home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
- From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
- Subject: FAIR: Counterspin #10
- Message-ID: <1992Jul22.034456.9548@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Sender: news@mont.cs.missouri.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Organization: PACH
- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 03:44:56 GMT
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Lines: 130
-
- /** media.issues: 196.0 **/
- ** Topic: COUNTERSPIN #10 **
- ** Written 8:25 am Jul 20, 1992 by fair in cdp:media.issues **
- From: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting <fair>
- Subject: COUNTERSPIN #10
-
- ATTENTION:
-
- -------------------------- COUNTERSPIN ------------------------
-
- -------------A Memo on Campaign Coverage from FAIR-------------
-
- --------------(Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)---------------
-
- --------------130 W. 25th St., New York, NY 10001--------------
-
- -Phone: 212-633-6700 | Fax: 212-727-7668 | Email: fair@igc.org-
-
- No. 10: July 20, 1992
-
- MANAGED DEMOCRACY: One got the impression from the coverage of the
- Democratic Convention that democracy is something that many in the
- national press corps are uncomfortable with. CBS's Richard
- Threlkeld (7/13) put it this way: "Americans are going to be
- watching to see how Bill Clinton manages this convention to see how
- he can manage the country." Again and again, Clinton won praise
- for "managing" to stifle any substantive discussion of issues,
- which raises the question of how the press would respond to similar
- "management" of the country. "Are you annoyed that you have to deal
- with people like Jerry Brown and Jesse Jackson?" Jim Lehrer asked
- Clinton (7/15). "Should Brown be allowed to speak if he hasn't
- endorsed the ticket?" John Cochran asked a Brown delegate (7/13).
- Maybe the idea is to eliminate the last few traces of news from the
- conventions so that journalists can spend their leap-year summers
- doing something else.
-
- MONEY MAZE: The chief failing of convention coverage was reporters'
- failure to "follow the money." Media consumers learned next to
- nothing about the corporate dollars behind Clinton and the
- Democratic Leadership Council. It's not that journalists don't
- understand that there's a connection between money and politics -
- - here's a David Broder column on Jackson (7/14): "Clinton played
- hardball politics with Jackson, especially after Ross Perot's
- comments about homosxuality made it clear that the gay community,
- whose financial support is critical to Jackson's operations, would
- find no alternative to Clinton in November." Broder can analyze
- this kind of political triple-bank shot -- when he's writing about
- marginalized sectors of the party. But has anyone in the
- mainstream press connected, for instance, Clinton's vague, timid
- position on health care with the support he gets from the medical
- industry (as Thomas Ferguson did in The Nation, 4/13)?
-
- Robert Hager on NBC Nightly News (7/14) did do a piece about how
- corporate donors schmoozed democratic office-holders at the
- convention. Though it only skimmed the surface, and to some extent
- played for laughs, it was refreshing to see something that at least
- mentioned corporate influence.
-
- FROM RIGHT TO RIGHT: Looking for a spectrum of opinion on the
- Democratic platform? You can turn on Capital Gang (7/11), and hear
- it denounced as "anti-capitalist" by Robert Novak and "mildly
- socialist" by Mona Charen. Then, for an opposing view, you can
- read "Column Left" on the L.A. Times op-ed page (7/9), where Elaine
- Kamarck praises the Democratic platform for avoiding Republican
- attacks by adopting Republican rhetoric and positions on everything
- from crime to welfare to corporations. A left perspective that
- holds that it's a bad idea for a Democratic platform to adopt
- Republican positions is apparently too far-out for much of the
- mainstream media.
-
- OPPRESSED WHITE MALES: An NBC correspondent (7/14) asked a delegate
- if the party was "too sensitive to black issues, to minority
- issues, to women's issues. Don't you think the Democratic Party has
- to reach out more to the white males?" Meanwhile, on ABC, Cokie
- Roberts was similarly concerned about the Democrats' male appeal:
- "When you have so many women in the party, you're going to turn off
- men." After all, only a half dozen of Clinton's top six choices
- for vice president were white men.
-
- SHABBY TREATMENT?: Jerry Brown was treated with the usual disdain
- by the press. Tom Brokaw (7/15) called his speech "a telephone
- book of complaints"; a Wall Street Journal editorialist (7/15)
- referred to his delegates as "the largest kindergarten class ever
- assembled." One surprise was Mark Shields' defense of Brown
- (7/15), who he said has been treated "shabbily" by the press.
-
- A BOX OF THEIR OWN: A New York Times contingent seemed to be in a
- press box of its own during Jesse Jackson's convention speech. In
- the Times the next day (7/15), David Rosenbaum reported, "He drew
- cheers from many delegations, but others responded tepidly, and
- still others watched in seeming indifference." "Though the speech
- touched the old chords, the passion of the speaker was in a
- slightly muted key, the response of the audience a shade
- desultory," according to Maureen Dowd and Times drama critic Frank
- Rich, who was perhaps more familiar with the ovations given to Miss
- Saigon. B. Drummond Ayres Jr. reported that "the old fire was not
- there." (Ayres' "Jackson is over the hill" piece first appeared in
- an early edition before Jackson's speech was delivered; when
- references to the speech were then added, they coincidentally
- supported the theme of the story.)
-
- Some at the Times observed the same speech the rest of the country
- did. Times TV critic Walter Goodman observed that Jackson's speech,
- "stronger than anything yet heard from the convention podium, was
- rousingly received." The lead editorial referred to "Mr. Jackson's
- electrifying exhortations to stand by the helpless and to rebuild
- America."
-
- LADIES' MAN: When Ann Richards came up to speak on Monday night,
- Tom Brokaw described her as "known for her hairdo." Brokaw had
- introduced Geraldine Ferraro at the 1984 Democratic Convention with
- these words: "The first woman to be nominated for vice president -
- - Size 6!"
-
- LOSS OF ROSS: Molly Ivins deserves credit for a scoop -- in a
- Washington Post op-ed on Perot (7/15), the day before he dropped
- out of the race, she described him as a "quitter": "If he can't
- have it all his own way, he takes his ball and goes home." The
- Wall Street Journal's Timothy Noah (7/17) showed signs of a
- terminal inside-the-beltway perspective when he explained that the
- Perot campaign unraveled "largely because of the clash between the
- grassroots eccentrics who launched Mr. Perot's campaign and the
- smart political professionals who were attempting to organize it."
- Don't let the people near the democracy; they might get
- fingerprints on it.
-
- Editor: Jim Naureckas
- Associate Editor: Jeff Cohen
- ** End of text from cdp:media.issues **
-
-