Reed Irvine - Editor
One of the big hurdles confronting Senator Kennedy in his campaign for the presidency is the issue of character. Ten years ago at Chappaquiddick he (1) panicked in a crisis; (2) put his career and image above the life of his young lady friend, Mary Jo Kopechne; and (3) perpetrated what Robert Sherrill, Washington correspondent of the liberal magazine, The Nation, has called "the most brilliant cover-up ever achieved in a nation where investigative procedures are well developed and where the principles of equal justice prevail."
The panic occurred ten years ago when Kennedy was 37 years old. After having run his car off Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, he somehow managed to escape from the submerged vehicle, but he left his companion, Mary Jo Kopechne behind. For ten hours he failed to report the accident or seek professional help to rescue the girl. Had professional help been summoned, Miss Kopechne would probably be alive today. John Farrar, the scuba diver who removed her body from the car the next morning, has said that her position indicated that she had been breathing air trapped in the sunken car and that she may have lived for several hours. She probably died not of drowning. but of suffocation ,when the oxygen in that air bubble was exhausted.
Some say the fact that Kennedy panicked and did not do what was necessary to save Mary Jo does not bear on his character today. That was ten years ago. But the cover-up that Robert Sherrill has detailed in his book, The Last Kennedy, is still going on. The judge at the inquest concluded that Kennedy had not told the truth. He and the others who were with him at that party ten years ago have all kept their lips sealed, refusing to answer the many embarrassing questions that hang over the case. That is relevant to any evaluation of Kennedy's character today.
This is what AIM Chairman Reed Irvine told NBC News when they interviewed him on October 10. They had asked for the interview because they were devoting a 5-minute segment of their nightly news program to Ted Kennedy's character, and at the last minute they found themselves without anyone who would say that Chappaquiddick revealed character traits that should be an issue in the campaign. Irvine gave them a forceful statement and also warned that the media should not abet Kennedy's cover-up.
When the segment on Kennedy's character was aired that night, not a single word of Irvine's 20-minute interview was used. One witness who was critical of Kennedy was shown. That was author and columnist Victor Lasky. He was shown saying: "He has to live with it. Does this make him the type of man we want in the White House? I say no." That was all--ten seconds out of the 8-minute interview that Lasky gave them. Lasky had also discussed the cover-up and its relevance in much the same way that Irvine had. NBC News had a choice of two hard-hitting statements that would have supplied some balance to their treatment of Kennedy's character. But evidently balance was not what they wanted. They used neither one.
Was it for lack of time? Not at all. About 23% of the time was devoted to self-serving statements by Senator Kennedy. Another 12% was taken up by a college professor who took the position that Kennedy's past misbehavior didn't tell us much about his character. His character, the professor said, was the basic attitude that he got from his family. One might infer that Teddy is a carbon copy of his two older brothers. NBC reinforced that view by showing Kennedy jogging for nearly half a minute, while the narrator intoned that what he got from his family was determination--the kind of determination that enabled him to lose 20 lbs. by jogging and not eating ice cream!
Tom Walsine, the producer of the program, said that the purpose of the program was to show that Chappaquiddick was not going to be forgotten, and he thought it filled that purpose. But the truth is that Walsine did not include one word in the program that would have shown that Chappaquiddick revealed serious flaws in Kennedy's character. They sought Lasky and Irvine out for that purpose, but they refused to air the facts they gave them.
Write to William Small, President, NBC News, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10020. Tell him what you think of the action of NBC News in blacking out the significant comments made by Victor Lasky and Reed Irvine on the relevance of Chappaquiddick to Senator Kennedy's presidential aspirations. Urge him to inform the people about Chappaquiddick.
ENTERTAINMENT OR INDOCTRINATION?
In a recent AIM Report (September I 1979), we pointed out how television entertainment programs are used to transmit the anti-business biases of the writers and producers of these programs. We have recently come across an exchange of correspondence which confirms that the producers of these programs do view their entertainment programs as vehicles for serious messages, contradicting a claim by an attorney for one of the production companies that these programs are not intended to be taken too seriously.
On October 6, 1978, Robert Mitchell, counsel for the Chlorine Institute, sent the following letter to Mr. Cy Chermak, executive producer of the NBC program about the adventures of two California highway patrolmen. "CHiPs."
Dear Mr. Chermak: We write in protest of the September 23rd episode of the program "CHiPs." Our protest arises because of the large number of technical errors in the presentation as highlighted in the attached report. These have more serious consequences than might be immediately apparent. For over a half century, chlorine producers in the U.S. and in several other countries have worked, through this Institute, to improve procedures and equipment for the safe manufacture, handling and transportation of chlorine. Especially important among these activities has been our constant effort to improve the chlorine handling knowledge and capability of this country's emergency services. One of the most essential targets has been volunteer firemen.
The subject TV episode undoubtedly has undone a good many years of work in this regard. To preclude even more damage we ask that this presentation not be re-broadcast in reruns and that it be withheld from future syndication. With the present strong legisla- tive, regulatory, media and public awareness and concern about the safe transportation of hazardous materials, we feel it most important to minimize the misinformation appearing in dramatic presentations on television. The chance of mishandling of a highway emergency by volunteer emergency personnel is simply too great to accept the risk. We ask for your cooperation and look forward to your reply. Very truly yours, Robert L. Mitchell, Jr.
Mr. Mitchell appended a list of eight factual errors in the program, including the statement that tanker trucks that were supposed to be carrying chlorine "would go off like an H-bomb" if they were not moved out of the vicinity of a fire. It was pointed out that chlorine is neither flammable nor explosive.
The Institute also pointed out that the tankers used in the episode were not the specially designed tankers that are used to transport chlorine and that the accident that was shown on "CHiPs" could not have happened to a chlorine tanker because of that special design. It was also noted that tankers transporting chlorine must carry emergency kits and gas masks. but no such equipment was evident in the "CHiPs" episode. "CHiPs" conveyed the rather alarming impression that the chlorine tankers had to be kept moving lest they become overheated by the California sun, presumably with dire consequences. The Institute pointed out that the safety valves on chlorine tankers are required to open only if the temperature rises above 140 F, not a temperature, likely to be reached enven in the California sun.
Karla Davidson, associate general counsel of MGM, the company that produces "CHiPS," responded to a criticism of this program from John Ruch of PPG Industries, saying:
"As you probably know, our series is a light fictional account of the adventures of two motorcycle policemen working for the California Highway Patrol. We attempt to be as accurate as possible in portraying the facts in each episode; but at no time to we purport to be a documentary or factual program, nor do we believe the public considers this series to be of such a nature."
However, after the editor-in-chief of Chemical Week, Mr. Patrick P. McCurdy (who will be one of the speakers at the AIM Conference on November 3), gave this episode of "CHiPs" the CW Ninny Award, he received the following letter from Mr. Cy Chermak. the executive producer at MGM Television.
To the editors: I have read... that your magazine has awarded "CHiPs" your 1978 Ninny Award.
Although we have been told that there were numerous minor technical inaccuracies in our "CHiPs" episode THE VOLUNTEERS, the real purpose of the show was to articulate a growing concern in America about the manner in which volatile chemicals are trans- ported through our communities.
Nevertheless, an award is an award. If you can arrange to have the "Ninny" presented to me in Youngstown, Florida, where eight persons were killed after a cloud of gas was released by a train derailment, I would be glad to accept . . ." Very truly yours. Cy Chermak
Pat McCurdy replied at length to Mr. Chermak, publishing both letters in Chemical Week of May 23, 1979. Here is part of his reply:
"I find your second paragraph quite amazing and revealing. All of this time, I thought the main object of shows like "CHiPs" was entertainment. Now you seem to be saying that "CHiPs," or at least this particular episode, is a sort of documentary, even an organ for advocacy. If this idea is correct, it substantiates quite well the thesis of Ben Stein as put forth in his book The View from Sunset Boulevard. Stein suggests that even the most seemingly innocuous TV shows may provide a platform for all manner of social and political messages... (Ben Stein will also be a speaker at the AIM Conference).
"Still. I don't have any major quarrel with the principle of your basing an episode of your show on shipment of a hazardous chemical and working in an accident. After all, there have been numerous unfortunate shipping accidents in recent years. mostly due to the dilapidated conditions of many of the railroads...
"But at least get your facts--technical and otherwise-- straight... The Sept. 23, 1978 episode of "CHiPs" contained a number of errors. You may think them 'minor,' but those errors could unnecessarily mislead, even panic some viewers. I submit, for example, that baseless references to 'going off like an H-bomb' are irresponsible in the extreme, as well as inaccurate and incredible...
"As for the place of presentation, I have an alternative suggestion to yours. How about in a plant where chlorine is used to bleach pulp or paper, or one that makes disinfectants, or one that makes chloroform, or one that makes fire retardants ... or any one of a number of plants that process chlorine into numerous useful and needed products with few accidents or injuries?"
We commend Mr. McCurdy of Chemical Week, John Ruch of PPG Industries, and Robert L. Mitchell of the Chlorine Institute for exhibiting some fighting spirit. Mr. McCurdy has suggested in Chemical Week that the episode of NBC's "Quincy" which we dissected in our September II 1979 issue is a strong candidate for the CW Ninny Award for 1979. This episode dealt not only with the transport of chemicals, but also with the alleged willingness of executives of large chemical companies to conceal the fact that they were producing dangerous carcinogenic products that were killing their workers and endangering the public, all for the sake of profit.
BIG MEDIA SUCKERED BY CHINESE COMMUNISTS
Remember all of those stories about how well things were going in China, how well off the people are, and how much better conditions are now than they were before the Communist takeover? Forget it. They were mostly lies.
AIM has always been critical of those stories since they were based on official sources in the Chinese Government and press or foreign journalists who were given guided tours on the mainland. Those who have lived under the communists and have gotten out paint a picture of starvation and oppression.
We cited one such report in July 1977, when a Communist Chinese Air Force officer, Yuan-yen Fan, flew his MiG-19 to Taiwan and requested asylum. Fan told a far different story of conditions in China than Americans were getting from their press and television. He stressed in a news conference on Taiwan that it was impossible for foreign journalists to gain any real understanding of the situation in Communist China in a short visit. He proceeded to paint a grim picture of conditions there, including serious food shortages. This contrasted with reports that had run two years earlier in The New York Times and The Washington Post predicting that Communist China would soon join the ranks of the grain exporting countries because of the fantastic gains that had been made in agricultural output.
Now the official Chinese Communist press has confirmed that things really weren't going very well. According to an August 29 article in the New York Times, "China's newspapers have in the last two months admitted that they have used false stories and puffery for years..." The Times reports that one local newspaper has admitted that two recent stories on increased industrial and agricultural production were false. The Times reports that even the Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, has confessed to printing "lies and distortions."
The confessions "are part of a nationwide campaign started by China's leaders earlier this year to eliminate propaganda and 'seek the truth from facts,'" the Times reports. "China's newspapers, meanwhile, are leading the campaign by admitting they have been falling for the propaganda and passing it on, without questioning it, to readers."
The problem is, however, that over the last six or seven years many American newspapers "have been falling for the propaganda and passing it on, without questioning it, to readers." For example, a January 2, 1975 article in the Washington Post reported, without critical comment, a portion of an editorial that appeared in three of China's most important publications. "In our country the market is brisk, prices remain stable and production and construction are thriving," the editorial claimed.
That was pure bunk, of course. Yet, time after time major U.S. newspapers published such nonsense. "Increased Grain Production in China" was the headline over an article in the New York Times in December, 1975. The story was based totally on figures supplied by the government. "'76 Oil Output Up 13%" was a story run bv the Times in 1977. This story was based on figures supplied by the official Chinese Press Agency.
Perhaps in the months to come, the Chinese press will come clean regarding industrial and agricultural production on the mainland. Aside from what they falsely reported, however, there is the question of what they didn't report. Some of the grave crimes that have been committed in communist China have now begun to surface, paving the way for the trial of the "Gang of Four." The People's Daily reported on September 4 that party officials killed several hundred thousand innocent people in China's Inner Mongolia region during the early 1970s. The paper reported that guilty party officials are now being purged.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. media did not report that massacre, since the official communist press was silent at the time. Western reporters were given guided tours of Inner Mongolia. Canadian journalist Ross Munro reported on such a tour in The New York Times on September 1, 1975. In a glowing story, Munro told his readers that before the communist takeover Mongolians were discriminated against. But now, he said, they are a "recognized minority" which receives "preferential treatment in schooling, employment and entry into administrative positions in government and industry." The Times reported that "While other countries are grappling with 'minority problems,' China seems to have found a formula for dealing with minorities, at least here in Inner Mongolia."
Now we know what the formula for Inner Mongolia was--mass murder, according to the People's Daily.
Strange to say, the Times has not reported the Chinese confession of this hideous crime. The Times has a duty to tell the story in view of its 1975 puff piece. If the Chinese press is going to tell the truth retroactively, the U.S. press should also correct the record.
Last year when President Carter made his dramatic move to recognize the communist Chinese regime, the American people were told that one reason for the move was that there had been a significant degree of liberalization in China. There has been some increase in freedom of expression. Posters began appearing on "Democracy Wall" in Peking that were in some measure critical of the government, or at least of some government officials, and some exposed serious injustices.
One of the most dramatic of these was a lengthy expose of a secret prison, not previously known to Westerners, in which high ranking Communist officials were imprisoned and subjected to torture. The author of this poster was a young man of 29, Wei Jing-Shen, who also edited an underground magazine called "Exploration."
After his poster exposing the secret prison appeared, Wei was arrested and held for six months. On October 16, 1979, he was tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The charge was that he had passed some kind of information to a foreigner, but no foreign observers were permitted to attend his very brief trial, and it is not known what information he is supposed to have passed or to whom he is supposed to have passed it.
On the day of the trial, Reed Irvine, editor of the AIM Report, asked State Department spokesman Hodding Carter III if our ambassador to China had taken any interest in this case and if any representations would be made to the Peking government on behalf of Wei. Carter replied that Ambassador Woodcock was interested in the case, but he would have to find out what, if anything, would be said about it.
The following day, Mr. Carter came to the daily State Department press briefing with this prepared statement: "We are surprised and disappointed at the severity of the sentence for a man named Wei Jing-shen Ambassador Woodcock has taken a personal interest in this case, and the PRC is aware of this fact."
The State Department refused to comment on whether or not it thought that this courageous editor and proponent of freedom of speech should be jailed at all, claiming not to know the facts about the charges in the case. Nor could Mr. Carter say for sure whether our "disappointment" had even been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. AIM Assistant Editor Cliff Kincaid reminded him that an embassy official had been sent to the jail to visit a Nicaraguan journalist jailed briefly by Somoza earlier this year and asked if anything so dramatic would be done to show how we felt about the treatment of this Chinese journalist.
Mr. Carter replied: "I have worn a dark blue suit for when I made this announcement. I felt that to be a fairly dramatic manifestation." That evoked laughter from the assembled reporters. Mr. Carter, perhaps sensing that he had made a joke of a very serious matter, said: "No, I mean, I find the question to be argumentative, and therefore, I'm giving you a flip answer. The fact is that we have, both from this podium and in China itself, made it very clear how we feel on this subject."
On October 23, a poster appeared on Democracy Wall accusing Swedish diplomat Lars Elstrom of interfering in Chinese affairs by criticizing the sentence of Wei Jing-shen in conversations with private Chinese. The poster asked the Foreign Ministry to take action against him.
There have been no reports of posters denouncing Ambassador Woodcock or any other official of the American embassy for criticizing Wei's sentence. Was it because our representatives were more discreet? Or could it be that in attacking Lars Elstrom Peking is discreetly telling Washington not to talk to them about human rights problems, no matter how modest our criticism?
District Judge Oliver Gasch's ruling that the President acted unconstitutionally in nullifying the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China was a severe blow to President Carter. But what has attracted less notice is that the ruling also exposed the bias-related blindness of Big Media.
Senator Barry Goldwater's suit that resulted in this historic constitutional ruling had been largely ignored by Big Media. When Carter's action was reported last December, of the three large weekly news magazines, only Time even mentioned the Goldwater suit. Time said Goldwater was acting "on the questionable ground" that the President cannot cancel a treaty without Senate approval. Time said that the Constitution does not require a Senate vote on cancellation of treaties. Judge Gasch reached the opposite conclusion after examining the evidence. Time presumed to instruct its readers without discussing--and perhaps without even examining--the evidence.
AIM REPORT is published semi-monthly by Accuracy In Media. Inc. 777 14th St.. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005 Second class postage paid at Washington, D.C. USPS 399-790. Subscriptions: $3 a year to members of AIM (Included in dues). $15 to others. AIM dues are $15 a year and are tax- deductible except for portion covering AIM REPORT subscription.
THE LEAD STORY IN THIS AIM REPORT IS AN OUTGROWTH OF THE FRUSTRATING EXPERIENCE of being interviewed by a network television correspondent with the understanding that some portion of the interview would appear on the network news only to find that none of it was used. This is no doubt a very common experience, and I would have had no gripe about it if the point of view that I had been specifically asked to represent had been expressed on the news program by anyone else. I thought it was inexcusable for NBC to take up my time on the pretext that they wanted to include in their segment on the character of Senator Edward Kennedy the views of someone who thought that the Senator's behavior at Chappaquiddick revealed--something important about his character, and then fail to use what I had said or what anyone else had said on this subject. Victor Lasky was similarly persuaded to give them some of his time for the same reason, and he has just about as much cause for complaint as I do. Though they showed him on the air for 10 seconds, they carefully avoided using anything substantive that he had told them about the Chappaquiddick cover-up.
I HAVE WRITTEN TO NBC TO PROTEST THEIR ABETTING THE CHAPPAQUIDDICK COVER-UP IN this way. In my letter, I pointed out that devoting a 5-minute segment to Ted Kennedy for five nights running during the week preceding the vote for delegates to the Florida Democratic convention was in itself a most questionable deed. The vote for delegates had been converted into a popularity contest between President Carter and Senator Kennedy. The NBC 5-minute segments leading up to the vote on Saturday were uniformly puff pieces for Kennedy, with the exception of the Friday segment, where Carter was given a fair amount of time. The Wednesday segment that was to deal with Kennedy's character turned out to be mainly devoted to trying to squash suggestions that his expulsion from Harvard for cheating, Chappaquiddick, and his messed up marriage ought to be factors that voters should consider.
IN SEEKING TO MANIPULATE THE AUDIENCE VIEWS ON THESE SUBJECTS, NBC SUPPRESSED and distorted the facts, in addition to censoring the critical comments of Vic Lasky and Reed Irvine. They said that Mary Jo Kopechne had drowned. That was the finding of the medical examiner, to be sure, be he never made a thorough examination, much less an autopsy to determine the cause of death. The evidence of the mortician indicated that Mary Jo Kopechne had very little water in her lungs, far less than one would expect in a victim of drowning. John Farrar, the scuba diver who removed her lifeless body from Ted Kennedy's car, said that her position indicated to him that she had been breathing air trapped in the car and had probably died when the oxygen in that air bubble was exhausted, not of drowning, but of suffocation. That is important, because it suggests that the girl's life could have been saved if Kennedy and his friends had only reported the accident promptly.
THAT, OF COURSE, WAS A SUBJECT NBC PREFERRED TO AVOID. NOT ONE WORD WAS SAID on this program about the very important fact that Kennedy had not only abandoned the girl for 10 hours, while he went back to his hotel to sleep, but that he has been a party to a massive cover-up of what actually transpired that night for the past ten years. The cover-up and the lying continue to this day. In my interview, I said that if Kennedy were to insist, as he has, that he has told the truth about Chappaquiddick, he should volunteer to take a lie detector test to prove the point. At the inquest, the presiding judge concluded that he had not told the truth. NBC did not want that aired either.
TYPICAL OF THE NBC KID-GLOVE HANDLING OF KENNEDY WAS THE TREATMENT OF HIS EXPULSION from Harvard in 1951. NBC said: "He was a freshman at Harvard, a football player, and he was expelled for cheating on a Spanish test." The viewer might have thought that young Kennedy peeked at someone else's paper, or perhaps had been caught with hidden notes. Not at all. He operated in a grand style. He hired another student to take the exam for him--a fact NBC did not bother to mention. And who did they have comment on this misdeed? Ted Kennedy himself. He said: "I was actually passing the course at the time. Thought that if I didn't make it through the exam I wouldn't be able to be involved in sports activity, but that was a silly act of a schoolboy." That was the end of that, as far as NBC was concerned. Well, almost. They did bring on their presidential character expert, Professor James David Barber of Duke University, who suggested that neither the cheating nor Chappaquiddick had much bearing on Kennedy's qualifications to be president, since he was not likely to "encounter anything like a Spanish test or a Chappaquiddick in the White House."
WE REGRET TO SAY THAT ROBERT SHERRILL'S BOOK, THE LAST KENNEDY, IS OUT OF PRINT and our supply is totally exhausted. We have had to refund money sent in for copies of this book, and so please don't send in any more orders for it. We can supply copies of Death at Chappaquiddick by Thomas and Richard Tedrow, a good book, at S8.95, postpaid.
OUR SUPPLY OF VICTOR LASKY'S IT DIDN'T START WITH WATERGATE IN PAPERBACK IS ALSO exhausted and we can't get any more. We still have a good supply of hardbacks, however. There are quite a few new subscribers that we owe a copy of the paperback, and we have been trying to figure out what to do. We are casting about for a good paperback that we might substitute. Suggestions from you to whom we owe these books and from publishers would be most welcome.
WE HAVE BEEN VERY BUSY WITH SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS IN RECENT MONTHS AND WILL BE BUSY in the month ahead. I was honored to be invited to be the convocation speaker at the annual meeting of the American College of Dentists in Dallas on October 20. Murray Baron, AIM's president, will be the convocation speaker at DePauw University on November 28. Murray will be speaking at a conference on The Media and the Law at Princeton University on November 16, and I will be speaking at a convention of the Society of Professional Journalists in New York City on November 15. At the end of November, I will be going to Taiwan, where I have been invited to give some lectures.
THE GIFT-GIVING SEASON IS COMING UP. HERE ARE A COUPLE OF SUGGESTIONS FOR YOU. 1. The AIM Report makes a great gift, especially for those who think like you, and for those that ought to think like you. To help you fight the ravages of inflation, we are biting the bullet and are offering gift subscriptions between now and Christmas at the bargain rate of only $10. That should help you solve a lot of those gift problems, and you will be helping to spread the AIM habit. 2. How about a Christmas present for AIM? The reason we have been able to keep our subscription rate low and do so many good things is because a lot of our good supporters give more than just the basic rate of $15 a year. Contributions to AIM are tax-deductible, and if you itemize your tax deductions, I can't urge too strongly that you give AIM a high priority in your list of charitable contributions. We violate all the fund-raising rules by not constantly asking our supporters for money. Our view is that we should concentrate on doing what you want us to do, do it well, and perhaps remind you once a year or so that we can do more and do it better if you give us your generous support. Will you? Many thanks.