely as a result of the policies and priorities of the
Reagan Administration, more people are becoming poor and staying poor in
this country than at any time since World War II."
Gumbel vs. Gumbel
In the same interview, Gumbel revealed his contradictory standards on
politicians and personal lives -- tough on Republicans, easy on
Democrats. When Rose brought up the Arkansas state troopers' story about
Clinton, Gumbel responded: "When Bill Clinton was elected, I think some
of us probably felt, 'Hey, you know what, the American public has
finally grown up and maybe that fascination is passé, and it's fading.'
But the recent round of what's been going on with the same person leads
me to think that no, that was wishful thinking on many of our parts."
But in 1991, Gumbel did three straight mornings of
interviews with Kitty Kelley on her book of unsubstantiated allegations
about the Reagans. On CNN's April 24, 1991 Larry King Live,
Gumbel declared: "I'm one of those people who generally has liked
Kitty's writing in the past. I know all of the research she does. I'm
aware of the fact that for all the things she's written that are
controversial, she has yet to lose a lawsuit...Kitty is a very brave
woman."
Classified Comedy
Boston Globe reporter John Aloysius Farrell, in his December 25
"Washington Notebook" column, portrayed The American Spectator
as hypocritical for airing allegations of President Clinton's Arkansas
womanizing, despite being "the butt of jokes here for its classified
advertisements for mail-order Chinese brides." Farrell added: "The
sudden sympathy for exploited women seems out of place for the
Spectator, a conservative journal that routinely delights in
savaging Hillary Rodham Clinton, Anita Hill, Susan Faludi, and other
feminists." Farrell remarked that an "ad for `Attractive Oriental Ladies
seeking correspondence, marriage' appeared in the December issue" and
"in October, a Spectator ad for a Hawaiian company promised:
`Thai-Asian-Worldwide Ladies Desire lifemates.'" To Farrell, such ads
"stir up images of retired colonels in leather chairs at stuffy men's
clubs, dreaming of submissive Asian servant girls."
Using Farrell's standard, how should classified ads in
liberal magazines be judged? In The Nation on November 15, an
ad by "Eva" offered "taboo fantasies discussed with integrity,
intelligence." He didn't imagine the kind of reader who would respond to
this Mother Jones ad, inviting "heterosexual crossdressers [to]
join a social support group." When liberal magazines run stories about
conservatives' personal lives, will Farrell use the same test?
Firearm Frenzy
The Boston Globe and USA Today have reduced the crime
problem to one cause -- guns. In a December 29 USA Today cover story,
reporter Tony Mauro claimed: "A consensus has formed that something must
be done to reduce the availability of guns. On every street corner, at
the workplace, in the classroom. It is a consensus born of fear." He
cited "poll numbers in favor of gun control, hovering close to 90
percent," though a USA Today poll showed stricter gun control ranked
fifth as a solution, and support for a handgun ban was the lowest since
1959. Mauro admitted: "In the newsroom of USA Today, which prides itself
on drawing its staff from a cross-section of the nation, it was hard to
find editors and reporters who had ever pulled a trigger."
The December 19 Boston Globe devoted a front page
story to reporter Gregg Krupa's assertions that "a sharp increase in
murders involving handguns coincides with the retooling of the industry
and the expansion of its markets. As sales and profits have grown, the
number of handgun-related homicides in the United States has jumped by
nearly 50 percent since 1986." Krupa added the NRA has "insulated gun
manufacturers from any involvement in the national debate over
firearms...a mutually beneficial relationship in which the NRA pushes
for a free flow of guns and the manufacturers reap profits in open and
expandable markets." So far, no Globe story on how Planned Parenthood
does the same for abortion providers.
Where's the Footnote?
Exaggerated stories about homeless and hungry children never seem to
lose their appeal to the media. On December 2, CBS reporter Giselle
Fernandez began her Evening News holiday season hard-luck story:
"Tonight, thousands across the country hope to light up the nation's
conscience, and spotlight the tragedy of more than a million kids living
homeless on the streets." Without mentioning a source for her figure,
Fernandez reported the "struggle to survive the streets every night" of
three New York youths. Anecdotal evidence aside, a review by the
prestigious National Academy of Sciences found that "studies seeking to
provide an estimate of the number of homeless children...are
nonexistent."
On December 20, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw reported: "It's
estimated there are five million kids in America who go hungry every
month." But in August, a dubious Tufts University study (also cited by
Brokaw) claimed only that 12 million children were hungry at some time
during 1991. Brokaw's new claim even exceeded that. He concluded
flippantly: "Whatever the number, in a country with these resources,
it's still hard to believe." It sure is.
I Am Bernie, Hear Me Roar
CNN anchor Bernard Shaw used the platform of the annual Frank E. Gannett
lecture before the Freedom Forum on December 8 to attack American men:
"Most American males are wimps in the battle against sexism and sexual
harassment." Sounding like a spokesperson for NOW, Shaw parroted
feminist arguments on pay discrimination: "Ladies and gentlemen, women
now constitute more than 50 percent of the United States' work force.
Yet, where they work full-time they barely earn an average of 75 cents
of the dollar taken home by their male co-workers. Why? Where in our
Constitution or ethics does it say women must pay a gender tax?"
Shaw went on to attack men's lack of concern for
women's health: "Because of attitudes, most women speak in very low
voices about these life and death matters, and wouldn't dare try to
engage husbands and boyfriends in discussions about this. And frankly
99.9 percent of us males wouldn't want to hear it anyway. We're not that
sensitive yet...And yet, when we men get sick or are troubled by
recurring medical problems, we insist that the world stop. Halt!" Shaw's
advice for men? "Our attitudes must change in some very basic ways.
Example: My boss is Ted Turner. When we are together, I don't greet him
by saying, `Hi Ted, honey, or darling, or sweetie.' I don't have
fondling thoughts and wandering hands with him." Jane will be glad to
hear that.
Wallace's Liberal Flashback
Mike Wallace took a trip back to a turbulent time in our history, when
everyone in America was protesting against Vietnam, the white power
structure, and the Miss America Pageant. You didn't? The history in the
December 22 CBS Reports: 1968 may be very different from how most people
remember it.
The special focused on major events like the Vietnam
War and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
But some news of 1968 was strained through a liberal filter. The
victorious Nixon campaign took up only 25 seconds in the one-hour
broadcast, while the short McCarthy campaign of that year was allotted
85 seconds, and an obscure feminist protest outside the Miss America
Pageant was given two minutes and 15 seconds. All 14 people who
remembered 1968 were liberals, ranging from radical activist Tom Hayden
to Johnson Administration official Joseph Califano to former Black
Panther Bobby Rush. Conservatives? None made the cut.
Designing Women's Issues
"Women's Agenda Advanced/A `Productive Year' in Capitol," read the
headline in the December 3 USA Today. Reporter Leslie Phillips claimed
that "more laws benefitting women and families passed Congress this year
-- and were signed by President Clinton -- than any previous first year
of a congressional session." While most of the issues Phillips mentioned
wouldn't find much opposition, two of them are controversial: mandated
family leave and abortion. "Women in the House lost, by a surprisingly
large margin, on the `Hyde amendment,' which bans government money from
being used for Medicaid abortions, [Rep. Pat] Schroeder said."
Conservative women? They weren't quoted.
Why have the "women's issues" done so well? "Schroeder
attributed the 1993 legislative record to a President who supports the
women's agenda and increased sensitivity and recognition by male
politicians that female voters are a powerful interest group." Since
Phillips chose only Schroeder's views, a better headline might have been
"One Woman's Agenda Advanced."
The Great States
Hawaii and Vermont are two states which are "ahead" of Washington on
health care "reform," reported USA Today. On November 15, reporter Judi
Hasson filed two stories on Hawaii. One found Hawaiians who love their
health plans, including: "I didn't realize how good I had it," "It's
pretty good," and "It's been wonderful. I even got to choose a doctor."
The only negative quote came from an uninsured woman who qualified for
Medicaid but never applied. The other story interviewed state health
director John Lewin who believes "Hawaii is `living proof' that employer
mandates work." After 17 paragraphs of Lewin's liberal views, she quoted
mandate opponents Sam Sloan of Small Business Hawaii and Rep. Jim
Cooper, whose health plan avoids employer mandates.
On November 30, the headline read "Message from
Vermont: Health Reform Easy to Swallow." Reporter Richard Wolf lauded
Vermont: "While most of the country is just learning the lexicon of
reform, more than a half-million people here are marching in relative
lockstep toward a brave new health-care world. Their message to
Washington: Watch us." Wolf explained: "While Clinton may be forced to
scale back his ambitious plan, [Governor Howard] Dean's is considered
moderate here in the face of broad support for a government system like
Canada's." Wolf quoted only Dean, Ted Kennedy, state Senator Peter
Shumlin and Jenny Carter, Naderite staff attorney for the Vermont Public
Interest Research Group. Voices of opposition to the potential plan:
None.
A Tale of Two Tailhooks
Accusations of sexual abuse made by Lt. Paula Coughlin in June 1992
against rowdy sailors at the Tailhook convention were closely followed
by the media. But there's been little press interest in Lt. Coughlin's
own behavior at the convention.
In December, The Washington Times reported Dr. Karye
LaRocque, a civilian Tailhook attendee married to a naval officer,
testified to a military court that she saw Coughlin "chugging champagne
from the bottle," "groping and grabbing" men and rubbing her "crotch"
and breasts against some of them. Only one report, an August 17, 1993
piece by CBS reporter Jim Stewart, mentioned Coughlin's drinking, but no
one covered LaRocque's revelations.
Tailhook defendant Lt. Rolando Diaz testified last
summer that he ceremonially shaved Coughlin's legs during the drunken
party at Tailhook. In exchange she autographed a banner he had
advertising leg shavings. According to the Navy's Tailhook report,
consensual leg shaving is conduct unbecoming an officer, but her illegal
action has never been mentioned by the networks.
Janet
Cooke Award
Newsweek Celebrates 60th Anniversary with Mostly Liberal Historical Essays
Magazine of the News or the Left?
What is a news magazine these days? America's news
magazines serve less as weekly news summaries and more as journals of
opinion. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Newsweek, the magazine
almost made the transformation complete, with a two-page essay on each
decade from the 1930s to the 1990s. For selecting essayists who mostly
rewrote history with a left-wing bent, Newsweek's January 3 issue earned
the Janet Cooke Award.
Newsweek remembered the '30s with an essay by Tillie
Olsen, who told of being oppressed and jailed for communist activities:
"I'd been working at Armour's and now distributed leaflets to
meatpackers at Swift's, in a near blizzard, for the Young Communist
League. Plenty of communists then, before it got so bitter and confusing
abroad. Pushing for a 10-cent-an-hour raise was `communist
inspired.'" Olsen wrote of the Cold War: "Some of us, bruised
by the Fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, were ahead...in
anticipating the conflict to come."
But to Olsen, the '30s were the glory days of FDR:
"In 1932, we voted Franklin D. Roosevelt into office...images
helped rouse us to act, to say that hunger is morally wrong and there
must be another way....[Roosevelt] always, always said hunger is wrong,
joblessness is wrong.'" Olsen said that with the arrival of FDR,
industry "had to contend with a federal government that
consistently intervened on the side of the people."
Newsweek turned right for the 1940s, summoning ABC's
David Brinkley, who wrote the book Washington Goes to War. Brinkley
remembered something different: "Americans [were] cranky and
irritated after watching Roosevelt try one economic nostrum after
another, all meant to end the Depression and create jobs. They all
failed." Brinkley described how tax withholding was born during
World War II: "Members of Congress were happy to find they now had
a Niagara of money flooding into Washington, all ready for them to
spend. Even when the war was long over, there was never any thought of
ending the withholding tax."
Author John Updike ambivalently looked at the '50s:
"As in the '20s, business interests reasserted control over
government. Idealism retreated from the public sector; each man was an
island." Updike found a "military rigor in its ticky-tacky
housing developments and sternly boxy skyscrapers; a kind of platoon
discipline in its swiftly assembled families" and "blacklists,
congressional show trials and meaningless, redundant loyalty oaths for a
time gave patriotism an ugly face." But he ended: "What one
decade -- a bit of a fuddy-duddy, but no fool -- had carefully saved,
the next recklessly spent."
But the last 30 years were reserved for the leftists.
Former Time essayist Garry Wills defended the 1960s: "The '60s play
the same role in modern conservative thought that the Fall of Man does
in Christian theology. Prelapsarian America was an idyllic time before
the Present Ugliness....It is odd to hear conservatives say that the
'60s caused disrespect for authority -- this from people who applauded
Ronald Reagan as he said, while in government, that government is the
problem not the solution, that it must be starved and mocked. This
position used to be called anarchism." Wills ended: "Insofar
as the '60s are still a force in our present, we need more of them, not
less -- more civil rights, more women's rights, more gay rights, more
citizens' say in government, less censorship, and less hypocrisy."
The 1970s were reserved for former New York Times
reporter Gloria Emerson, who celebrated protesting soldiers and
veterans: "It was a group of Vietnam veterans who gave the last
angry blow to the war and I loved them for it." As for the late
'70s, Emerson ventured "some specifics were splendid: the Camp
David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt welded by President Jimmy
Carter; his human-rights policy too. But when the imperial Shah of
Shahs, our protege in the Middle East, was deposed in Iran in 1979 and
the Ayatollah Khomeini reigned, this decent man went down in
flames."
Leftist Princeton professor Cornel West torched the
1980s as "Market Culture Run Amok," theorizing: "For the
first time since the 1920s, the political Right -- along with highly
organized conservative corporate and bank elites -- boldly attempted to
reform American society." The result? "Increased crime,
violence, disease (e.g. AIDS), tensions over race, gender, and sexual
orientation, decrepit public schools, ecological abuse, and a faltering
physical infrastructure. In short, Reaganomics resulted in waves of
economic recovery, including millions of new jobs (many part-time),
alongside a relative drop in the well-being of a majority of
Americans."
Politically, West wrote, "A strategy of `positive
polarization' (especially playing the racial card) has realigned the
electorate into a predominantly white conservative Republican Party and
a thoroughly bewildered centrist Democratic Party." The '90s were
covered by humorist Dave Barry's essay making fun of both political
parties.
Newsweek Senior Writer Jonathan Alter made the
selections of essayists for the special issue. In an interview with
MediaWatch, he explained the final liberal slant to the essays wasn't
their original idea: "I wanted Tom Wolfe for one of those decades,
and he wouldn't do it. He was too busy."
Alter added: "I would argue that [John Updike]
wrote a conservative essay about the '50s, and a lot of people would
have written about the sins of McCarthyism and the narrow-minded this
and that. I'll tell you one other person who we wanted to get for this
project, and unfortunately, we weren't able to get him...We wanted to
get Richard Nixon on the '50s." Alter also mentioned: "I
thought Brinkley made some interesting points...Of course you won't
mention that."
When asked about the selection of Cornel West, Alter
asserted: "There are a lot of different interpretations of the
'80s, and we ran a cover story by George Will at the end of the '80s
["How Reagan Changed America," January 8, 1989] that I think
would have been much more to your liking. We didn't have any kind of
liberal reply at all to the '80s, and this was the other view, which we
tried to offset, in at least in a minor way, with Jim Baker...We
actually did a little bit of the Media Research Center's agenda by
getting John Ehrlichman to do a media-bashing sidebar on the '70s."
Baker and Ehrlichman expressed short views in small boxes that
accompanied the essays. Other boxes solicited the views of liberals
Daniel Inouye ('40s), Betty Friedan ('50s), Tom Hayden ('60s), and Randy
Shilts ('90s).
The more news magazines like Newsweek and Time dwell
on opinion to differentiate themselves from the rest of the news media,
the more they blur into an echo of liberal opinion magazines. When will
Newsweek decide: Is it a magazine of the news, or a magazine of the
Left?
Review
Conscientious Objectors to Trooper Allegations Jumped on Tower, Thomas, Nancy Reagan
"Holier-Than-Thou" Hypocrisy
The revelations of four Arkansas state troopers who
declared that then-Gov. Bill Clinton used them to set up liaisons with
women received a nearly identical amount of coverage as Clinton's last
"bimbo eruption." The Gennifer Flowers story drew only 14
stories on the four network evening news shows in a six-day period.
Likewise, the trooper story attracted only 22 stories in a 12-day
period, nine of them on CNN.
Liberals often fend off charges of bias by suggesting
critics are conspiracy theorists. When David Brock's American
Spectator article spurred the Los Angeles Times to publish
its trooper story, it was Times Washington Bureau Chief Jack
Nelson who cried foul on the PBS show Washington Week in Review
on December 24: "There was a conspiracy, in my opinion, by
right-wingers, including some right-wing journalists, to press this
newspaper into running this story before it was ready to." Nelson
named ABC's Brit Hume and New Republic writer Fred Barnes: "They
were all promoting this story."
Some media outlets tried to avoid the story as
tasteless and unsourced. Many of those conscientious objectors had taken
a decidedly different approach when the targets of leaks and gossip were
conservatives.
Media outlets did not ignore unproven charges of
personal behavior made against Sen. John Tower in his failed nomination
for defense secretary; or Kitty Kelley's gossipy book about Nancy Reagan
and her sex life, including lesbian affairs, fellatio with Hollywood
directors, and supposed White House liaisons between the First Lady and
Frank Sinatra; or Anita Hill's charges against Justice Clarence Thomas,
despite, as Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot put it,
"Ms. Flowers now has more corroboration than Anita Hill ever
did." Here's a small sample of the hypocrisy:
CBS. CBS Evening News failed
to mention the story until Mrs. Clinton denounced it, two days after the
other networks, and then only in passing. Executive Producer Erik
Sorenson downplayed the story because he found it was just
"circumstantial evidence. No women have come forward. I don't want
to put these guys on the air because everyone else is doing it." He
told The Boston Globe December 23: "I don't want to act
holier-than-thou, but the walls are definitely tumbling down."
But on March 2, 1989, CBS Evening News aired
allegations of John Tower fondling women and abusing alcohol based
solely on a source, Bob Jackson, who was discharged from the military
for "mixed personality disorder and anti-social and hysterical
features." On April 8, 1990, CBS reporter Mark Phillips did an
entire story on Kitty Kelley's Nancy Reagan book, concluding:
"Is the stuff in the book true or just vindictive tales? Who knows?
Who cares?"
Last August, CBS This Morning interviewed,
Susan Trento, whose book contained a footnote about a dead ambassador
who guessed George Bush had an affair. CBS This Morning did
mention the trooper story in an interview with political experts Bob
Beckel and Fred Barnes, but did not secure any of the principals for an
interview.
The New York Times. As in
the Gennifer Flowers case, the Times initially buried Clinton's
sex scandal in small wire stories on the back pages. Washington Bureau
Chief R.W. Apple proclaimed "The New York Times is not a
supermarket tabloid." But the Times ran a front-page
Maureen Dowd story the day before the release of Kitty Kelley's book --
without any of Kelley's critics, or any attempt to prove Kelley's
allegations. The Times also ran a 1991 Fox Butterfield article
which revealed the name of William Kennedy Smith's accuser and described
her "wild streak," her fondness for drinking, and her speeding
tickets.
The Wall Street Journal.
Washington Bureau Chief Alan Murray also disdained the story. "It's
two troopers who are trying to get a book deal. Without a great deal
more corroboration, we wouldn't touch it." Indeed, the Journal
buried the scandal deep within stories on other subjects. But they
didn't spike the Hill story. Two of Murray's reporters, Jill Abramson
and Jane Mayer, have sold movie rights to their forthcoming book on the
uncorroborated charges against Clarence Thomas, titled Strange
Justice.
Newsweek. Newsweek
ran the trooper story, but accompanied it with attacks by the magazine's
"Conventional Wisdom Watch," which said David Brock
"swallows any pond scum that fits his right-wing agenda,"
called Cliff Jackson an "obsessed Clinton hater," and the
troopers "slimy fibbers peddling stale fascinatin' tales. One-third
true?" Columnist Joe Klein suggested: "As long as the
peccadilloes remain within reason, the American people will have great
tolerance for a President who has not only seen the sunshine of Oxford,
but the dusky Dunkin' Donuts of the soul."
On The McLaughlin Group, Newsweek reporter
Eleanor Clift denounced the Brock article: "It is full of innuendo
and bias... You have to look at the credibility and the motives of the
people making the charges instead of just the President's
credibility."
But Jonathan Alter, Newsweek's media critic
and "Conventional Wisdom" writer, wrote a long cover story on
Kitty Kelley's book on April 22, 1991, concluding: "If even a small
fraction of the material amassed and borrowed here turns out to be true,
Ronald Reagan and his wife had to be among the most hypocritical people
ever to live in the White House." In Newsweek the week
before, Clift hailed the Kelley book: "If privacy ends where
hypocrisy begins, Kitty Kelley's steamy exposé of Nancy Reagan is a
contribution to contemporary history."
PBS/NPR. National Public Radio
reporter Nina Totenberg, who publicized Hill's unproven charges, decried
the trooper story on Inside Washington December 25. "You
get allegations that are printed in a fringe magazine, or at least a
magazine with a very definite political agenda, and then you see...how
long it takes the rest of the press to come and bite." Paul Duke,
the moderator of Washington Week in Review, declared on
December 31: "One of my losers of the year is David Brock, who
wrote that slimy magazine article that revived all those old charges
about Bill Clinton's personal behavior, and I regarded that as
journalism which is truly out of bounds."
But during PBS coverage of the Hill-Thomas hearings on
October 12, 1991, when Sen. John Danforth criticized the role of liberal
groups in pressing Anita Hill to come forward, Duke disagreed:
"There's criticism being directed at these groups but it seems to
me this is in the American spirit. This is in the oldest American
tradition of lobbying, where people organize for their causes and they
band together....and so I think some of the critics are off base when
they condemn this so strenuously, because these groups are representing
significant segments of the population."
On
the Bright Side
Boxing Helen Thomas
Asked "Do you sense a liberal bias in the
press?" on the December 31 C-SPAN Journalists' Roundtable, UPI
White House reporter Helen Thomas responded: "A liberal bias? I
don't know what a liberal bias is. Do you mean do we care about the poor
the sick and the maimed? Do we care whether people are being shot every
day on the streets of America? If that's liberal, so be it. I think it's
every- thing that's good in life, that we do care. And also for the
solutions, we seek solutions and we do think that we are all responsible
for what happens in this country."
A few minutes later Knight-Ridder Washington News
Editor Stephen Smith explained: "I think Clinton was roughed up by
the press this year. I don't think he got proper credit for a lot of the
things that he did. But, oddly enough, I think that a lot of the
criticism stemmed from disappointment. People, reporters who felt that
Clinton was going to achieve certain things and had certain standards,
and then felt let down by the way he performed in his stumbling phase;
and they really pounced. Particularly after the campaign coverage, which
I think had been puffy. I think that he did get a good campaign ride
compared to Bush and then he paid the price later on."
Why the free ride during the campaign followed by
disappointment once Clinton won? Smith suggested an answer: "I
think if you went through the newsrooms of America and screamed out
`will all Republicans please raise their hands,' you would go long and
far without seeing many hands."
Hattori Unmasks Mao
CBS reporter James Hattori unmasked Mao Zedong's
murderous reign, which has often been ignored by journalists while Mao
was in power and after his death. The December 24 CBS Evening News piece
marking the 100th anniversary of Mao's birth reported on official
celebrations in China which "don't include Mao's shortcomings. No
mention whatsoever of his failed economic and social policies which
caused so much pain to countless millions of Chinese."
Unlike many reports on China, this one avoided
interviewing any government officials. Instead, most of the talking
heads in the piece were longtime political prisoners, American communist
Sidney Rittenberg and author Nien Cheng. Mao's former doctor was also
interviewed, charging that the Chairman was a philanderer.
Hattori described the war Mao waged against his
people: "It was Mao's so-called `Great Leap Forward' to reform
agriculture that resulted in massive starvation in the early 1960s, and
as many as 30 million dead. Then he used his cult popularity to spark
the `Cultural Revolution,' leaving millions more dead, purged, or
imprisoned."
Page
Eight
TV Truth Squads Take the Day Off
Entitled to Errors
"When President Clinton opened a day-long seminar
on entitlement spending yesterday in Pennsylvania, he painted a somewhat
distorted picture of trends in federal taxation, poverty, and his own
deficit-reduction program...the President made statements that did not
always match available statistics," reported Major Garrett in the
December 14 Washington Times.
For example, Garrett wrote: "He [Clinton] said
there had been `30 years of family [income] decline concentrated heavily
among the poor.'" Census Bureau figures show median family income
grew by one-half of 1 percent from 1970 to 1991, with the highest and
steadiest period of income growth for all families occurring from 1983
to 1989. Garrett further reported: "The President touted cuts in
entitlement spending for farm subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans
benefits." Garrett noted however that while the Clinton budget does
include reductions in the growth of entitlement programs, in actuality,
entitlement spending is projected to increase from $764 billion in 1993
to $1.3 trillion by 1998. So how did the networks and papers, which all
covered the Pennsylvania conference and all regularly focused on
Reagan's gaffes, react? They didn't.
In fact, only ABC's Brit Hume on the December 13 World
News Tonight pointed out the contradiction in Clinton addressing an
entitlement-reduction conference when "Clinton has, by his health
care plan, proposed one of the biggest expansions of federal entitlement
benefits in recent history." The fact checkers in the media
obviously have a different set of standards for their fellow liberals.
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