Tripp Trumped; Corroboration for Freeh Skipped;
Erbe: Expect "Conservatives to Lie"
1) Case against Linda Tripp
dropped by Maryland prosecutor, but neither ABC or CBS mentioned the
development Wednesday night. CNN and NBC gave it a few seconds.
2) CBS’s John Roberts labeled as
"best intentions" the quest to eliminate soft money and on the
United purchase of US Airways, ABC took a nice shot at United’s bad service:
"United currently ranks among the worst carriers in every category."
3) Pressure on Janet Reno to drop
fundraising corroborated, but only FNC cared. Brit Hume: "What had been a
top Justice Department official’s word against that of a top FBI official
became the top Justice man’s word against that of two FBI men."
4) After asserting that older
women don’t need a gun because they won’t be raped, a comment which led
Linda Chavez to quit a PBS talk show, its host, Bonnie Erbe, wrote her:
"I expect insecure people and especially conservatives to lie and play
games." Just the latest example in Erbe’s long history of
conservative-bashing.
5) Letterman’s "Top Ten Ted
Turner Pickup Lines."
>>> Chat Friday
with the MRC’s Tim Graham about the MRC’s Special Report on Elian
coverage. Friday, May 26, at 10am EDT, the Washington Post will host the
one-hour session. Here’s the plug from the Post Web site:
"Do you believe the press has been fair to all the
parties involved in the Elian Gonzalez case? According to the conservative
watchdog organization the Media Research Center, the answer to the above
question is no. In a new study, the Center is accusing the national media of
having undermined the Miami Gonzalez family specifically and the
Cuban-American community in general, and of dismissing criticism of the raid
that led to the removal of the child from his relatives' Little Havana home.
What do YOU think? Join in the discussion with the Media Research Center's
Director of Media Analysis, Tim Graham."
To post questions in advance or to participate Friday, go
to:
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/00/graham0526.htm
To read the Special Report by Tim, "Back to the
‘Peaceable’ Paradise: Media Soldiers for the Seizure of Elian," go to
the page now updated with MRC Chairman L. Brent Bozell’s statement as well
as a couple of photos of the press briefing with Members of Congress, plus
video clips of two of the most biased stories:
http://archive.mrc.org/specialreports/news/sr20000523.html
<<<
1
Networks
largely ignored decision to end pursuit of Linda Tripp. Wednesday night,
CNN’s The World Today and the NBC Nightly News ran brief items on the
announcement from the Maryland prosecutor that the case is being dropped,
but neither ABC’s World News Tonight or the CBS Evening News touched it.
MSNBC’s The News with Brian Williams only mentioned it in the end of
show run-down of "tomorrow’s headlines." FNC’s Fox Report
did carry a full story by Rita Cosby.
Tom Brokaw took 20
seconds to read this item on the May 24 NBC Nightly News: "The woman
whose tape recording almost brought down the President will not face trial
after all. The prosecutors in Maryland today dropped all criminal charges
against Linda Tripp for illegally taping phone calls with Monica Lewinsky.
They say they had no way to prove their case because the judge had
severely limited Lewinsky’s testimony."
2
CBS
labeled as "best intentions" the quest to eliminate soft money
and ABC took a nice shot at United Airlines for bad service which its
merger with US Airways may only exacerbate.
Wednesday night the
networks reflected conflicting news judgments with four different choices
of lead stories amongst six networks. ABC’s World News Tonight led with
the United buy-out of US Airways, the CBS Evening News and MSNBC’s The
News with Brian Williams started with the audio tapes from the Alaska Air
crash, CNN and NBC began with the China trade vote while FNC’s Fox
Report pushed Fox’s tabloid side, going first with the Ramsey’s taking
a lie detector test.
Both ABC and CBS ran
pieces, pegged to the DNC’s gala tribute to President Clinton set for
Washington’s MCI Center Wednesday night, on big money fundraising, what
Dan Rather dubbed "mega-bucks political fundraisers."
John Roberts handled the
story for the CBS Evening News and after noting how the event will raise
the very soft money Clinton had vowed to outlaw, he allowed Common Cause
President Scott Harshbarger to criticize Clinton followed by a soundbite
of Clinton blaming Republicans for blocking reform. Roberts then turned to
the network source for wisdom on fundraising:
"Senator John McCain, who ran for the White House
on a platform to eliminate soft money, faults both parties."
McCain: "It’s a natural result of a system
that’s lurched out of control."
Roberts then endorsed an expansion of regulation to
restrict campaign spending, saying it reflects the "best
intentions." Roberts concluded: "But for the sake of party
loyalty John McCain is throwing his support behind Republicans who oppose
campaign finance reform, including George W. Bush. In the race for the
presidency, even the best intentions often take a back seat to the need
for big money."
Over on ABC, liberal
Fred Wertheimer served as John Cochran’s expert on fundraising. Later,
the show ran a "Money Talks" piece on how, as Peter Jennings put
it, "the broadcast industry has a vested interest in maintaining the
status quo" because of all the money it makes off of campaign ads.
John Martin explained how in the last 18 months the networks and the
National Association of Broadcasters have devoted $7 million to lobbying.
Switching to the airline
merger plan, in her lead story ABC’s Betsy Stark took this probably all
too accurate shot at United Airlines: "Fares are already an average
23 percent higher at airports dominated by one airline than they are at
airports with more competition, according to a recent study. The other
issue for generally disgruntled airline passengers is what impact a merger
would have on service. United currently ranks among the worst carriers in
every category, from on time arrivals to baggage handling, and some see
little reason to expect improvement."
3
At
a Senate subcommittee hearing Wednesday a top Justice Department official
corroborated FBI Director Louis Freeh’s recollection that a top Justice
Department official had said in 1996 that the White House had made it
clear that Attorney General Janet Reno’s job was on the line if she
pursued Democratic campaign fundraising by naming an independent counsel.
But only the Fox News Channel noticed, running a piece on Special Report
with Brit Hume.
Not a word about the
development aired on any of the three broadcast network evening shows for
May 24 nor on CNN’s The World Today or Inside Politics. MSNBC’s The
News with Brian Williams skipped it but devoted a lengthy segment to the
role of comedy shows in the campaign followed by an interview with Jay
Leno. In a synergy of news judgments, both ABC’s World News Tonight and
the NBC Nightly News ended with pieces on the movement to get pets to be
treated by the law as more than mere property. Both featured soundbites
from the same "animal rights" attorney, Robert Newman, and his
client, a woman in a custody fight with her ex-boyfriend over a dog.
FNC’s own general interest news show, the 7pm ET Fox Report, also
ignored the hearing.
When this allegation
first broke late last week, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today
each gave it 20 seconds while all the broadcast network evening shows as
well as CNN’s Inside Politics and The World Today skipped it. MSNBC’s
The News with Brian Williams picked up on it and FNC ran a full story.
FNC’s Brit Hume set up
the May 24 story on his 6pm ET/9pm PT program:
"On Capitol Hill this day, what had been a top
Justice Department official’s word against that of a top FBI official
became the top Justice man’s word against that of two FBI men. The
underlying issue is whether the Justice Department went soft in its
investigation of alleged Clinton fundraising abuses because it was under
White House pressure to do so, with the Attorney General under particular
pressure."
As transcribed by the
MRC’s Brad Wilmouth, David Shuster reported: "Lee Radek, the
prosecutor in charge of the Justice Department probe into the campaign
fundraising scandal, denied that he ever said he was under pressure to
protect Janet Reno’s job."
Lee Radek at a Senate Judiciary Committee’s
subcommittee hearing: "I am certain, although I have no recollection
that I never said that ‘there was a lot of pressure on me and the public
integrity section regarding this case because the attorney general’s job
might hang in the balance,’ or words to that effect."
Shuster: "That denial would have made it one top
official’s word against another except for one thing, there were two FBI
officials present during the conversation in question, and the second one
came forward this day under oath to back up the first. The second
official, Neal Gallagher, said that indeed Radek had said there was
pressure on Justice to avoid naming an independent counsel in the
case."
Neil Gallagher, FBI Assistant Director for National
Security: "And this was attributed to the fact that the Attorney
General’s job may hang in the balance."
Subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter: "Are you sure
of that?"
Gallagher: "I’m positive. And at the same time,
there may have been some general discussion as to the fact that the
Attorney General had not yet been selected by the President to continue in
his Cabinet."
Shuster: "Despite Gallagher’s testimony, Radek
maintained the FBI account of his conversation is still wrong. As proof he
pointed to recent comments by Janet Reno. She acknowledged meeting with
the FBI Director four years ago but can’t remember him expressing
specific concerns. Republicans found the testimony unbelievable."
Specter: "What Director Freeh says he told the
Attorney General, he didn’t really do, right?"
Radek: "If he had, I’m sure she would have
talked to me about it, and she didn’t."
Shuster concluded: "One Republican responded
angrily that this dispute is yet another reason why there should have been
an independent counsel. Democrats maintain that the evidence wasn’t
there for one. But in any case, the argument over alleged pressure is not
going away. The committee plans to call for testimony from the Attorney
General."
+++ See what the
infamous Lee Radek looks like and hear from Neil Gallagher. Late Thursday
morning MRC Webmaster Andy Szul will post a RealPlayer clip of Shuster’s
story. Go to: http://www.mrc.org
4
Bonnie
Erbe, host of PBS’s To the Contrary, has only disdain for conservatives.
In a recent e-mail message to Linda Chavez she castigated her: "I
know and accept your insecurities. And I expect insecure people and
especially conservatives to lie and play games." In another message
she dismissed National Review: "Nobody reads that magazine
anyway."
The missives, reported
May 23 by the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, came after Chavez quit
Erbe’s show to protest Erbe’s less than sensitive suggestion that
older woman should not have any fear of being raped and thus have no need
to own a gun for protection. On the show which aired the weekend of May
12-14, Chavez explained how she owns a gun for protection because she live
in a rural area where it would take 30 minutes for a police response. Erbe,
a former reporter for Mutual Broadcasting and NBC Radio (not affiliated
with GE’s NBC, but owned by Westwood One until absorbed by CBS) shot
back, shall we say: "And if you look at the statistics, I would bet
that you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning, Linda, than
living where you live, and at your age, being raped. Sorry."
Chavez argued to Kurtz
that "if a conservative said something very politically
incorrect," such as how "women of a certain age are not going to
be raped because they're beyond their sexual years, that would be
considered beyond the pale."
The exchange was first
reported by National Review’s e-mailed Washington Bulletin, which asked
Erbe about her comment. Erbe, who is also a Scripps-Howard columnist,
stood by it, adding: "Women buying guns for their self protection
have gone completely bonkers."
To read a transcript of
the full exchange, as well as to watch it via RealPlayer, go to the May 17
CyberAlert:
http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2000/cyb20000517.asp#5
In the May 23 Washington
Post Howard Kurtz picked up on the ongoing off-air battle between Chavez
and Erbe. In a story titled "'Contrary’-ness Strikes PBS Talk
Show," Kurtz revealed (all ellipses after start of first graph as
they appeared in the Post story):
....After the May 13 show, Chavez, 52, who
lives in Loudoun County [Virginia], sent the program's producer statistics
that said she indeed has a far better chance of being raped than felled by
lightning. When National Review's Web site ran a piece on the flap --
co-authored by a man who once worked for Chavez at the nonprofit Center
for Equal Opportunity -- Erbe responded with a series of e-mails to
Chavez.
"I think your reaction (especially
looking up the stats on lightning strikes) goes beyond histrionic,"
Erbe wrote. Calling Chavez an "overgrown Catholic school girl"
who "planted" the National Review story, Erbe said: "If you
think you zinged us, think again. We don't care. Nobody reads that
magazine anyway.... I must say I'm shocked at your reaction. I thought you
were a much bigger, more mature person than you're showing yourself to
be."
In another missive, Erbe wrote: "I
know and accept your insecurities. And I expect insecure people and
especially conservatives to lie and play games....I suggest you get into
therapy, otherwise you're going to continue to be miserable and in denial
the rest of your life."
Erbe now says that "I did offer Linda
an on-air apology if I hurt her feelings. She has yet to take me up on
that. Other than that, I find the whole situation very amusing and think
Linda is going off the deep end....The door is open for her to come back
to the show." She says Chavez has quit the program before "in a
snit."
Chavez, a former GOP Senate candidate in
Maryland, says she left the show for a couple of years in the mid-'90s
both for scheduling reasons and because another panelist kept calling her
a liar. She says that people in her office undoubtedly notified National
Review about Erbe's on-air comments, but that she declined to comment for
the piece.
Erbe says the story must have been
orchestrated by Chavez's friend Kate O'Beirne, Washington editor of
National Review -- and an original "To the Contrary" panelist
who also quit the show years ago. But O'Beirne says she had
"absolutely nothing to do with it."
"I never had a cross word with
Bonnie," O'Beirne says. "I hate to disappoint her, but there's
no cabal."
Chavez, a prominent conservative, says she
is "offended by a kind of double standard in journalism: If a
conservative said something very politically incorrect, that women of a
certain age are not going to be raped because they're beyond their sexual
years, that would be considered beyond the pale....It struck me as meow!
What a catty thing to say."
Although she once wrote a syndicated
point-counterpoint column with Erbe and has been on the all-female show
for most of its eight-year run, Chavez says she's had it with the program.
In a final e-mail last week, Erbe said an
apology would be a "no-brainer" if Chavez would "extend me
the courtesy of a phone call." As for Chavez's insistence that she
had nothing to do with the National Review item, Erbe wrote: "I was
born at night but not last nite....This is getting sillier and sillier.
This will be my last communication with you. Please let it be your last to
me."
END Excerpt
If only it could be
Erbe’s last insult of conservatives, a pattern for which she has a long
record. The MRC does not regularly watch her weekend PBS talk show since
it rarely features active reporters, but over the last few years we’ve
caught a few of her most egregious attacks on conservative thinking from
when she was still an active radio reporter in the 1995-97 range:
-- From the November 20,
1995 Notable Quotables, a quote headlined "Abortion: Just as Bad as
Eating Meat." Erbe on partial- birth abortion, November 3 To the
Contrary:
"But aren’t most medical procedures, when you
describe them in detail, pretty disgusting? Isn’t, for example, the
production of veal, when you describe it in detail, and how people eat
meat, when they crunch down on the flesh of living beings, formerly living
beings with their teeth. Isn’t that pretty gruesome, too?"
-- From the September
23, 1996 Notable Quotables, Erbe on the August 16 To the Contrary,
commenting on the Republican convention:
"TV viewers saw a well-orchestrated image of a
moderated Republican Party, portraying itself as pro-woman,
pro-minorities, and pro-tolerance. This is in sharp contrast to the
delegates on the floor, sixty percent of whom self-identified as
conservative Christians."
-- From the October 7,
1996 Notable Quotables, Erbe responding to conservative criticism on
Westwood One’s Jim Bohannon Show on August 30:
"I think, generally speaking, most people would
agree that the partisan, that the smear tactics -- I mean, the going after
the family, and since when has President Clinton said anything about
Elizabeth Dole? It hasn’t happened, and yet you see the Republicans
attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton, who I agree has made mistakes, but they
[Republicans] have no boundaries, and I think that yes, both parties are
guilty of using smear tactics -- it goes back to as I said the origin of
American politics -- but I think the Republicans are quite frankly, better
at it than the Democrats, and I think most people see that and believe
that.... Why don’t you recognize some of the hypocrisy on the part of
the Republicans?...Well, for starters, a rape victim up on the podium in
San Diego when the Republicans oppose abortion."
-- From the April 7,
1997 Notable Quotables, a quote headlined, "If We Kill Them Before
They’re Born, Then Conservatives Can’t Hurt Them." The quote came
from a column, which appeared in the March 29 Washington Times, on claims
of how pro-choicers lie about partial-birth abortion:
"The right wing has lied repeatedly in an effort
to move public opinion on this issue....Lie No. 1: Conservatives care
about life. The renowned quipmeister, Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts
Democrat, once said, ‘Conservatives’ interest in life begins at
conception and ends at birth.’ Truer words were never spoken. If they
did care about taking care of babies and protecting the helpless, they
would not be so driven to cut government programs that help the poor, nor
so concerned about paying a few dollars less of their own money in
taxes."
-- From the June 30,
1997 Notable Quotables, a quote from a June 7 column:
"What liberals can’t understand is why can’t
Republicans be honest about their discomfort with the advancement of women
and minorities...The ideological pulse of the party, the Conservative
Action Team, is backing its own candidate for the Republican
Conference’s vice chair. And nary a woman was ever in the running. The
message from the crowd is clear: only anti-abortion, right-wing males need
apply."
-- From the March 9,
1998 Notable Quotables, a bizarre assessment of the 1980s in her column
run in the February 28 Washington Times:
"If there is any President who does not deserve
credit for our current economic prosperity it is Ronald Reagan. The latter
part of the 1980s will go down as one of the most poorly-managed,
economically reckless fiscal periods in American history."
-- And finally, just for
fun, from the September 6, 1999 Notable Quotables, Erbe, in the wake of
drug allegations against George W. Bush, boasting of her history as a
heroin user. This quote taken from her Scripps-Howard column as it
appeared in the August 24 Denver Rocky Mountain News:
"I have a confession to make: More than 25 years
ago (actually, about 30 years ago) I used an illegal narcotic. I’m not
running for President, nor any political office for that matter. And the
statute of limitations has surely run out on my transgression. So it’s
safe to come clean. I won’t make you guess about which drug it was. It
was heroin. And here come the gory details. I snorted it -- no, I didn’t
inject it. I was caught up in the drug culture of the late ‘60s and
early ‘70s, which I state as a reason, not an excuse. And, oh yes, prior
to trying heroin I smoked a lot of different types of marijuana and
hashish (yes, inhaling all the time) and took a wide variety of
hallucinogens: mescaline, LSD, you name it. Well, I not only survived that
stupor, I excelled at high school studies and extracurricular activities
during it."
Apparently a drug-filled
brain isn’t conducive to appreciating conservative ideology.
5
From
the May 24 Late Show with David Letterman -- prompted by a New York Daily
News story that the 61-year-old media mogul is dating Karen Rosenfeld, a
28-year-old Marymount Manhattan College English instructor -- the
"Top Ten Ted Turner Pickup Lines." Copyright 2000 by Worldwide
Pants, Inc.
10. "One more drink and I'll be ready
for a merger."
9. "Wanna go back to my place and make some 'Turner Classic Movies'
of our own?"
8. "You'll soon grow to love me as much as I do."
7. "How tall am I? I'm 5'9"; 6'7" when I stand on my
wallet."
6. "I'm going to assign Bernard Shaw to do a story on how great your
ass is."
5. "Baby, I wouldn't get tired of you for at least a year."
4. "Just think, marry me and you'll have the same name as dozens of
lousy cable stations."
3. "I'm a captain of industry by day, and Captain Makeout by
night."
2. "How'd you like to go to third base on Turner Field?"
1. "Who wants to be a billionaire?"
And, from the Late Show
Web page, some of the "also-rans" as Late Show writers
"keep producing more brilliant jokes than can fit in a Top Ten
List."
-- "You know, Jane Fonda couldn't
handle my workout."
-- "I'm the guy who makes sure television sets all over the world get
wrestling every night."
-- "Have sex with me or I'll colorize 'Casablanca'."
-- "I'm not 'Fonda' Jane anymore, but I am 'Fonda' you -- get
it?"
-- "How'd you like to try on Jane's old Barbarella outfit?"
I wonder, was Jane Fonda
too liberal for Ted Turner or was he too liberal for her? --
Brent Baker
