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Clintons Paying the Price for Media Double-Standard

With the media having a field day over Whitewater, the orgiastic coverage of the affair has provided a field day for media analysis. Here's what we've been able to glean so far.
The double-standard over how the press has covered Clinton as compared to Reagan/Bush is startling. Whitewater is being compared to Watergate, yet Republican scandals such as influence-peddling in HUD, CIA connections to BCCI, "Iraq-gate," the CIA's lies and exaggerations about the Soviet Union's military strength, lies and cover-ups of U.S. activities in El Salvador, Ed Meese's numerous conflicts of interest (shall we keep going?) were all underplayed by the mass media.
None of these scandals received the relentless, day-to-day, front-page coverage that has been devoted to Whitewater. Even the S&L crisis, though often in the news, was glossed over in regards to the Reagan administration's role in deregulating and subsequently non-regulating the S&L industry. And more reporters are writing about impeaching Clinton over Whitewater than who posed the impeachment of Reagan over Iran-contra!
Inconsistencies also have surfaced in how the media have discussed ethics in government. Because Republicans customarily aren't held to the same ethical standards as Democrats, Bill - and Hillary, for that matter - are being nailed to the wall for behavior that was far below the media's concern during Reagan/Bush.
For example, every president takes his buddies with him to Washington. But while Reagan was never criticized for making life-long friend Meese - among others - a part of his administration, the Clintons are being drilled for maintaining their circle of friends.
What gives? Here are a few theories: One more thought: The mainstream media crossed a line by picking up the supermarket-tabloid story about Gennifer Flowers, thus establishing new standards of credibility and news judgment. The result is that shaky sources are being quoted in Whitewater stories, whereas relatively credible sources were discounted during the coverage of Reagan/Bush scandals.
The media, for example, have printed unsubstantiated quotes from known Clinton enemies. During Reagan/Bush, however, reporters ignored respected human-rights and church organizations that had first-hand knowledge of abuses in U.S.-backed countries in Central America.
A full-blown analysis, including a comparison of inches and minutes devoted to Reagan/Bush scandals and to Whitewater, would no doubt confirm the strong appearance of inconsistent media coverage. Such a study should be conducted by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting or another media-watchdog organization.



Farewell to the National Boycott News

In 1984, Todd Putnam left his college in Indiana, moved back to Seattle and started the National Boycott News with paper-route money he had saved to pay for tuition.
Ten years and nine issues later, the NBN is no more. But during that decade, Putnam became an oft-quoted national expert on boycotts, helping to nurture a mode of activism that now strikes fear in the hearts of many corporations who dare to go against public opinion.
Putnam first started noticing the degree to which corporations control American society while taking political science classes in college.
"Corporations kept popping up no matter what we were reading in class. And they were always screwing things up," says Putnam, now 30. "But I don't think anyone else was getting as hot and bothered about this as I was."
Putnam got to thinking.
"I formulated the idea that if corporations are running things, and we live in a democracy, that we have to control the corporations. I saw boycotts as being the first stepping stone to doing this."
The first issue of the National Boycott News had eight pages and a circulation of 3,000. When issue eight came out in 1993, it had grown to an enormous 124 pages and a circulation of 15,000. By that time, Putnam was getting calls from The Wall Street Journal and the network news to comment on one boycott or another.
From reporting on 20 boycotts in the beginning, later editions of the NBN routinely updated readers on more than 200.
"In fairness to the boycotts, I wanted to cover them all. It was a never-ending struggle," Putnam said, remembering the difficulty in keeping up with sometimes daily boycott developments. "Some boycotts were succeeding overnight. Anytime a boycott ended before I could report on it, I experienced a great loss."
Issue 9, NBN's last, came out earlier this year as an insert in the Boycott Quarterly, NBN's heir apparent, which was started by a colleague of Putnam who lives in Olympia.
With the NBN behind him, Putnam wants to write a book about how to gauge corporate responsibility through rating systems.
"If citizens don't have enough information about who they're voting for, how can they vote in ways that serve their interests? The same goes for corporations."
Putnam envisions different organizations - environmental, labor, social justice, and so on - coming up with their own corporate ratings, depending on the issues each group finds the most important. Many recent books have talked about the need for corporations to change, Putnam said, but his "will be the final chapter of all these other books."
The latest issue of the Boycott Quarterly, with the NBN insert, is still on the newsstand. Anyone wanting issue 8 of the National Boycott News - which is a tremendous resource for anyone interested in boycotts and/or corporate behavior - can send $2 to Putnam at 6506 28th Ave. NE, Seattle, 98115.
We wish Todd all the best...



Labor Editors Need Not Apply at Dailies

Many US daily newspapers, including The Seattle Times, once had labor editors, but no more. Emmett Murray, a Times copy editor and former president of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, has some theories as to why.
"A large deterring factor against labor was Reagan's clampdown on PATCO [the air traffic controllers' union]. It was a signal that labor is no longer a consideration," Murray said.
In 1981, PATCO leaders were jailed, and striking members permanently replaced and banned from working as air traffic controllers. President Clinton finally lifted the ban last year.
A few years after the PATCO clampdown, the Times dumped its labor editorship and put the labor beat under the notoriously management-sympathetic business desk.
"Labor coverage has suffered in the business department," Murray said. "It's mostly a matter of quantity. The paper will cover labor issues sporadically and well. But for the most part, labor just doesn't exist."
Murray sees two obstacles to strengthening labor reporting. "First, management has convinced people that labor issues are a 'slant'." He cited the example of KCTS, the Seattle PBS affiliate, which has refused to air the labor issues talk show,Shoptalk, on the grounds that the show's labor funding would make the network seem biased. Corporate funding of many PBS shows, including the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, seems to raise no concern.
A second obstacle, Murray said, comes from within news reporters themselves. "Labor in newspapers has gotten a good standard of living, and now there is a middle-class ethos among reporters, not a working-class ethos as before."
According to Murray, newspaper writing has shifted at the same time from a focus on "ordinary people" to a focus on "people who buy."



New Ink



Governor Radiowave

Dittoheads beware, Jerry Brown is on the air. Brown is a true intellectual in love with the debate. When given an uncensored forum to discuss his views at length or argue with someone he disagrees with ... well, let's just say it makes for a far more interesting talk show than that of Limbaugh's 'armchair social critic' approach. Brown, former two-term governor of California and three-time presidential candidate has been around the block more times than all of right wing radio's intellectual wannabes combined. Brown has seen the game firsthand, knows who the players are and exposes them. Each night brings new guests and a different topic, running the gamut from pesticides in our food to corporate domination of the media. So before you get stuck in a right wing radio rut, be sure you tune in the Governor. Monday thru Friday, 7pm - 9pm (pre-recorded) on KING 1090-AM.



Be All that You Can [misogynistically] Be

In the March 7 Seattle Times, on page A4, bottom of the page, three column inches with a two-line 14-point (very small) headline, appeared a story about the Navy assignments of the first women to regular combat ship duty. Sixty women were immediately assigned, with another 500 to follow, to duty upon the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
One would think that the fact that, for the first time in American history, women were assigned to combat roles would warrant more than three paragraphs. What makes the complete lack of news value judgment even more apparent is the fact that on the following page, same day, appeared an article about the collapse of has-been Vegas mobster Frank Sinatra. Four columns wide, with a 30-point headline screaming "Sinatra Flies Home After Fainting Spell," complete with out-of-focus photo of an unidentifiable person lying on a stretcher.
Let's conduct a bit of media analysis, shall we? OK, an old man faints and gets 25 column inches plus pix. For the first time in American history, women bravely and proudly enter combat roles (said jobs previously denied to them because of they were stereotypical fainting females) and garner three column inches.

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Contents on this page were published in the April/May, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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