No Such Media Concern During Iran-Contra, Wedtech, Sununugate...
Page One
The Whitewater Wimp Factor
Presidents Reagan and Bush had to live through
numerous media- driven scandals that distracted each from pursuing their
agenda. Then the Whitewater scandal erupted on President Clinton. The
media reaction? A sudden concern for overdoing it and its detrimental
impact upon Clinton's policies.
"The press is on a rampage," complained U.S.
News Editor-in-Chief Mort Zuckerman in his April 11 issue: "We
cannot afford a failed presidency, especially if it is falsely damaged
by innuendo, speculation and hyperinflated interpretation of events a
decade or more ago."
A month earlier, on March 11, Boston Globe
Washington Bureau Chief David Shribman called Whitewater "a cheap
dime-store novel transformed into a Washington page-turner" by an
inept White House staff and the Vince Foster suicide. The next day, Washington
Post reporter Howard Kurtz wrote a front-page story titled
"Media Awash in Whitewater, Some Critics Warn," noting the
disapproval of old CBS hands Walter Cronkite ("definitely
overheated") and Marvin Kalb ("There is a rushing to judgment
that is unprofessional and distasteful"). On CNBC's Talk Live
March 30, NBC's Bryant Gumbel described Whitewater coverage as "too
much, off-target."
In a March 28 CNN Inside Politics story,
Bruce Morton claimed "the trouble with Whitewater may be that there
is less there there: no crime, as far as is known, no broken promise to
the voters, either."
He blamed the story on media competition and, though
the biggest revelations came from The New York Times and
The Washington Times, on "gossip. Poorly sourced stories that
start out in the supermarket tabloids or on tabloid TV on Monday are in
the mainstream press and the network newscasts by Tuesday. Gossip's a
lot easier to write than tough, investigative pieces or stories about
the health care debate."
Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein asked in the
March 21 issue: "The time for Watergate comparisons may yet come,
but what if it doesn't? Do we, the righteous guardians of the truth,
admit that we blew this all out of proportion -- or do we continue to
puff motes into dust storms in order to justify our investment? The
Clintons have earned their isolation. But they deserve a more sober
hearing than this lunatic cauldron."
Many reporters agree. The April 4 Time ran a
chart showing 75 articles in a month in major outlets used both
"feeding frenzy" and "Whitewater." But a Center for
Media and Public Affairs analysis found that from March 1 to 20, the Big
Three networks aired 86 Whitewater stories, or 4.3 per night, compared
to 12.9 per night at the beginning of Iran-Contra in 1986, and 13.4
nightly during the eruption of Watergate in the spring of '73.
Revolving Door
Baer to the Rescue
U.S. News & World Report
has made its second contribution to the White House staff. Nine-year
veteran Donald Baer has taken the title of Director of Speechwriting and
Research. Baer held the title of Associate Editor until becoming a
Senior Editor in 1988. Since late 1991 he's been an Assistant Managing
Editor in charge of the up-front "Outlook" section. Last May, U.S.
News Editor-at- Large and former Editor David Gergen became
counselor to the President. Also working in Baer's shop: Carolyn Curiel,
a former Nightline producer and New York Times editor,
and Alison Muscatine, a former sports and metro news reporter for The
Washington Post.
NBC's Re-Run Ross
When President Carter took office, Thomas Ross
abandoned his position as Washington Bureau Chief of the Chicago
Sun-Times to become Assistant Secretary of Defense for public
affairs. With the election 12 years later of another Democratic
President, Ross is back in politics. He's signed on as Special Assistant
to the President and Senior Director for public affairs at the National
Security Council.
From 1986 to 1989 he served as Senior Vice President
of NBC News in charge of planning. Since leaving NBC he's been at the
Hill & Knowlton public affairs firm as Senior Vice President and
global director of media relations. At the NSC he'll work with Tara
Sonenshine, Deputy Director for Communications and a Nightline
producer for most of the 1980s.
Pryor Experience
Joining ABC News in April as a New York-based
editorial producer at large was Mark Robertson, a Senior Vice President
in Hill & Knowlton's Washington office. Robertson once worked for
Senator David Pryor, Common Cause magazine reported last year.
Robertson told MediaWatch that he handled
scheduling and wrote speeches for the Arkansas Democrat from 1980 to
1982. According to The Washington Post, Robertson will be
"working primarily with Diane Sawyer," a former Nixon press
assistant. Under her new $7 million contract, Sawyer will have a role
with Day One and Turning Point, in addition to
co-hosting Prime Time Live.
Moving Around
Margaret Carlson, Special Assistant to the Director of
the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the Carter years, has started
writing a regular Time column under the heading of "Public
Eye." She's been a Time Washington reporter since 1988.
Carlson's cover story last May 10 called Hillary Clinton an "icon
of American womanhood"....
Following Les Aspin's departure, Miranda Spivack, a
public affairs specialist at the Defense Department since last summer
and previously a Washington reporter for The Hartford Courant,
has revolved back into the media. She's now Editor of a Maryland chain
of suburban newspapers owned by The Washington Post Company....
Speaking of Aspin, Fred Kaplan, a Legislative
Assistant to then-Rep. Aspin in the late 1970s, is now The Boston
Globe's Moscow Bureau Chief. He's been a Globe reporter since
1982... Betty Furness, who retired in 1992 after 16 years as Today's
consumer reporter, passed away at age 78 on April 3. She served as
Special Assistant to President Johnson for consumer affairs.
Page
Three
America, Full of Hatemongers
Rather Hostile
Dan Rather turned April into Guest Editorial Month.
While Rather pulled punches on lifting the trade embargo against Vietnam
in the April 4 National Review ("Only the President can
answer whether he has kept faith" with the Vietnam dead), he fired
both barrels in the April 11 edition of the far-left magazine The
Nation.
Rather took a verbal bat to the religious opponents of
homo-sexuality: "Gays and lesbians are beaten to death in the
streets with increasing frequency -- in part due to irrational fear of
AIDS but also because hatemongers, from comedians to the worst of the
Christian right, send the message that homosexuals have no value in our
society. Sometimes that message has a major-party affiliation and a
request for a campaign contribution. In the post-Cold War era, gays have
been drafted to replace communists as the new menace to the American
Way: We're told gays corrupt youth and commandeer art and entertainment
to win converts."
The CBS Evening News anchor found hatred
across America: "North or south, east or west, you'll still see
racism, violence, and inequality all over this country. Look at the
white institutions outside the south that keep ethnic and racial
minorities locked away in ghettos. American children of color are
presented with an onslaught of lessons and images telling them they're
not worthy."
Rather moved on to Indians: "The first Americans
fare no better. A century after genocidal wars ended on the Western
plains, Native Americans are still subjected to conditions of
hopelessness, poverty, and disease that make a dent in white
consciousness only when some germ crops up on the reservation and
threatens to spread." As for making a dent on "white
consciousness," how many CBS Evening News stories have
focused on Indians since 1990? Four, and none yet this year.
He concluded the diatribe: "The list goes on and
on: Vietnamese- Americans, Arab-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Americans
from every corner of the globe are daily subjected to abuses of civil
rights, to violence, hatred, and inhumanity. Across the country. Don't
try to tell me or any other New Southerner that civil rights was and is
a `Southern problem.' The Old South shared the worst of its legacy with
all Americans."
NewsBites
Embarrassing Eleanor
The White House hoped for a puff piece on Hillary Clinton and Eleanor
Clift came through. "I guess the only thing I see comparable
[between Whitewater and Watergate] is that a lot of people want to
launch careers based on finding something," Clift asked in the
interview for the March 21 Newsweek. "How angry are you
about the way this has mushroomed from a little land scandal into an
allegation that you and your husband are corrupt?"
Clift also fed excuses to Mrs. Clinton: "My
theory is that you have a thing about privacy....The attacks against you
are really about more than Whitewater. They really go to the role that
you're taking on and whether you can be the spouse of a president and a
policymaker....Edward Bennett Williams used to say that Washington likes
to burn a witch every three months." In an April 4 Washington
Post story on Clift's Clinton apologist reputation, an anonymous
Newsweek staffer told reporter Howard Kurtz: "I think she takes it
too far...A lot of people find it embarrassing."
The Two Faces of Eleanor
On the February 18 C-SPAN Journalists Roundtable, Eleanor Clift
tried to explain why Anita Hill was big news but Paula Jones, who claims
that Bill Clinton sexually harassed her in 1991, is unnewsworthy --
timing. Clift said of Jones and alleged mistress Sally Perdue:
"This rather reeks of exploitation, if these women had, you know,
serious concerns, why didn't they speak out then? Why didn't they come
forward earlier? There is no way to check whether they are credible, and
it seems to me that a responsible press doesn't automatically just put
people on the front page because they've made a charge."
Compare this to her defense of Hill: "She, in
fact, was reluctant to come forward as she was encouraged to do, so when
the information was leaked on the Hill...she then did not deny it. She
also came forward at a time when the confirmation of the person that she
was making these allegations against, Judge Thomas, was still in
question. It seems to me that the discussions about Bill Clinton's past
sexual life came up in the campaign. "
Makes Me Wanna Puke
Bryant Gumbel never fails to claim that racism pervades American
society. On the March 22 Today, Gumbel talked to Nathan McCall,
a Washington Post reporter who served time in prison for
attempted murder, to discuss his new book Makes Me Wanna Holler.
McCall said he wrote his book because news accounts "fail to get
behind the stories, the incidents, and deal with some of the larger
social issues that lead to that kind of behavior." Gumbel added:
"It's too easy to put a black face on the problems of crime, of
drugs, of poverty, and just say it's a lost cause and walk away from
it."
Rather than ask McCall how he turned away from crime,
Gumbel focused on blame: "Those who say, `just lock them up, throw
away the key, incarcerate them, warehouse them,' whatever, do you think
they are even conscious of just how racist this country is?" Gumbel
also asked: "It's been written that being black in America is like
being witness at your own lynching. Why, why didn't your experiences
make you more resentful than you are today?"
Joan's Love Canal
The 1978 media hysteria over Love Canal showed the danger of reporting
"disasters" without evidence. Good Morning America's
Joan Lunden revived the allegations on March 18 in a one-sided interview
with two former residents. Lunden claimed: "The name Love Canal
became synonymous with environmental disasters. Love Canal was a quiet,
upscale suburb of Buffalo, New York until the poison below the ground
began to seep out. The Hooker Chemical Company had dumped 20,000 tons of
toxic waste under the land where homes were later built. Families were
devastated by illness."
Lunden asked former resident Lois Gibbs: "Were
any members of your family made ill by the buried waste?" Gibbs
said her daughter developed leukemia. Lunden noted Occidental Petroleum
would "have to pay off this 350 million dollars in cleanup
costs," and asked the other resident: "You think that's
enough?"
Michael Fumento's book Science Under Siege
explained that in 1953 Hooker "was joined in the [legal] dumping by
federal government agencies." She didn't mention that, or note that
Hooker sold the land in 1953, meaning Occidental must stand trial for a
41-year- old, then-legal activity. Concluded a 1981 study in Science:
"Data from the New York Cancer Registry show no evidence for higher
cancer rates associated with residence near the Love Canal toxic waste
burial site." Fumento quoted a New York Times editorial of
June 20, 1981: "It may turn out that the public suffered less from
the chemicals there than from the hysteria generated by flimsy research
irresponsibly handled."
NRDC's Teflon Reputation
On February 26, 1989, 60 Minutes promoted a study from the
Natural Resources Defense Council concluding that Alar, a synthetic
growth regulator used by apple farmers, posed an "intolerable
risk" of causing cancer in children. CBS reporter Ed Bradley called
Alar "The most potent cancer-causing agent in our food
supply." Five years later, the Alar scare has been scientifically
debunked by, among others, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, the
American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and the
National Cancer Institute. Dr. Elizabeth Whelan of the American Council
on Science and Health noted: "Distinguished physicians, scientists
and regulatory groups have determined that there was never any
risk," and suggested "Perhaps, then, both consumers and the
media will be more cautious before believing the next `cancer of the
week' scare."
Perhaps not. On the March 14 NBC Nightly News,
Robert Hager, undaunted by the Alar hoax, began his report: "Today
a report from the highly respected environmental group, the Natural
Resources Defense Council, says most towns and cities are depending on
crumbling water systems built shortly after World War I, and using
technology from the Victorian Era." Start boiling the water.
Victims of Progress?
Add U.S. News & World Report contributing editor Emily
MacFarquhar to the list of those disappointed by the end of the Cold
War. In a March 28 cover story, "The War Against Women," she
reminisced about the good old days for women: "The collapse of
communism, unlamented almost everywhere, has hurt women in unexpected
ways. Gender equality was always more rhetorical than real under
Marxism, but women have been hard hit by the implosion of old command
economies, the end of guaranteed employment and the unraveling of the
social safety net." Under the heading "Victims of
democracy," MacFarquhar noted: "The new democratically elected
assemblies of Eastern Europe have far fewer women members than their
puppet predecessors did." This war, it seems, is best ended by a
return to the liberation of command economies and puppet governments.
AIDS Alarm
When the media announced an alarming new increase in reported cases of
heterosexual AIDS, they left out the "why." The March 21 Newsweek
reported: "The government has news for anyone who still thinks AIDS
is a gay disease. Last year, according to a new report from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), gay men accounted for fewer
than half of the nation's new AIDS cases -- and heterosexual cases rose
more sharply than did any other category." The March 21 Time
stated: "The number of new AIDS cases surged unexpectedly last
year, more than doubling, owing to a jump in infections among
heterosexuals."
In an unpublished letter to The New York Times,
Michael Fumento, author of The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS,
explained the new definition "changed everything. First, it added
three new indicator diseases that, when accompanied by HIV, will prompt
an AIDS diagnosis. Those diseases -- pulmonary tuberculosis, recurrent
pneumonia, and invasive cervical cancer -- tend to be found far more
often in non-homosexuals than in homosexuals. Cervical cancer, of
course, is strictly a disease of women. The other part of the new
definition, which classifies a person as having AIDS if the level of a
certain white cell in their blood falls below a certain level,
disproportionately expanded non- homosexual cases." But in the
March 11 New York Times, Lawrence Altman reported: "The
new definition does not affect the rate of increase by heterosexual
transmission." In fact, Fumento's subsequent letter noted,
"Because of the addition of these new indicator diseases, it was a
foregone conclusion that the portions of the epidemic made up of
non-homosexuals would increase."
Unsatisfactory Job
Peter Jennings traveled to Detroit to broadcast ABC's World News
Tonight from the March 14-15 "jobs summit." Jennings went
to an auto plant to show the effects of technology: "Everyday
machines are becoming so efficient that fewer workers are needed to do a
great many jobs. Just take a look at this assembly line at Cadillac.
Imagine the effect when it gets to your work place, if it hasn't
already." Jennings ignored that during the '80s, when personal
computers and faxes revolutionized the workplace, 20 million jobs were
created.
Jennings also charged: "Good jobs began
disappearing to automation or to competition overseas in the 1970s. Make
more with less became the new business slogan. Hundreds of thousands of
higher wage workers were pushed into the low-wage service sector."
But as Robert Samuelson noted in the March 14 Newsweek, "since
1900, our incomes have quadrupled....Higher living standards are the
fruit of higher productivity."
Rodney's Special
In a 30-minute Feb. 23 special, CNN's Bernard Shaw introduced us to
America's newest sweetheart: "He hurts inside. He's changed
outside. Slimmed down, his 210 pounds resembling those of a pro football
wide receiver. He leads his family with serious focus...The past for him
has drawn an unwanted spotlight of troubles." Olympic champion Dan
Jansen? No, Rodney King. After leading police on a high speed chase in
March 1991, and failing to cooperate with the arresting officers, King
was violently subdued. Two passengers in King's car, also black,
surrendered and were not harmed. Still, Shaw reported: "Rodney King
says his nightmare -- the beating -- was an awakening to the world of
racism." Shaw noted King, the focused family man, has since been
arrested at least twice for drunken driving, again "after his wife
called police to say she had been injured in a domestic dispute and
feared for her life," and for "the alley incident with
Hollywood vice police, who claimed King tried to run them down after
allegedly picking up a transvestite male prostitute." None of this
deterred Shaw, whose tribute began with a walk on the beach where,
"He searches for solitude because Rodney King is trying to find
Rodney King," and went on to show King frolicking with his family.
Shaw concluded with King reading a poem he'd written about "his
culture," entitled "Special People."
The Misery Dairy Farm
Tom Brokaw opened the March 28 Nightly News with the plug:
"TV talk shows bring in big money for milking human misery."
But what about his own show? Before that story, a graphic teasing the
lead story on South Africa read "Carnage!" Brokaw began:
"In South Africa tonight, the price of democracy is running high
and bloody," showing riots, gunfire and corpses. The next two
stories focused on destruction from weekend tornadoes, one from an
Alabama town where "two out of three people are now either hurt or
dead."
Then, two stories on two students killed during a Los
Angeles carjacking, including a 13-second soundbite of the dead
students' faculty adviser bursting into tears. The eighth report showed
what Brokaw described as "graphic pictures that are just surfacing
of that political assassination in Mexico." No "milking human
misery" here.
Janet
Cooke Award
All Four Networks, Newsweek Distort Studies of Hunger in America
The Media's Eating Disorder
How is the problem of hunger in America quantified?
Since the federal government conducts no national measure of hunger,
liberal interest groups favoring more government food handouts have
issued their own studies. Each in turn has become a national news story,
featuring liberal experts, but no conservatives. In each case, the media
overstated the findings.
The Food Research and Action Center contended on March
26, 1991 that 6 million children went hungry on at least one day in the
previous year. Dan Rather began the CBS Evening News: "A
startling number of children are in danger of starving...one in eight
children is going hungry tonight."
Tufts University's Center on Hunger, Poverty, and
Nutrition issued a press release on June 10, 1993, doubling the FRAC
number to 12 million who were hungry at some time in 1991. On the June
16 NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw reported to the nation:
"Hunger in America. There are some startling facts tonight. A
study... claims that 12 million American children are
malnourished."
The Urban Institute claimed on November 16, 1993 that
"between 2.5 and 4.9 million elderly Americans -- many living well
above the poverty line -- suffer from hunger and food insecurity." CBS
Evening News anchor Connie Chung cited "a disturbing report
tonight about older Americans in this country. Millions of them, even
some living above the poverty line, don't know from day to day where
their next meal is coming from."
Second Harvest, a national network of food banks,
issued a study March 8 claiming that 26 million Americans used a food
bank at least once in an 18-month period (from June 1992 to December
1993). The networks again exaggerated the findings and ignored skeptical
experts. All of the networks claimed 25 million or more people
"rely on" or "need" food banks, not that the study
counted a single trip in an 18-month period. For their misreporting of
the hunger problem, all four networks and Newsweek earned the
Janet Cooke Award.
NBC's Larry Carroll beat the competition with a
February 22 news story on Second Harvest, claiming "there's 25 to
30 million Americans who go hungry at some point every month and need
the services of not just public assistance like food stamps, but also
private food banks and soup kitchens and so forth."
On the March 8 World News Tonight, ABC's
Kathy Wolff did a brief story focusing on Richard Lohr-meyer, who lost a
well-paying job selling software. "Today's study claims 26 million
Americans rely on food banks -- a surprising number of them middle
class."
CNN's Jeff Flock contended: "The largest hunger
relief organization in the United States, Second Harvest, has for the
first time surveyed hunger and found 25 million Americans -- that's one
in ten -- who rely on food pantries, soup kitchens, and homeless
shelters for food."
On CBS, Dan Rather announced: "The country's
largest network of food banks is out today with a new survey on hunger
in America. The study finds almost 26 million Americans -- that's more
than one out of ten -- rely on soup kitchens or other food charities to
eat." The next morning, CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith
promoted the study: "A new study by a national network of food
banks says hunger has spread to the suburbs and into the American
working class. Second Harvest says children account for nearly half the
26 million Americans who rely on food pantries and other emergency
feeding programs."
All of the networks also neglected to mention the
study's funder -- Kraft Foods, a corporation with an obvious interest in
increasing support for federal food subsidy programs. Kraft also funded
the FRAC and Urban Institute hunger studies. None explained that Second
Harvest is currently lobbying the Clinton administration to continue an
$80 million program which sends surplus commodities to food banks.
MediaWatch called all four
outlets. CBS didn't call back. World News Tonight spokesman
Arnot Walker rebuffed our call: "If you want a quote, we'll say we
stand by our report." At NBC, Carroll admitted "any of the
numbers out there are non-specific," but credible: "What we
discovered was there has not been an actual count of individuals using
food banking services on an individual -by-individual basis. The 26
million is something of an extrapolation...which the Department of
Agriculture acknowledges is probably correct."
CNN's Flock checked his script again and agreed the
word "rely" may be too strong: "It does seem to be
overcharacterizing the relationship. According to the numbers I'm seeing
here, 40 percent have received food assistance for more than a year, so
they count for `rely.' About 30 percent were between 3 months and a
year, and that could arguably be `rely,' and another 30 percent were 3
months or less. That's certainly arguably not `rely'...you make a good
point. They said `rely' in the press release. I looked at a transcript
of our interview with the Second Harvest person, who characterized it
that way. But the numbers I don't think bear it out completely."
The Newsweek story, authored by Laura
Shapiro, avoided some of these pitfalls, noting that Second Harvest
found that 26 million "now make use" of food banks. She also
added some balance by quoting economist Robert Havemann ("I don't
believe that many people are hungry") and Heritage Foundation
analyst Robert Rector. He told MediaWatch:
"The average poor child by age 18 is one inch taller and ten pounds
heavier than the GIs who stormed Normandy. Poor children today are not
malnourished, they're supernourished by historical standards."
Shapiro's article claimed "Second Harvest's
results jibe with previous hunger surveys by organizations like the
Urban Institute and the Food Research and Action Center, as well as
poverty statistics." Shapiro did not note poverty statistics can't
measure hunger, or question the FRAC and Urban Institute methodologies.
The FRAC study classified children as hungry if they
answered "yes" to five of eight questions, including two which
didn't deal directly with missing meals, and two that dealt with adult
eating habits. The Urban Institute survey was conducted by mail, an
obviously unscientific way of polling.
So isn't that piling up dubious study on dubious
study? Shapiro told MediaWatch: "Your
basic point, which is that all of these studies lack a lot of scientific
depth, is true. I think that is why a very important story which I
didn't include, and I wish I had space to include, is that there is now
a whole move at the USDA to calculate hunger more scientifically. It's a
picture that's very hard to get a hold of. I think the Second Harvest
study provides one more perspective." When asked about why Kraft
Foods wasn't mentioned, Shapiro conceded: "You know, I never put
that together."
Review
A World Destroyed by Capitalism in Need of Higher Taxes, More Government
Charles Kuralt: On the Road to Serfdom
After 37 years with CBS News, Charles Kuralt signed
off from Sunday Morning for the last time on April 3. The
avuncular Kuralt will popularly be remembered for his "On the
Road" pieces and the artsy, unhurried morning show he created 15
years ago. But all this masks his other side, one which peeked out from
under his folksy demeanor throughout his career: a committed liberal.
For his retirement, MediaWatch collected the
political wisdom of Charles Kuralt.
Environment. During the early '90s
environmental craze, Kuralt, who ended Sunday Morning every
week with a nature video, was in the vanguard. He espoused the view that
technological advancements only bring environmental destruction. On Sunday
Morning's May 31, 1992 broadcast, Kuralt introduced a report by
saying, "Our motor cars free us and foul the air. Our factories
supply us with everything we need and poison the water. Every time
humanity makes a great leap forward, we land deep in toxic mud."
Tax More/Spend More. Kuralt
repeatedly stressed that if only people had the will to pay increased
taxes, government could spend more on our country's problems and quickly
solve them. Introducing a January 12, 1992 Sunday Morning piece
on Michigan's welfare reforms, Kuralt heaped shame on the state for its
lack of "compassion." He began with a parable: "You know
the old saying about giving a hungry man a handout -- he'll just be
hungry again after he's eaten. But if you teach him to fish, the saying
goes, why, then he'll always be able to feed himself. A lot of states
are thinking along these lines, trying to reduce their budgets by
cutting dependence on welfare, telling a lot of people, in effect, to go
fishing."
Yes, for Kuralt, caring equaled spending. He looked
toward Europe with envy in an August 1991 Sunday Morning
monologue. "A report last week compared health care for children in
the United States with health care in the ten countries of Western
Europe. Really there isn't any comparison. Nearly all children in Europe
are able to see a doctor when they're sick. A lot more of them are
immunized, a lot fewer of them die in infancy. Do Europeans care more
about their children than we do? There's a simple answer: yes."
On the September 6, 1992 Sunday Morning,
Kuralt discussed the plight of the poor in America. "According to
guidelines established by the federal government, a family of four can
be classified as living in poverty if its cash income is $13,924 a year
or less. $13,924 a year for four of you comes to $9.54 per person per
day. Can anybody live on that?...One nation under God is what we say in
the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, but the Pledge was written long
ago, and has never been adjusted for inflation. With 36 million
Americans in poverty now, perhaps the Pledge ought to be brought up to
date to read: two nations under God." But he conveniently ignored
that assets and non-cash benefits of the poor are not included in the
poverty measure.
Last August, Kuralt thought Americans had been failed
by their representatives. Not because of corruption or waste, but
because the politicians didn't have the guts to raise taxes enough:
"Last week after much posturing and fretting, the elected
representatives of the people decided how much sacrifice we should make
for a civilized society. By the narrowest possible margin in both houses
of the Congress, they agreed, in the interest of deficit reduction, that
we could afford: four cents. A rise of just over four cents a gallon in
the federal tax on gasoline...In the land of the free and the home of
the brave, ordinary citizens might have been brave enough to make a real
sacrifice for the economic health of their country. But now we won't
know. The politicians weren't brave enough to find out."
Kuralt has also served as a cheerleader for the left
in the cultural war. On the May 2, 1993 Sunday Morning, he
applauded the Clinton administration decision to put women in combat as
a victory for equality. "Les Aspin said last week that he means to
clear the way for women in the armed forces to fight in combat. That is
a milepost, of course, and an advance of considerable importance to
women.... The least sane enterprise upon which human beings ever embark
will thus be made non-sexist. Women have always suffered the madness and
horror of war. Now at least they will do so with a gun in their
hands."
Good Liberals/Bad Conservatives.
Kuralt served as a commentator for CBS News during the political
conventions in the summer of 1992. The perspectives he delivered for
CBS' coverage were glowing assessments of the liberals and condemnations
of the conservatives. At the Democratic Convention in New York, Kuralt
breathlessly praised Gov. Mario Cuomo's partisan attacks on George Bush:
"I'm still in the glow of that Cuomo speech. Mario Cuomo is like
one of those three-way lightbulbs...he said he was going to stay on dim
so as not to put Bill Clinton in the shade. And then he stepped up here
tonight and delivered a genuine 250-watter. A speech bright enough and
hot enough to fill up this dark room. I think tonight was Cuomo's night,
as last night was Jesse Jackson's."
At the Republican Convention, Kuralt felt the thoughts
expressed by some speakers deserved condemnation. On August 17, 1992 he
was especially tough on Pat Buchanan, declaring: "I thought the
Buchanan speech had ugly elements in it, especially there at the end,
take back our culture, take back our country. I think that was an appeal
to racism."
Earlier that day, following the media zeitgeist, he
slammed the GOP platform as extreme. "This platform the Republicans
adopted today reminds me of another Republican platform and another
convention, the one of '64, the one that nominated Barry Goldwater,
[when] the party's farthest right-wingers took over for the first time
and drove through a breathtakingly conservative platform...Those folks
were not so interested in winning the election as in humiliating Nelson
Rockefeller and the other moderates of their own party." Kuralt
continued: "They lost in a landslide. Republicans with long
memories might have noticed that something like that was going on here
today."
He concluded by attacking Christian Right delegates.
"The only excited, demonstrative delegates any of us could find
were the ones from the religious right, Pat Robertson's God and Country
rally. They remind me of those Goldwater delegates of 28 years ago, far
more interested in imposing ideological purity on this party than they
are on winning the election...They got the platform they want. No room
for a pregnant woman to make any decision [on abortion] at all, even if
she was raped. It's tough on welfare, tough on taxes and guns and gays
and pornography, tough even on public radio and public television."
On
the Bright Side
Good Money After Bad
In order to improve school facilities and attract
white students back into the inner-city schools, in 1986 a federal judge
ordered the Kansas City public schools to correct, regardless of cost,
funding disparities between urban and suburban districts.
In a February 27 piece on 60 Minutes, CBS
reporter Lesley Stahl asked the question, "Is money the
answer?" In Kansas City, with nearly 1.2 billion dollars, "Old
schools were demolished all over town, and new ones built. They stocked
them with the latest materials and thousands of computers. They gave
teachers huge raises, and mandated that no class could have more than 25
kids. They did just about everything recommended by the reformers."
Seven years later, Stahl revealed: "To everyone's
astonishment and dismay, academic achievement has hardly improved at
all. Junior high and high school test scores in reading, writing, and
arithmetic are exactly where they were before, way below national
averages."
The spending jump has not succeeded in attracting more
white students either. Stahl confronted the superintendent of schools:
"You cannot deny that system-wide, the desegregation numbers are a
disaster. I mean, there are...proportionately fewer whites than there
were when the money started coming in." In closing, she pointed to
a successful alternative: "One school in Kansas City that is making
an impact is Martin Luther King Middle School, and they didn't spend
through the roof. They didn't get a new building, just a facelift.
There's no exotic theme, just a basic curriculum. But the kids wear
uniforms...Test scores at King used to be the worst in the system, now
they're just about the best."
Carlson on the Cardinal
After the sexual abuse lawsuit against Chicago's
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin was dropped, Time's Margaret Carlson
took the media to task for failing to check plaintiff Steven Cook's
unsupported allegations. In her "Public Eye" column in the
March 14 issue, she reported: "The plaintiff's lawyer had rushed to
file the suit in hopes of having it included in an imminent CNN special
on priests and sex." For the special, which aired November 14,
"Cook's charges were added to the program and used to promote
it."
Carlson explained: "CNN was not alone in giving
Cook the oxygen of publicity. But when the only hook for a story is a
lawsuit -- which only takes one person convincing one lawyer to go
forward -- the media are under some obligation to check out the
accusation." As for the allegations, Carlson noted: "Repressed
memory is controversial to begin with, and the hypnotist who jogged
Cook's memory is in the graphic artist business and not a licensed
psychologist. The evidence is flimsy." As for the exonerated
Cardinal, Carlson concluded "CNN gave the Cardinal a quarter-hour
on Friday night to try to allow him to recover what was taken from him.
Is it enough? Is it too late?"
Page
Eight
Times Says Post Suspended Reporter
Paula Jones Story Fight?
Michael Isikoff was suspended from The Washington
Post "for two weeks for insubordination after a heated
confrontation with editors over the newspaper's handling of a story
about sexual harassment accusations against President Clinton,"
according to Rod Dreher of The Washington Times. The March 25
story reported: "Two sources at the paper said Mr. Isikoff was
upset because he thinks the Post is burying his findings about
sexual harassment charges leveled at Mr. Clinton by Paula Corbin Jones,
an Arkansas state employee, at a Feb. 11 news conference."
The next day, Post Managing Editor Robert
Kaiser countered in Howard Kurtz's Post Media Notes column that
the Times story was wrong: "We do not discuss personnel
matters of any kind out of respect for the privacy of our
employees...But in light of the incorrect assertion in today's Washington
Times, I'd like to say that no one here has been disciplined over
the handling of a story about Paula Jones's allegations."
Kaiser explained: "Our role in a case like this
is to examine an allegation made by a private citizen against a public
official with some care...We have an obligation to the Post's readers to
do our best to establish the truth and not simply to print damaging
accusations the moment they are made." Really? Two years ago the Post
had no problem putting on page one Anita Hill's uncorroborated
allegations about Clarence Thomas. But two weeks after the Times
story, the Post had still not printed a story on Paula Jones.
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