SPIKE

THE RABID
MEDIA
WATCHDOG


Objectively Superficial
Mainstream News Reporters Took the Easy Route, and Didn't Dig Deep for Facts in Election '96.

opinion by Mike Layton
Free Press Contributor

Newspaper editors, accustomed to injecting sports analogies into every news story - "third worst airplane crash," "fifth deadliest hurricane this century" - like to carry the method over to political campaigns. So they send reporters to the Public Disclosure Commission to find out which candidates got the biggest bucks from which fat cats. Rarely do the editors or reporters ask why. They're afraid to expose political idiocies, out of conformity to the journalism school gospel to "be objective." So they just report the obvious; what did the two candidates say about each other? Give each one four paragraphs and no one can accuse us of bias.
Almost never questioned by the media in the recent election were the whines of Republicans that "big labor" was spending jillions of dollars to buy the election. Labor's attack ads did cost about $35 million, a hefty chunk of union dues money. But it's small change next to the $175 million that labor's opposite number, big corporations, spent on the same mission. And yet a reader would have to dig deep, mostly in the alternative press, to find a comparison illuminating that disparity. TV watchers never had a clue.
What did it all mean? What was behind the figures? Republicans had a ready answer: big Labor was trying to buy a Congress which would tax the pants off everyone and give all the good jobs to darker people who just snuck over the border.
Democrats had a better answer to why big corporations wanted to purchase lawmakers: slash Medicare and reduce taxes on the rich. As usual, Democrats loused up even so simple and self-evident a message and their gains in what should have been a banner year were slight.
In this state they did turn out Randy Tate, the mewling Republican opportunist who first won legislative office by falsely accusing his opponent of being a child molester. His opponent this election, Adam Smith, deserves applause, but also careful watching by voters. But the media doesn't deserve any applause for the demise of Tate. He was treated as an equal, in print and on the tube, to Rick White of the First District, a genuine conservative who deserved to win over his blowhard Democrat opponent.
Republican Jack Metcalf, who doesn't trust paper money and preaches term limits after 35 years at the public trough, should have been easy meat for State Sen. Kevin Quigley in the Second Congressional District. But Quigley inserted his foot in his mouth early and kept it there.
The media followed the reactionary path and failed to tell voters of the district the extent of Metcalf's clownishness or Quigley's waffling. The media's delinquencies were most glaring in Southwest Washington's Third Congressional District where incumbent Republican Linda Smith, the poster girl of election finance reform, almost lost to unknown newcomer Brian Baird.
After a campaign heavily financed by corporations two years ago, St. Linda vowed not to take tainted money again from Political Action Committees. And the press bought it. No reporter asked where the money was coming from to plaster the district with full page newspaper ads and slick flyers and brochures clogging mail boxes.
The answer is simple. That paper blizzard was financed by the same PACs, once removed, that Smith was denouncing. They were oozing through loopholes in Initiative 134, the alleged election finance reform that PACs helped right wing Republicans sell to Washington voters four years earlier. Smith was a nominal sponsor although it was crafted and sold from a Seattle law office.
The scam is called "soft money." It's outside the cash that contributors are allowed to give to individual candidates. Fat cats can give unlimited amounts to political parties to spend on candidates as they wish. Yet the media, here and nationally, deified Smith as the saviour of a public sickened by the purchase of elections. Initiative 134's clever venality helped Republicans retain control of the State House of Representatives and take the Senate from the Democrats.
Voters did turn out some of the dingiest ding-dongs to disgrace a legislative body in 70 years, but it was the grapevine that exposed them, not the media. Newspapers ignored the craziness and television didn't even know it was happening. Among the losers was Bruce Craswell, the Rasputin-like husband of the GOP gubernatorial candidate. Newspaper readers barely knew the lady has a spouse. Craswell's loss means his fellow developers will have to at least come into Gov. Gary Locke's office through the front door.



Moore calls for Boycott of Borders

Author and TV producer Michael Moore just finished a nationwide book tour. Along the way, he incurred the ire of Borders Bookstore.
Moore refused to cross a picket line of workers at the Philadelphia Borders. When he expressed sympathies for the organizers, his subsequent readings at various Borders stores across the country turned into entirely different events. Most of his readings were cancelled.
In a November issue of The Nation, Moore wrote that he is calling for a nationwide boycott of Borders, after what he claims was Borders' attempt to nix his support for Borders workers trying to organize.
In the Midwest, disaffected workers spoke to him from the shadows in parking lots after his readings. Management was apparently flown in to staff the stores during his readings.
Moore concluded:
"Well, they're really going to need protection now. First, I am donating my royalties from the next 1,000 sales of Downsize This! to the organizing drive at Borders. Second, I am asking each of you to support the Borders workers in your city. Bring up the union when you're in the store and thank that kid with the nose ring and green hair for helping to revive the labor movement in America.
"Note to Borders Executives: If, after this column is published, you retaliate by removing my book from your shelves, or hiding it in the "humor" section or underreporting its sales to the New York Times list, I will come at you with everything I've got. You sandbagged me in Philly, and the only decent way for you to resolve this is to give (Philadelphia organizer) Miriam Fried her job back and let the workers form their union without intimidation or harassment."



No Peace at Pacifica

A recent article from Berkeley's Slingshot has shed some light on tumultuous times at Pacifica Radio. Pacifica's flagship station, KPFA in Berkeley, is under community pressure to remain responsive after a nationwide organization of the network. The alternative radio network is now a crusade to transform itself into a "yuppified, new-age version of National Public Radio."
In 1993, the Pacifica board adopted a "Strategy for National Programming," in an attempt to solicit more foundation money and "professionalize" the network. This meant seeking an upwardly mobile audience and jettisoning many volunteer staffers. At KPFA and the two other unionized Pacifica stations in LA and New York, the results have been a new contract with a "no strike" provision and a prohibition on discussing station issues on the air.
The same issues have plagued UW's community station, KCMU. Recently, volunteer DJ Marshall Gooch was dismissed after he made critical comments on the air about station management.
The Berkeley group, Take Back KPFA, is critical of Pacifica's executive director, Pat Scott, and her decision to hire the American Consulting Group to advise the network's board on management policies. According to Slingshot, ACG counts among its other clients RJR Nabisco, TRW and Union Carbide.
KPFA management has also shifted the programming content. New features are mainstream film reviews, weekly Bob and Ray reruns, and an astrologer live from Pacifica's Washington, D.C. station. For more information, check out the Free Pacifica web site.



Worth to Times: "Boring as heck"

In late November, independent journalist and Free Press founder Mark Worth lectured reporters and editors at the Seattle Times "Bias Forum." Apparently, the Times is concerned that its bland, center-right politics are alienating both the left and the right.
Worth critiqued the Times from the left and came to these conclusions:
The Times has become increasingly "consumerized." What real news remains, is based on official sources. A "soap opera" approach to government coverage (day by day, blow by blows without long term context), "bores the heck out of readers, most of whom want to know how events and decisions are affecting their lives."
Worth told Times staffers that this incremental approach, in which a story consists of a new lead and 12 inches of boilerplate, also "bores the heck out of reporters, thus making the stories boring as heck."
He went on to say the Times has fallen into an "objectivity trap," where the paper is, "trying too hard not to look too liberal to undo the perception that the media establishment is liberal." This surrenders news judgment to the readers who complain the most, warps the terms of the debate, and discourages investigative and enterprise stories, said Worth.

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Contents on this page were published in the January/February, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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