GOOD MORNING, MR. PRESIDENT: How did ABC get President Bush to agree to do three live interviews on Good Morning America? By allowing him to pick what subjects he wanted to talk about and declare certain issues off limits, according to a report by Cox News Service
(9/28).
The setup was that Bush would be interviewed on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of this week, with the subjects limited to taxes, crime and healthcare. While at least the first two topics are favorite Republican themes, an issue Bush is more vulnerable on, the economy, is not featured, even though voters consistently rank it as most important. “We wanted to do the economy as well as health issues,” Good Morning America executive producer Jack Reilly told Cox’s Julia Malone, but the Bush campaign refused.
According to Malone, “Reilly said the agreement for the interviews also rules out questions on Bush’s role in the Iran/Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.” (Good Morning America, contacted by FAIR, denied that Iran/Contra was placed off limits, while admitting it was unlikely to come up given the agreed-upon topics.)
The reason ABC gave in, Malone reported, was “hard bargaining by the president’s top media adviser Dorrance Smith, formerly a producer with the network.” Smith, as executive producer at Nightline, held one of the top spots at ABC News–illustrating how the “revolving door” works to the administration’s advantage.
ENEMIES LIST?: The restrictions on Good Morning America’s interviews indicate the kind of kid glove treatment Bush has come to expect from the media–or else. According to Leslie Stahl, journalists who don’t coddle the president have been put on an “enemies list” of major news figures who aren’t allowed access to Bush. Reports in Newsday (9/29) and USA Today (9/30) suggested that, in addition to Stahl, the hypothetical list may include Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Bill Moyers, Bryant Gumbel, Tim Russert and George Will (Newsday, 9/29; USA Today, 9/30).
An example Newsday gave of the list in action: When Rather asked to interview Bush at the Republican convention, the Bush campaign suggested that Bush would talk to Connie Chung instead. CBS appropriately declined to let the Bush camp decide how the network would cover the convention.
On the other hand, in order to get an interview with Bush just before the convention, ABC’s This Week With David Brinkley agreed to campaign demands that Brinkley alone would interview the candidate, not the usual panel of Brinkley, Sam Donaldson and Will. According to Brinkley producer David Glodt, the White House “assured us the interview with Brinkley is all we’re going to get.” When Al Gore was interviewed by the show, by contrast, he faced Brinkley, Will and Bush tennis partner Brit Flume.
EMPTY CHAIR: In a 1990 New York Times op-ed (3/4/90), NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert outlined how network election coverage could be improved: “Let’s have the four major television news organizations–ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC–commit to broadcasting four prime-time debates, each moderated by their anchors. The moderator’s only role would be to change subjects, clarify differences and keep order…. No panel, no props, no rigid rules. Just two candidates, face to face, asserting, explaining and defending their views.” In other words, the format determined by the bipartisan debate committee in 1992, and accepted by Clinton. Russert had a proposal for dealing with a candidate, like Bush, reluctant to accept this format: “If one candidate chooses not to participate, the debate goes forward–with an empty chair. My hunch is that no one candidate will cede his or her opponent unilateral access to an audience of 70 million people.”
The “empty chair” proposal turned out to be empty rhetoric: The dates that the bipartisan committee proposed for the first two debates have come and gone, and no mainstream pundit seriously suggested going ahead whether Bush participated or not.
COUNT ’EM: The “128 tax hikes” line won’t die–Bush campaign director Fred Malek published an op-ed (New York Times, 9/23) listing the 128 times Bush says that Clinton raised taxes, and Clinton campaign manager Mickey Kantor, keeping the election debate on the same silly plane, listed 178 times Bush has “raised taxes” (New York Times, 9/29). The Malek piece will be a trove for future historians exploring George Bush’s contribution to politics–he was the first candidate, for example, to claim that if his opponent raised taxes 25 cents on wine coolers made both in and out of his state, that’s two separate tax hikes (Nos. 74 & 78).
But the most ironic part of Malek’s op-ed is the title: “Yes, 128 Clinton Fees and Taxes. Count ’Em.” Malek seems to have an affinity for counting, first manifested when he counted the number of Jews at the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the orders of President Nixon. Nixon believed a “Jewish cabal” at BLS was trying to sabotage him, and he sent Malek to find out how big it was. Two months later, two top BLS officials–both Jewish–were out.
When this came out in 1988, Malek explained that “when you are in the White House you get lots of directives that you don’t agree with.” In other words, he was only following orders. Or as Lee Atwater once said of Malek, “He’s the kind of guy who makes the trains run on time.”
While this story was enough to get Malek removed from a top post in the 1988 Republican campaign, in the current race it’s hardly been mentioned. When Bush named Malek as campaign manager at a news conference, according to columnist Roger Simon (L.A. Times, 12/15/91), “not a single reporter asked a single question about Malek.” In 1992, according to a search of all major papers in the Nexis database, the subject was mentioned only four times. If participating in an inquiry of “Jewish cabals” isn’t newsworthy behavior, what is?
Counterspin is written by Jim Naureckas and edited by Jeff Cohen.
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