Networks Fail to Investigate Allegations While Dismissing Revelations
Page One
Whitewashing Whitewater
"Are the Republicans on a witch hunt?" NBC
Meet the Press host Tim Russert asked Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on July
31. Russert argued "Bob Fiske found no criminal behavior, the White
House Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics have found no
unethical behavior." When it came to Whitewater in July, the
media's innate skepticism evaporated, replaced with passive acceptance
of official reports and Clinton Administration denials.
After Special Counsel Robert Fiske's report was
released June 30, the media touted it as the definitive statement on the
Foster death and White House-RTC contacts. On the CBS Evening News Dan
Rather declared: "For now, at least, President Clinton and his
aides are entitled to say, `We told you so.'" On CNN's Inside
Politics, anchor Bernard Shaw asked White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler, in
light of the Fiske report, "Should the Republicans shut up?"
When Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) and Sen. Lauch Faircloth
(R-N.C.) raised questions the Fiske report failed to answer about the
condition of Vince Foster's body, none of their concerns were reported.
Faircloth's and other Republican's questions on the subject during the
Whitewater Senate Banking Committee hearings were reported, but some
were disgusted with the subject. Peter Jennings asked Capitol Hill
correspondent Cokie Roberts, "With all they have to do, how did
they get into this one?"
On July 26, Day 1 of the House Banking Committee
hearing, many reporters reflected CBS' Bob Schieffer's conclusion:
"Neither the testimony nor a stack of internal White House
documents released by the committee contained any startling new
information." Only ABC's John Martin reported that evening new
information had, in fact, been presented. Lloyd Cutler revealed he had
found 30 White House-RTC contacts, up from the 20 Fiske found.
Two days later Cutler revised his testimony in a
letter to the House committee, changing the date on which the White
House learned of the RTC criminal referrals, from after a meeting
between Clinton and Ark. Gov. Jim Tucker to a month before. Cutler also
conceded that information on the RTC probe could have come from the RTC
contacts, not through questions from the media as he had testified. Once
again, this went unreported by the networks.
When the White House admitted on August 2 that
Foster's Whitewater-related papers were moved to a closet in the
Clintons' White House residence after Foster's death, not immediately
given to their lawyer as they had maintained, no network reported it for
a whole day. On August 3, CBS did a piece on the lie, NBC noted it in
passing, while ABC waited two days to report it.
Revolving Door
The Times Agenda
The latest to join the already media-veteran heavy
National Security Council staff: Bob Boorstin, a New York Times
metropolitan reporter from the mid 1980s until jumping to the Dukakis
presidential effort in 1988. Boorstin, who will now serve as a foreign
affairs speechwriter, remains a Special Assistant to the President for
policy coordination, a position he's held since the beginning of the
Clinton Administration.
Boorstin has been involved in formulating Clinton's
economic and health plans, a role detailed by Bob Woodward in his new
book, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House. In 1992,
Woodward reported, Boorstin was assigned to help economic adviser Gene
Sperling and "became the campaign's utility writer."
As the economic team worked in June 1992 to finalize
Clinton's economic plan, Boorstin came up against health care adviser
Ira Magaziner. "Bob Boorstin took a stab at reasoning with
Magaziner as they were traveling in a van to the Governor's Mansion. `No
one believes you will save $4 billion,' Boorstin told Magaziner. `It
doesn't pass the smell test.' He touched his nose and sniffed once, then
twice. Smell was vital in politics. `Look, I used to be a New York
Times reporter, and this is just not credible.'"
Two pages and a week later in June the economic team
convened again, but Boorstin didn't show such concern for the smell
test. As tax hike ideas were dropped from the draft plan, "a tax on
foreign corporations, which realistically might have brought in $15
billion over four years, was now saddled with the burden of bringing in
$45 billion," wrote Woodward. "Boorstin and Sperling knew it
was a lie, a vast overestimation, but they had to balance the books and
the $45 billion had come from a congressional report, providing at least
some outside verification."
Following the inauguration, Boorstin became media
adviser to Hillary Clinton's health care efforts. To win the public
relations battle, Woodward learned that Hillary Clinton told Boorstin
"they had to find a story to tell, with heroes and villains."
Boorstin recommended one. He "was undergoing successful drug
therapy for manic depression with the controversial drug Prozac. He had
seen the price of a Prozac tablet jump from about 60 cents to $1.10 in
just three years, and knew firsthand how drug companies were profiting
off the ill. Research showed the enormous profits of drug companies, and
Hillary was poised to denounce them."
New to the Hill
Capitol Hill will have a second newspaper to
supplement Roll Call next month when The Hill, a
weekly being launched by former New York Times reporter Marty
Tolchin, begins publication. Signing on as Executive Editor is Al Eisele,
a former Knight-Ridder Washington correspondent and Press Secretary to
Vice President Walter Mondale.
Eisele covered Mondale for Knight-Ridder's St.
Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press in the early 1970s.
Explaining why he left journalism on Inauguration day 1977 to join the
new Vice President's staff, Eisele told The Washington Post:
"Mondale was one of the few guys in politics I respected enough to
go work for. I found I could do press work for him -- and for Jimmy
Carter, too, for that matter."
Page
Three
Too Tough-On-Crime Lawman
Sheriff Brownshirt
"Meet the dinosaur of Maricopa County, Arizona.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio doesn't wear boots or ride a horse and rarely carries
a gun. But he has a style that would make Wyatt Earp proud, and leave
him in the dust. This tough talking crime fighter has a 1990s knack for
self-promotion that would rival Madonna." That's how NBC's Fred
Francis began his July 13 Now profile of Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of
Arizona's largest county. The piece criticized the Sheriff mostly for
his get tough on crime policies, portraying them as a menace to civil
liberties.
"Though he works in seeming disregard of the
Constitution, his constituents love him," Francis lamented. One
Sheriff policy that constituted a civil rights violation: banning nude
magazines from the Maricopa County jails.
"In fact," Francis intoned, "lawyers
for the inmates say the top law enforcement officer of Maricopa County
is breaking the law. They say the magazine ban is in direct violation of
a court order. He gets around it by claiming that nude magazines are a
security threat." So in other words, he is acting within his powers
and is not breaking the law.
Francis claimed "there are other constitutional
issues in Joe's jails -- like the presumption of innocence....Ninety
percent of these inmates [in one jail] haven't been convicted, they're
still awaiting trial, but they're being treated as if they've been
sentenced to hard time." Pre-trial detention, which is usually
approved by a judge, is not unconstitutional. That's how Los Angeles
prosecutors are holding O.J. Simpson.
The worst rhetoric was saved for Sheriff Arpaio's most
creative attempt to curb crime: more community involvement in crime
fighting by the formation of citizen posses. These posses volunteer
hundreds of hours of their time, keeping a uniformed presence visible
and freeing up police to deal with more serious matters.
Maybe if the Sheriff had organized midnight basketball
leagues Francis would have portrayed him as an innovative crimefighter
with a social conscience. But Francis saw the posses as a threat to
freedom: "If this graduation of brown-shirted posse members smacks
of fascism, it doesn't bother the Sheriff."
Janet
Cooke Award
ABC's Tom Foreman
Finds the Majority of Ad "Inaccuracy" and "Scare
Tactics" on the Right
Who's "Strangling Fair Debate"?
In the 1992 campaign, the networks appointed
themselves as truth squads on the candidates' advertising. But almost
all the "misleading" ads came from the Republicans. With the
health care debate reaching culmination, ABC identified the source of
"misinformation." For attacking only conservatives without
allowing them to defend themselves, ABC earned the Janet Cooke Award.
On World News Tonight July 25, ABC's Tom
Foreman began: "In the battle over health care reform, the first
casualty may be the truth. Special interest groups promoting a wide
range of positions have committed $50 million to ad campaigns, yet many
are causing more confusion than clarity."
Foreman based his entire story on a recent study by
the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. ABC
chose the Annenberg Center's Kathleen Hall Jamieson as their referee,
but never told viewers the study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, "a nonprofit group with close ties to the Clinton
reform effort," as the August 1 Time described it.
While the study often supported Clinton's statistical
claims for health reform, the report singled out some liberal ads and
said "questionable claims are not the unique property" of
either side. But Foreman mentioned seven claims, and all but one
criticized the Clinton plan.
Foreman explained: "Consider this commercial by
Empower America, a conservative political group. It says the Clinton
reform plan will mean patients losing the right to choose their own
doctor." ABC soundbited the ad: "The bureaucracy will decide
when and even if you see a specialist. Under this plan, you will lose
choice and control."
Foreman "corrected" it: "All the plans
being considered would offer consumers a relatively wide choice of
doctors within a selected coverage pool. If patients want to go outside
of the pool, they can, but it will cost more." Jamieson added:
"The notion that the Clinton plan will remove choice is
fundamentally false."
That is not a question of fact, but a matter of
prediction. The Clinton plan would move more Americans into HMOs, with
their prescribed lists of doctors and reluctance to allow specialist
care. In the February 7 New Republic, Manhattan Institute
analyst Elizabeth McCaughey pointed out the Clinton bill "pre-empts
state laws protecting patient choice" denied by HMOs. As for
"going outside of the pool," she quoted Dr. John Ludden of the
Harvard Community Health Plan (who ABC interviewed on Good Morning
America July 19) predicting that the fee-for-service option will
"vanish quickly." But Foreman didn't ask a medical expert; he
asked a journalism professor.
Foreman continued: "Another myth: access to
health care would be limited, rationed. An ad by the National Right to
Life Committee." Foreman showed part of the ad: "I think
they'll be targeting handicapped babies and older people." Jamieson
weighed in: "What is false about the claim about rationing is the
assumption that we don't have any now...Virtually everyone in the
country who's not wealthy is facing some form of rationing."
Douglas Johnson of the NRLC told MediaWatch
that rationing "is not just the inability to obtain something
because it is not free and you don't have the money to pay for it. To
`ration' something is to deliberately restrict or withhold it. For
example, gas rationing in World War II didn't mean some people couldn't
afford gas. It means that the government forbade people to purchase
gas."
Foreman went on: "Another myth: reform will mean
almost everyone paying more. A commercial by the insurance lobby."
The ad said: "You know, 40 percent of all plans could be taxed.
Congress should know that's not fair." Foreman countered: "In
reality, right now the legislation is so far from its final form, no one
knows what the bottom line will be, though there are few indications of
widespread cost increases." Jamieson added: "Some people will
pay more, but it's not going to be a great deal more. Most are going to
pay the same or pay less."
But if no one knows how legislation will end up, how
can these claims be judged? Notice the ad did not say "reform will
mean almost everyone paying more." The ad said 40 percent of plans
could be taxed, which Sen. Bill Bradley proposed in the Senate Finance
Committee. As for most paying the same or less, it's not only a question
of premiums, but of taxes. Republican economist Chris Frenze
told MediaWatch: "Under the Clinton plan,
employers could pay as much as 7.9 percent of payroll, essentially a
payroll tax larger than the standard employer tax rate of Social
Security."
Foreman moved on: "Some of the worst scare
tactics have come from highly conservative groups through thousands of
direct mail flyers aimed primarily at older people. The Heritage
Foundation warns the first people to be rationed out of health care are
the elderly. The Seniors Coalition says doctors will have less time to
treat patients. And the American Council for Health Care Reform says the
government would use health records to end privacy for all Americans and
determine who shall live and who shall die. Although there is little
evidence to support any of these claims, each group asks for substantial
contributions to help fight for seniors' rights."
But all six groups attacked in his story to MediaWatch
they were never asked for evidence. Since the elderly need health care
more, restrictions would affect them more. The National Center for
Policy Analysis (NCPA) pointed out that in Britain, 80 percent of kidney
dialysis centers refuse to treat patients over 65. As for privacy,
McCaughey noted the Clinton plan mentions privacy, but "doctors
must report their patients' personal medical information to a national
data bank or risk harsh penalties."
Foreman cited one ad from the Democrats touting Hawaii
as having "The highest health care coverage in the nation. Business
is thriving. People are healthier." Foreman meekly noted:
"Those claims may be true for Hawaii. That does not mean the
Hawaiian model will work for the nation."
But in the February 22 Investor's Business Daily,
reporter John Merline noted the Urban Institute put the state's
percentage of uninsured at 11 percent, greater or equal to 16 other
states. The NCPA found that in the decade after the start of Hawaii's
plan, employment growth lagged behind the national average and the state
fell from 25th to 36th in average annual employee wages.
Foreman ended: "Scare tactics and misinformation
could strangle fair debate and special interest groups will effectively
rob Americans of the right to choose for themselves." But he
strangled fair debate by not allowing his targets self-defense. MediaWatch
called Foreman to ask why he took this approach, but he didn't call
back.
NewsBites
Health Plan or Else
ABC's World News Tonight devoted a week of American Agenda to
the health care debate. For the last one, on July 29, Peter Jennings
noted some "say if you don't do it right, do nothing." Which
would mean? Failing to consider any downside to big government reform,
Beth Nissen endorsed the liberal class warfare angle, concluding:
"Without health care reform, there is nothing to stop insurance
discrimination. And anyone can get sick. Anyone with a job can lose it
-- lose benefits, lose protection....Without reform, only the richest
will be protected from a debilitating new kind of disease -- a virulent
strain of worry about their health care, their security; worry that is
becoming epidemic."
Only Some Opponents Count
On July 15, when conservatives and liberals came to testify against the
Supreme Court nomination of Stephen Breyer, only the liberals were worth
covering. Michael Farris, last year's GOP nominee to be Lieutenant
Governor of Virginia, was completely missing. Instead, The New York
Times and The Washington Post ran pictures the next day of
Ralph Nader and focused several paragraphs on the testimony of Nader or
his associate Sidney Wolfe of the Public Citizen Health Research Group.
The Post had one paragraph quoting Paige Cunningham of
Americans United for Life.
Good News Is No News
In the past, the media have highlighted the newest AIDS scare statistics
purportedly showing the disease spreading through the population.
Typically, Dr. Bob Arnot reported on the June 11, 1993 CBS Evening
News: "Heterosexual AIDS among Americans is growing faster
than any other risk group, up thirty percent in 1992
alone...Heterosexual AIDS in America is exploding." But the latest
stats showing a drop in cases has been met with media silence.
Centers for Disease Control data released in late July
revealed that in the first six months of 1994, 37,529 new AIDS cases
have been reported, a decline from the 59,979 cases reported in the
first six months of last year. The CDC broadened its definition of AIDS
on January 1, 1993, which officials say mostly caused the increase in
that year, but the drop in reported cases also shows its spread has
slowed. The number of network stories reporting this? Zero.
Getting Away with Murder
As a crowded tugboat made a mad dash for freedom from Cuba on July 13,
four government fireboats intercepted it and used high pressure water
hoses to blow many of the refugees off the deck. A July 19 Miami
Herald story reported that about 40 people, including many
children, drowned in the incident as the tugboat sank after its hold
filled with water. Though President Clinton condemned the Cuban action,
generating a three sentence USA Today item, no other national
news outlet noted it. The Washington Post did not mention it
until nine days later. On July 22, the editorial page reprinted four
paragraphs of a Miami Herald editorial on the tragedy. As Pedro
Reboredo, a county commissioner in Florida, stated in an ad he bought in
the Post three days later: "My people do not expect you to
invade Cuba. They just want to feel that they are not alone, that the
cries of those Cuban children...will not go unanswered or unheard."
Untouchable Ted
Sen. Ted Kennedy faces his toughest reelection bid ever, yet the
national media conveniently ignored the tragedy at Chappaquiddick. The
25th anniversary of the incident came and went on July 18 with little
media attention shown to the mystery surrounding the death of Mary Jo
Kopechne. On July 18, CNN's Inside Politics ran a short story
on Chappaquiddick, and it was alluded to during a segment on
anniversaries on the July 17 Late Edition. It also received a brief
mention on the July 24 CBS Evening News in a story on
anniversaries. The New York Times on July 18, and Newsweek's
July 25 edition also mentioned the tragedy as part of broader stories;
ABC, NBC, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time and
U.S. News & World Report did not.
While no network found time to do an in-depth look at
Chappaquiddick, both CNN and CBS found time to celebrate the 104th
birthday of Rose Kennedy, with the July 24 CBS Sunday Morning
devoting a full segment to the Kennedy matriarch. And in June of 1993,
CNN and NBC evening shows ran stories on the 100th birthday of Cracker
Jacks, as did CNN in celebration of G.I. Joe's 29th.
Weiner Roast II
In what has become an annual event, New York Times reporter Tim
Weiner charged officials with rigging a 1984 test of the Strategic
Defense Initiative. In an August 18, 1993 front-page story, Weiner
charged that "Officials in the `Star Wars' project rigged a crucial
1984 test and faked other data in a program that misled Congress as well
as the intended target, the Soviet Union." Following the story,
then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin concluded on September 9, 1993:
"The [June 10, 1984] experiment was not rigged, and deception did
not take place."
As voting time for SDI funding approached this year,
Weiner repeated his theory in a July 23 article headlined: "Inquiry
Finds `Star Wars' Tried Plan to Exaggerate Test Results." How
credible is this latest assault? According to the pro-SDI group High
Frontier, the General Accounting Office concluded "the Homing
Overlay Experiment had not been rigged, and that deception did not take
place." In fact, buried in the fourth paragraph of Weiner's story
is what should have been the lead: "The [GAO] report directly
contradicted accusations, made by four men who worked for the Star Wars
program to Congress in August and subsequently reported by The New
York Times, that Star Wars officials rigged the fourth test in the
series as part of the deception program."
Mao Now
The Washington Post presented a stunning two-part series titled
"Uncounted Millions" on mass murder during the reign of
China's communist dictator Mao Zedong. On July 17 and 18, reporter
Daniel Southerland chronicled tales of murder, famine, and cannibalism
and discovered with Chinese and American scholars that "the two
people most associated with mass deaths in this bloodiest of human
centuries -- Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin -- were likely surpassed by
a third, China's Mao Zedong." While Hitler and Stalin killed around
40 million each, "evidence shows" Mao "was in some way
responsible for at least 40 million deaths and perhaps 80 million or
more."
Southerland explained that "in the early years of
Mao, many Western scholars were so enamored of Mao that they refused to
believe such widespread atrocities could have been carried out by the
Chinese communists." Not to mention Western reporters. On July 22,
1989, for instance, Washington Post reporter Michael Weisskopf
euphemistically reported that Mao's "ideological binges...shredded
China's intellectual community," but concluded: "While Beijing
denies the Tiananmen massacre, Chinese critics merely add it to the list
of things Mao never did.
Moscow on the Hudson. Today laid out the
second media welcome mat for Stephen Wechsler, the Army deserter turned
East German communist. On the heels of June's fawning Washington
Post story on Wechsler, Bryant Gumbel introduced Wechsler on July
18: "For most who lived behind the Iron Curtain, the end of the
Cold War was a time of joyous liberation, but for one American it was a
time of fear." Reporter Jamie Gangel picked up on the fear angle,
characterizing the time of his early 1950s defection from the U.S. Army
as an era noted for "The start of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and
fear of communism."
For most East Germans the Berlin Wall imprisoned them.
But Wechsler explained that "I had always been just a little
fearful in Berlin, I had heard stories that some ex-soldiers had sort of
been brought back to the West...the Wall in a way meant protection for
me." Gangel failed to challenge his paranoia, instead reminiscing
about how he is "getting reacquainted" with "many things
he has never seen or heard before," such as outlet malls. Calling
the man who spent 42 years behind the Berlin Wall, where news on the
West came in dictator-approved bites, an "expert on America from
afar," Gangel allowed him to explain that his return let him
confirm the U.S. has "many people without a home." Will Today
offer the next Nazi sympathizer to leave Argentina such a warm
welcome?
Selective Ethics
Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wrote July 8 that
"ABC News is cracking down on big-bucks speeches by its star
correspondents." Why? Kurtz quoted an internal memo from Senior VP
Richard Wald: "`It isn't just how big a fee is, it is also who
gives it and what it might imply...You may not accept a fee from a trade
association or from a for-profit business. Their special interest is
obvious and we have to guard against it.'"
How will ABC policy affect speeches before other
special interests, like the NAACP? As Susan Gregory Thomas reported in
the May 17 Washington Post, ABC correspondent Carole Simpson
(and CBS anchor Dan Rather) hosted a $175-a-plate fundraiser for the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund's 40th anniversary. Would the new policy
prevent helping such a liberal advocacy organization? No, Director of
News Practices Lisa Heiden told MediaWatch, noting that ABC's policy had
always covered "groups with a political purpose" and NAACP
doesn't fit that category.
What's a Moderate?
Maybe it's a grand experiment in shifting the political spectrum two
clicks to the right through media word association: `Republican,' equals
`far right,' while `Democrat,' means `moderate.' See reporter Jackie
Calmes' story on an Idaho congresssional race in the July 7 Wall
Street Journal.
"Ultraconservative GOP candidates like Helen
Chenoweth," and her "far-right supporters," face
Democratic incumbent Rep. Larry LaRocco, a "pro-abortion-rights
moderate." But Calmes did not inform readers of LaRocco's less than
moderate 24 percent rating from the American Conservative Union (ACU).
Eric Pianin achieved a similar distortion in his May
27 Washington Post article on new House Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Sam Gibbons: "A moderate on most social issues,
Gibbons is more conservative on economic matters." Yet a few
paragraphs earlier, Pianin noted that Gibbons (ACU rating: 22),
cosponsored legislation "to create a national system of
government-paid health coverage...a single-payer plan."
A sidebar box in the June 27 Newsweek
lamented the retiring of "moderate" Democratic Majority Leader
George Mitchell. In 1992, his consistently liberal voting record earned
him a 95 percent approval rating from Americans for Democratic Action.
In the same year, however, the "moderate" contradicted the
ACU's legislative checklist every time, leaving him a rating of zero.
Violent Baseball.
As developments in the O.J. Simpson story slowed, CBS dusted off an old
piece of feminist principle: Link male violence to the lack of females
in professional sports. On the June 30 CBS Evening News, Bob
McNamara demonstrated the speed with which trendy leftist theory can
become a gravely reported news story.
Intoned McNamara: "Some...say that baseball,
football, basketball, hockey and boxing will always be linked to
violence, on and off the field, as long as they're for men only. Mariah
Burton Nelson has become a magnet for women tired of a sports world
dominated by men." McNamara ran a clip of Nelson, author of The
Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football, explaining that
"The hardcore statistics we've got are from colleges with football
and basketball players and it does show that they rape more than anybody
else except frat boys."
McNamara did allow Oakland A's manager Tony LaRussa to
say that Burton's conclusions are "stretching it almost to the
point of B.S." Undaunted, McNamara concluded, "When an athlete
steps over the line, coaches and crowds go along, it may not be that the
games have gotten too rough, but that the rest of us can't remember how
to play."
Analysis
Reporters Hold Anti-Clinton Ads to
Higher Standard of Disclosure, Accuracy
Harry and Louise Get the Shaft
More than $50 million has been spent on ads in the war
over socialized medicine. Conservative ads charged the Clinton plan will
reduce doctor choice, lead to rationing and new bureaucracies, and cost
more taxes, lost jobs and reduced wages. Liberal ads have focused on the
crisis of the current system which leaves sick and dying Americans
uninsured, and how greedy insurance companies are stopping reform. So
did reporters monitor all sides for accuracy -- conservatives, liberals,
industry?
MediaWatch analysts
identified 19 examples of print and TV reporting on ad accuracy in the
last year, and found the ad watches were often reserved for Clinton's
critics. Of our sample, 11 stories attacked anti-Clinton ads
exclusively, six stories critiqued both sides, and only two focused
solely on a liberal ad.
Harry and Louise. The Health
Insurance Association of America (HIAA) aired their first round of
multi-million dollar "Harry and Louise" commercials before the
Clinton plan was unveiled. The White House quickly attacked the ads.
So did CBS. On September 22, 1993, CBS This
Morning reporter Hattie Kauffman did a story featuring Families USA
chief Ron Pollack, who denounced the HIAA ad as "unethical to the
worst degree" for listing the Coalition for Health Care Choices as
the sponsor. CBS did not point out that the HIAA ads exceeded federal
disclosure requirements for type size and disclosure of funding, and
their disclosure outdid many liberal ads. CNN criticized the ad from the
same angle on October 19.
Newspapers also critiqued the HIAA ads. In the first
of two New York Times evaluations, on October 21, 1993,
reporter Elizabeth Kolbert didn't declare the ad inaccurate, but found
it had "a melodramatic, overacted quality that may make viewers
suspicious. And once they learn the ad is sponsored by the insurance
industry, these suspicions are only likely to increase."
In the November 15, 1993 issue, Newsweek
media critic Jonathan Alter added his two cents: "Although one
commercial wrongly claimed the Clinton plan limits choice, it wasn't any
more misleading than the average election year spot."
Time's Margaret Carlson sneered in the March
7 issue this year that the HIAA ads "play on the credibility of
successful middle-aged yuppies who have no more pressing concerns than
the specter of bad coffee or bad regulation....Harry and Louise shed no
more light on health care than their counterparts selling Taster's
Choice shed on instant sex or coffee." Carlson quoted Kathleen Hall
Jamieson: "Harry and Louise invite false inferences...They frighten
people about reform, while insisting they are for it."
Conservatives and Republicans. CNN's
Brooks Jackson attacked the Republican National Committee in an October
22 story for an ad estimating 3 million jobs would be lost under the
Clinton plan. Jackson reported "independent experts say the GOP ad
is just wrong," even though no plan had been implemented.
On April 29, 1994, a Wall Street Journal
story was headlined "Truth Lands in Intensive Care Unit As New Ads
Seek to Demonize Clintons' Health-Reform Plan." Reporter Rick
Wartzman charged: "Many of the groups twisting the facts are
hard-line conservatives, bent on stopping any government presence in
health care." Wartzman singled out Americans for Tax Reform, whose
ad he said "isn't true. Neither the Clinton health care bill nor
any of the alternatives on Capitol Hill would force people to call for
government approval before visiting a doctor or rushing to the
hospital." Wartzman ignored that most reform plans push more
Americans into HMOs, which require pre-authorization of doctor or
hospital visits.
On May 27, The New York Times carried a story
headlined "`Liars' Try to Frighten Elderly On Health Care, Groups
Say." Reporter Robert Pear began: "Two large consumer groups
charged today that conservative direct mail organizations were scaring
elderly people with inaccurate attacks on President Clinton's health
care plan." The "consumer groups" were the American
Association of Retired Persons and the union-affiliated National Council
of Senior Citizens (NCSC). Pear did not evaluate the ads of AARP or
HealthRIGHT, which is supported by the NCSC.
Mixed Reviews. The MacNeil-Lehrer
NewsHour let the advertisers debate each other on October 21, 1993
and July 18, 1994. On November 2, 1993, NBC's Robert Hager critiqued
HIAA ads for suggesting the Clinton plan would contain global budgeting
(which was considered). But Hager also declared it a
"half-truth" for Families USA to claim doctor choice is
guaranteed when it may require paying more for fee-for-service care, and
described HealthRIGHT's contention that health costs are the leading
cost of personal bankruptcy as "bizarre."
When the Democratic National Committee misquoted Gov.
Carroll Campbell (R-S.C.) in an ad ("you shouldn't say there's no
health care crisis" became "there's no health care
crisis"), Lisa Myers pointed it out February 17. But Myers also
critiqued an RNC ad which claimed "you will have to settle for one
of the low-budget health plans selected by the government." Myers
responded: "The Clinton plan gives consumers the option of
continuing to see any doctor they choose for a higher price." But
the RNC quoted Elizabeth McCaughey's February 28 New Republic
article citing doctors as confident that "fee-for-service [care]
will seldom be available."
The New York Times' Catherine Manegold
evaluated ads by the liberal AARP and the conservative Citizens for a
Sound Economy on July 17. Both ads cited fear of the future. In the AARP
ad, "Because the actors are convincing and the concerns they
articulate are common, the advertisement hits home." But Manegold
panned the CSE ad: "While the ad plays effectively on many peoples'
fears, its Darth Vader tone works against it. It has an overblown
quality that slips dangerously close to the tone of a spoof."
Liberals and Democrats. Few outlets
covered the DNC's Carroll Campbell error. The Washington Post did
the story, but it didn't make CBS, U.S. News & World Report
and major newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, USA Today
(which promoted the ad in a February 10 story), and The New York
Times. CNN's Brooks Jackson did cover the Campbell story, but
reviewed no other liberal ad.
While CBS and CNN critiqued the HIAA's ads for
inadequately underlining their funding, with Families USA's Ron Pollack
leading the attack, the Health Care Reform Project's pro-Clinton
commercials were never critiqued. But its ads don't declare they are
paid for by Families USA (which won't disclose its donors) and by
businesses like American Airlines, Ford, and Chrysler, which support
socialized medicine as a way to pawn their health costs off on the
taxpayer.
On
the Bright Side
The Numbers Game
Newsweek Senior Editor Jerry
Adler in the July 25 issue examined how statistics used by the media can
be twisted and shaded by interest groups to advance their agenda. Adler
ticked off a list of inflated stats on battered women and the homeless.
Adler reviewed a 1991 Food Research and Action Center
(FRAC) study which claimed 11.5 million children under the age of 12
"were either hungry or `at risk' of hunger -- an astonishing one
child out of four."
Adler explained: "The `at risk' category is often
a fruitful one for social action groups seeking to magnify a problem. In
this study children were said to be at risk if their parents answered
yes to any one of eight questions. One was this: in the last 12 months,
`Did you ever rely on a limited number of foods to feed your children
because you were running out of money to buy food for a meal?' Not being
able to afford what you might otherwise buy (even once a year) is a
pretty tautological definition of poverty." Unfortunately, Newsweek
editors have failed to reflect Adler's skepticism toward the FRAC study.
Newsweek dutifully reported FRAC's faulty child hunger findings
in its April 1, 1991 issue and again in an article by Laura Shapiro in
the March 14, 1994 edition.
Healthy Questions
When Hillary Rodham Clinton appears on morning shows,
the questions are usually fawning. However, on the July 19 Good
Morning America devoted entirely to the Clinton health plan, co-host
Charles Gibson questioned the assumptions behind the First Lady's plan.
He observed: "Your entire system is based on savings in Medicare
and Medicaid, which in the past has proved problematical. Secondly, it's
based on the concept you can contain costs in health care to no greater
than the Consumer Price Index...No nation in the world has been able to
do that." When Mrs. Clinton answered that costs were slowing,
Gibson retorted "if market mechanisms are doing it, then why do we
need reform?"
Gibson challenged the cost projections. "Even if
you're able...to simply cut the inflation in health care costs in half,
the estimates are you're putting upwards of $600 billion on the deficit
over ten years." After Mrs. Clinton told businessmen how many
benefits they would receive, Gibson asked: "Your plan contemplates
subsidies for poor people, people above the poverty line, subsides for
small business, subsidies for early retirees, subsidies for any big
business that pays more than 7.9 percent in their payroll in health
costs....even the chairman of the Finance Committee in the Senate said
this is a fantasy, that we can hold costs down and pay for all
this."
Mrs. Clinton appeared for two hours, but while Gibson
promised the show would air "opposing voices in the health care
debate for extended discussions," when it came time for the
Republican view on July 27, Rep. Newt Gingrich got only 45 minutes.
Page
Eight
Limbaugh's Correctors
An obviously impressed Howard Kurtz led off his Washington
Post "Media Notes" column on July 8 with a study by the
far-left Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) charging that Rush
Limbaugh is guilty of "sloppiness, ignorance, or fabrication"
and has a "finely honed ability to twist and distort reality."
But Kurtz, as well as every other news outlet that
covered the story, including Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune,
and the Los Angeles Times, failed to explore FAIR's record of
accuracy. That includes FAIR's role in charging, without any scientific
proof, in 1993 that domestic violence increased dramatically on Super
Bowl Sunday. In a January 31, 1993 story Washington Post
reporter Ken Ringle revealed that FAIR and the other activists
publicizing these claims had no scientific data to back them up. Two days
later, FAIR spokesman Steve Rendall told The Boston Globe:
"It was not quite accurate...It should not have gone out in FAIR
materials."
When it comes to accuracy in reporting about
Limbaugh's profession, Kurtz should look closer to home. In a May 22
story, Post reporter Ann Devroy referred to syndicated talk
show hosts "Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy and Ron Reagan,"
apparently meaning Michael Reagan. In a June 15 report on a GOP
fundraiser, the Post's Lloyd Grove and Joe Donnelly described
the "mistress of ceremonies Blanquita Cullum" as "a Texas
radio shock jock." In fact, she hosts a political talk show on a
Richmond, Virginia station.
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