Presswatch /Back in the Saddle Again
Cony, John
Back in the Saddle Again by John Corry 1 t is scoundrel time again. You knew the Republicans have no compassion when you read the New York Times's quote of the day. It always appears in a box on...
...It is not hard to imagine them jumping the conservative ship, and embracing third-party populism, or some new fancy by Ross Perot...
...Just before the Senate vote on the balanced-budget amendment, Tom Brokaw led the NBC "Evening News" by showing his insider's wisdom: "Politicians like to talk a lot about their courage, but when it comes to the really tough choices in cutting the federal budget, courage gives way to finding cover...
...Hundreds of schoolchildren were told they faced starvation or worse, and then bused to the Capitol, where they handed out buttons that said, "Pick on Someone Your Own Size...
...The big news organizations, and especially their pundits, no longer have inside sources, and much of what happens in Washington now passes them by...
...America's premier newspaper has no special access now to Washington's new centers of power, although it must try to pretend that it does...
...n other words, the election and the threat to the mainstream media are now being rolled into one, the more easily so both can be overturned...
...The Times's regular news columns are in even worse shape...
...Few news stories pointed out that the trust fund does not exist...
...It also said they wanted to "slash funding" for WIC, the supplemental assistance program for pregnant women, infants, and children...
...He is also a cretinous liar, with off-the-wall opinions...
...Apparently, Rosenberg meets with congressmen, and on at least one occasion argued with the House majority whip, Rep...
...The market is what counts...
...This was not much of a story to begin with, but the Times stayed in there trying...
...A lot of things in stores are rip-offs," and it was made by a Wisconsin fourth-grader, who had been interviewed while she ate a free lunch of roast turkey, whipped potatoes, low-fat gravy, and peas...
...It helps set the boundaries for media commentary...
...whether "we're going back to the days when Ronald Reagan suggested that ketchup and relish be designated as vegetables...
...For one thing, it is driven by ratings...
...The embarrassing part was that the legman declined to be interviewed, too...
...Mainstream media credibility had been imperiled...
...Many Democrats opposed it because it didn't specifically protect the Social Security Trust fund...
...A recent column in Editor & Publishermagazine, a bible of the newspaper business, deplored the "sinister element in Limbaugh's message...
...A rented crowd showed up in an auditorium, waving empty lunch trays, when Newt Gingrich gave a speech...
...Even some conservatives have been left adrift...
...And while it probably is irrelevant, it may be worth noting that the current federal guidelines on nutrition mention some of the same nutrients found in ketchup...
...M eanwhile, the disdain that Gingrich and his close allies show for the big news organizations has had a perhaps unintended effect...
...The Democrats had their excuse, and the amendment had already been defeated...
...CI The American Spectator May 1995 49...
...In the real world of Congress, as opposed to the one the columnists imagined, the House Republicans had proposed to increase the funding for school nutrition programs by more than 4 percent a year for the next five years...
...Times columnist Anthony Lewis agreed, casually noting that under the Republicans, school lunches would receive "less funding...
...Putnam's Sons...
...A talk show today may be replaced by a top-40 program tomorrow...
...He also said that he hoped all his colleagues would join him...
...They insisted they could not vote for the balanced-budget amendment unless the Republicans promised never to touch the Social Security trust fund...
...The story also noted that a "liberal advocacy group"—in fact, it was leftist—once charged him with dozens of instances of "sloppiness, ignorance or fabrication...
...Exactly how it did so was never made clear, although it seemed to have to do with Limbaugh and the November election...
...The press has recovered from the election...
...Gingrich, of course, also likes C-Span, and thinks of it as alternative media...
...It noted that Rosenberg had been "reared in a Jewish household, but now describes himself as an evangelical Christian...
...In a speech in the Dominican Republic early this year, Peter Arnett said that he was "going on the road to defend the media in 1995—it's a matter of survival...
...The Republican triumph left commentators off balance, but now their sense of direction has sprung up anew...
...And the same week the article about Frank appeared in the New Republic, an editorial about him appeared in the Brookline Citizen Journal, his hometown paper...
...Gingrich and his allies had relied on alternative media—talk radio, C-Span, publications like this magazine, and, above all, Rush Limbaugh...
...Somehow it "gravely threatens the credibility of the mainstream media...
...Many Democrats got away with murder...
...Reagan aides, Barnes said, "treated the Washington Post as the arbiter of how they were doing...
...Presumably, you get Limbaugh, and you get the new Congress, too...
...When they show up, he drops by and is interviewed...
...An embarrassing example of this was a long page-one piece above the fold in a Sunday paper about Limbaugh's legman on Capitol Hill...
...F aced with the lopsided coverage by so many major news organizations, Speaker Gingrich looks for friends where he can find them...
...It said that if people in Brookline thought Frank was a perfect little gentleman, it was only because they had not seen him on C-Span...
...Limbaugh will soldier on—freshmen Republicans named him an honorary member of the new Congress—but the allegiance of many other talk-show hosts is uncertain...
...Therefore, the article finds, Frank is perfectly suited to take on the Speaker in Congress...
...But Gingrich, according to Barnes, has concluded the opposite: "Bad coverage in the mainstream media means he's doing well...
...Bureau chiefs are appointed for life, or at least until they retire...
...When Bob Dole failed to find the one vote needed to pass the balanced-budget amendment, he was derided on some of the talk shows...
...In Newt's Washington," Fred Barnes wrote in the New Republic, "the rules of media courtship have changed...
...Then it asked this question: Most Republicans supported the amendment as necessary to balance the budget...
...Apostasy is the exception...
...It is only an accounting device, used to pretend there is money stashed away when there isn't...
...The Republicans wanted to raise this to $3.5 in 1996, with additional increases thereafter...
...Tom DeLay...
...It's expensive to pack a cold lunch...
...They feed on red meat and loud shouts, and all nuance escapes them...
...Astute readers knew what to think about that: Republicans want the child to go hungry, or else forced to eat cold, over-priced baloney...
...For another thing, Rush Limbaugh has spawned a legion of imitators, and some of them are flakes...
...On the other hand, Arnett did give his speech in Santo Domingo, and not at, say, the Columbia Journalism School...
...Time magazine ran a cover piece about the whole sorry fraud, but by then it made no difference...
...It was true they were equivocating when they seemed to say they would never cut Social Security, but that was a minor infraction...
...His medium of choice is talk radio, and as Speaker he invites talk-radio hosts to broadcast from the Capitol...
...Here is the beginning of a column by Bob Herbert on the op-ed page of the Times: The Republican jihad against the poor, the young and the helpless rolls on...
...The large news organizations that cover Washington hold permanent franchises...
...Whom do you agree with more...
...It always appears in a box on page two, and supposedly it is the pithiest and most interesting comment made by anyone in that day's paper...
...Limbaugh gets Arnett where he lives...
...He is Joel C. Rosenberg, 27 years old, and while the Times allowed that he might only be a gofer, it also reported that he did not "hesitate to exercise the power that his affiliation with Mr...
...Two days later a Times editorial—"The Return of Ketchup"—said that callous Republicans wanted to "turn the school nutrition program over to the states with a sharply reduced budget...
...Republicans did not do well in the news stories about the debate on the amendment, either...
...Limbaugh grants him...
...CNN reported that "the GOP must battle the perception that the Contract With America is a contract against children...
...One of the keys to Frank's abandon," it also says, "is that he holds arguably the safest seat in the House...
...Gingrich could just as well look for new friends then at NPR...
...And many believe they have an answer—a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget by the year 2002...
...Meanwhile, an article in the New Republic says that Barney Frank is not "merely hostile" to Gingrich, he has an "acute hatred" for him—"he loathes him...
...So far no legislative assault has been too cruel, no budget cut too loathsome for the party that took control of Congress at the beginning of the year and has spent all its time since then stomping on the last dying embers of idealism and compassion in government...
...Talk radio, though, is not like that...
...None of this was true, but begin with the assumption of a Republican jihad, and all else will fall into place...
...This day, it was, "I like having a hot lunch...
...He distrusts the big news organizations, and is happiest when he can speak to his own...
...There was a peculiar coda then in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll...
...We are off in a new round of the media wars...
...It wasn't about anything, of course...
...This makes for an interesting experiment in political communication, but whether it will overcome the impact of the mainstream coverage is still moot...
...It received an appropriation of $3.4 billion for 1995...
...The poll is supposed to be non-partisan, but it seemed likely that the first question was written by Republican Teeter, and the second by Democrat Hart...
...In fact, Reagan never suggested any such thing, but no matter...
...Limbaugh himself declined to be interviewed, which might be expected...
...If they watched C-Span, it said, they would realize he was "a champion of unsubstantiated fear-mongering, bringing practically nothing substantive to any debate"—other than, in his person, "one of the most compelling cases for term limits...
...Then the Times dropped the whole matter, leaving readers to wonder what that was all about...
...Then it reported that Rosenberg "was attacked by allies of Israel for opposing American loan guarantees to Israel" two years ago, even though everyone thought that he was a Zionist...
...This is tough stuff, bad news for both Limbaugh and the Speaker...
...Everyone knows everyone else, and collegiality is the rule...
...Gingrich may be allowing his feelings to run away with him there...
...The enemy has been identified, and sometimes hysterically targeted...
...The poll, run by the Republican pollster Robert Teeter and the Democrat Peter Hart, found that 71 percent of all Americans still favored a balanced-budget amendment, while only 25 percent opposed it...
...The reference was gratuitous, but part of the big-media game now is to establish moral supremacy over a Limbaugh or Gingrich, and for that any shorthand will do...
...The finding on the first question was almost exactly reversed: 64 percent of all 48 The American Spectator May 1995 Americans said they agreed more with the Democrats, while only 27 percent favored the Republicans...
...Their anchors suspect the contract is all a crock, anyway...
...CNN was correct...
...They also had proposed to increase the funding for WIC...
...The Times was only trying to keep up appearances, and at the same time discredit Limbaugh...
...William Safire's columns in the Times, for example, seem to turn increasingly now on foreign affairs, old scandals, or assessments of Pete Wilson...
...And he has the audacity to call himself a journalist" Saddam Hussein, apparently, was only business...
...Prominent politicians once sought the approval of the Times, the Washington Post, the national news magazines, and the networks...
...Bad coverage meant they were screwing up...
...In a word," Arnett said, "Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host . . . Rush Limbaugh is the king...
...The same week the column appeared, Katie Couric wondered on NBC's –Today" John Corry, a former New York Times media critic, is author of My Times: Adventures in the News Trade (Grosset/G.P...
...Evening news programs, of course, took notice...
...ut what is, is one thing, and what it B appears to be is another...
...Herbert is not a serious man, but his intemperateness is blessed by the Times, and so should not be taken lightly...
Vol. 28 • May 1995 • No. 5
