Reed Irvine - Editor
The Sunday before the election for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, the state's leading paper, the Raleigh News & Observer, ran a cartoon showing a black man peering apprehensively from his doorway. Two men holding burning crosses stood on his lawn, while a third asked, "Hi. We're with the Helms campaign. Can we put a sign in your yard?" The Ku Klux Klan robes were missing, but the import was clear: a vote for Sen. Jesse Helms was a vote for the KKK. Ironically, a headline in the opposite column endorsing Helms' opponent, Harvey Gantt, who happens to be black, read, "Gantt: Unity, Not Hate."
Much of the national media stressed a supposed "racial" angle in covering the Helms-Gantt race, which Helms won, despite late polls showing him eight percentage points behind. But the coverage introduced a disturbing new media axiom into political reporting: a white candidate who challenges a black on a legitimate campaign issue, whether a public policy question or personal conduct, risks the "racist" accusation. Once a candidate is so smeared, ordinary rules of fairness in reporting no longer apply.
The day before the burning-cross cartoon, the News & Observer made a clumsy effort in a news story to link Helms with the Klan. An article on campaign finances stated, "At least 15 of Mr. Helms' supporters around the country also gave money to David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klansman who lost a bid last month for a U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana, according to the campaign finance reports." The News & Observer offered no proof that Helms knew any of the 15 "supporters," who were among more than 200,000 who gave to his campaign.
Nor did the News & Observer explore the well-publicized left-extremist connections of persons it listed as Gantt contributors. Jackson Browne, the rock artist, performed at the closing campaign rally of Sandinista chief Daniel Ortega in Managua last spring. Ed Asner, the fading sitcom actor, is a big fundraiser for the Committee in Solidarity With the People of Salvador [CISPES], the U.S. action arm of the communist insurgency in El Salvador.
Leftists hate Helms with intensity because he speaks out strongly on such family-value issues as federal funding for pornographic art and mandatory testing to stop the spread of AIDS. He is strongly anti-communist and pro-defense. He supports sensible taxes and a market economy. The arts and homosexual communities poured money and volunteer workers into Gantt's campaign. And while decrying the supposed "racism" of the Helms campaign, the North Carolina and national media themselves cast the campaign on racial lines.
On October 20 the News & Observer ran a banner headline atop the front page, "Black Voter Registration Surges; Gantt Leads in New Poll." The lead paragraph attributed the increase to the "landmark nature" of Gantt's candidacy. Ed Smith, minority affairs chairman of the state Democratic Party, was quoted, "It is also a testament to the justifiable racial pride that black voters attach to Harvey's challenge of Senator Helms." The article quoted party officials, as saying there had "been an emphasis on signing up new voters in the black churches."
The Winston-Salem Journal on October 31 reported that Jeff Greenfield, a correspondent for ABC's "Nightline," said that the campaign's "story line, an unabashed black liberal going against a traditionalist Old South incumbent senator, is tantalizing." Greenfield said, "It's like a piece of fiction, only it's true." He noted that Helms "could be beaten by his mirror opposite, which would be the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction and the first black Democratic senator ever." Peter Appleborne of the New York Times called the contest "the most important race in the country this year.... We may overdo it, but this is one where it's the ultimate New South-Old South race." The News & Observer's "Under the Dome" political column listed more than a dozen out-of-state newspapers covering the race, plus major magazines and broadcast media, and reporters from six foreign countries. Race was high on their list of issues.
In North Carolina, the Raleigh News & Observer raised the racism charge loudest, and most frequently. The News & Observer wields inordinate influence because it is published in the state's capital, and in the so-called "Research Triangle," home of North Carolina's leading universities and research facilities. Out-of-state reporters normally start campaign coverage in the capital, so what they read in the News & Observer provides their first impression of what is happening.
That the News & Observer is unabashedly liberal and pro- Democratic is something that many North Carolinians accept, albeit unhappily. Sandra Still of Garner wrote the paper on October 22 that when she moved to Raleigh she was "amazed at how my stereotyped impression of the biased Southern newspaper as power-politics is alive and well in the 1990s. Many of us Northern natives joke among ourselves about the N&O Building being Democratic headquarters for North Carolina."
Claude Sitton who until his retirement November 1, 1990 served as both editor and editorial director controlled the Helms coverage and commentary. For the same person to direct both news and editorial policies is rare in modern journalism. Most papers try to keep a wall between the news and opinion sections. An honest journalist is supposed to report facts without deference to his paper's editorial views.
A glowing farewell piece in the News & Observer on October 28 contained this assessment of Sitton by Richard Cole, dean of the University of North Carolina school of journalism: "He was very tough, but a Democrat." The article also said that Sitton's dual roles meant, "that the newspaper often spoke with a unified and powerful voice. It also meant that his interests powerfully influenced subject matter." This "unified voice" was discernible on both news and editorial pages during the Helms-Gantt race.
The "case" against Helms for racism grew from two commercials, which his campaign used extensively the last ten days. "The commercials are in color," News & Observer reporter Steve Riley wrote on November 2. "But the issues are black and white." One of them, concerning Helms' opposition to an ill-named "civil rights act" on employment quotas, was cited time and again by the Big Three networks as evidence of the senator's "attempt to insert racism into the election" (CBS). The other ad attacked Gantt's controversial sale of a TV license. As its expert analyst the News & Observer used Robert H. Dorff, an associate professor of political science at North Carolina State University, a hotbed of Gantt support. Dorff said, "This is the ugliest direct racial overtone that I recall seeing in any Helms campaign. It is the most blatantly strong racial attack that I have heard."
The Big Three networks picked up the "racist" accusations without pausing to examine the content and context. By this standard, nothing Gantt has done in his entire career could be the subject of critical comment - not even in the give-and-take of a raucous senatorial campaign.
In the "jobs" ad, the camera focuses on white hands crumbling a rejection letter. "You needed that job, and you were the best qualified," it states. "But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair? Harvey Gantt says it is...For racial quotas: Harvey Gantt. Against racial quotas: Jesse Helms."
The ad dramatized Gantt's assertion that if he had been in the Senate he would have voted to override Bush's veto of the civil rights bill. In his veto message, Bush said the bill would drive employers to quota hiring to avoid costly lawsuits. The Chamber of Commerce of the United States agreed. Helms voted to sustain the president's veto, as did 33 other senators. Paul Greenberg, editor of the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Gazette, wrote of the ad, "It seemed a fair enough comment for robust debate in a free country. If white folks are discriminated against, is it no longer discrimination? Or are nice people not supposed to notice?" But News & Observer political editor Ferrel Guillory claimed the ad showed there was little difference between Helms and David Duke, the former Louisiana Klansman. He said it "delivers in pictures much the same message Mr. Duke delivers in words."
In 1985, the FCC awarded a valuable license for a Charlotte television station to Harvey Gantt, then mayor of Charlotte, and some friends and associates who banded together under the name "Metro-Crescent." The key factor in the award was the expectation that the station would be owned and operated mainly by blacks. Four months later, Metro-Crescent sold out to Capitol Broadcasting Co., which is predominantly white, for a large profit. Gantt has refused to disclose his profit on the deal. Stories in the press said that on an initial investment of $679.50 later raised by about $40,000, he has already made about $450,000 and will make more when the deal is completed in 1992.
Helms ran an ad that asked, "How did Harvey Gantt become a millionaire?" It charged that he "used his minority status" to obtain the television license. It said, "The black community felt betrayed, but the deal made the mayor a millionaire. Harvey Gantt made government work -- for Harvey Gantt."
Black groups indeed were incensed at the television station deal. The Charlotte Observer reported on October 30 that People United for Justice, a predominantly black group, "accused Gantt and his partners of selling principles for profits." Disclosure of the deal played a part in Gantt's defeat when he sought reelection as mayor of Charlotte in 1986.
In light of these facts, the Helms-hating media could hardly attack the ad's message, but the News & Observer described the ad's background music as "menacing" and said Gantt had answered in an ad of his own. The answer showed Gantt saying, "Jessie Helms is running another smear campaign. He is charging me with using my race for financial advantage...." He provided no factual rebuttal. The News & Observer was satisfied and charged that Helms had brought up "racially oriented issues."
Both the state and national media featured Gantt's race as a key factor of his candidacy, and his campaign touted it as a leading reason to elect him. On November 4 a front page story in the News & Observer by Steve Riley began, "One is white and conservative. The other is black and liberal." The Washington Post's Thomas B. Edsall wrote on November 1 of Gantt's bid "to become the South's first post-Reconstruction black senator." In dozens of stories the News & Observer and other media stressed the racial aspects of the contest.
Gantt ran ads featuring the voices of a black couple on black stations. Helms commented to the press, "Inasmuch as he is playing it...only on black radio stations, obviously he is injecting the race issue. I don't want you fellas to once again suggest there's any racism in the Helms campaign because that just isn't so." In northeastern North Carolina, Gantt made an appeal for votes seemingly based directly on race: "It's so important for the black community, which is a significant part of the Democratic Party, to appreciate the importance of this election." The News & Observer didn't report this. It was mentioned in a letter to the editor on October 17.
TIn an interview with the News & Observer published on October 18 Helms said, "Mr. Gantt is making a racial campaign out of this, if you will pardon me. He's going around telling blacks, 'this is our chance, and you've got to vote.'" He said the media didn't see Gantt's statements "as having racial overtones...the media have got blinders on."
In a pejorative front-page article on October 24 the News & Observer charged that Helms "has begun trying to tar" Gantt "by linking him to homosexuals." It quoted Gantt saying that Helms "is always trying to create some bogeymen.... If this were 25 years ago, he'd be talking about blacks. If this were 18 years ago, he'd be talking about the communists or those civil rights agitators...."
Actually, homosexuals made themselves and their issues highly visible in the campaign, and boasted of the priority given to beating Helms. They were especially concerned about Helms' opposition to federal funding of such "art" as the homoerotic pornography of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Helms also advocated mandatory AIDS testing of immigrants and an end to confidentiality of AIDS test results. Saying this could curb the spread of the disease.
The Washington Blade, a homosexual weekly, ran a lengthy account of the importance homosexual activists put on the Helms-Gantt campaign. They worked through "Senate Vote '90," which the Blade said was organized by "Lesbian activist Mandy Carter...specifically to raise money to work for Helms' defeat this year." The Blade reported that the group "raised approximately $120,000 towards its efforts" and "held effective voter registration drives in Gay bars and supplied volunteers for door to door literature drops and phone banks." After Helms won, a gay political activist told the Blade, "It's our worst loss."
Gantt also enjoyed a flow of money from media figures. Contributors included Sharon Percy Rockefeller, president of WETA-TV, the PBS affiliate in Washing- ton, and a recent Bush appointee to the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (also wife of the West Virginia Democratic senator), $1,500; former CBS president Frank Stanton, $500; retired Time magazine executive Andrew Heiskell, $500 (his wife, Marian Sulzberger Heiskell, is a director of The New York Times Company); and Marlo Thomas, wife of television talk show host Phil Donahue.
North Carolina's Full-Court Press
In editorials, cartoons and local and syndicated columns, the News & Observer laid down a nonstop barrage on Helms through October and the first week of November. As if to remove any ambiguity, the first editorial endorsement ran unusually early, on October 7, more than a month before the election. Two other endorsements followed. Editorials on October 1 and 20 attacked Helms aide James Meredith, who gained fame in 1962 as the first black to integrate the University of Mississippi. In addition, five cartoons attacked Helms.
News & Observer "news" stories, meanwhile, gave constant boosts to the Gantt campaign, with some articles reading as if they could have come from his press secretary. A sampling gives the flavor of their coverage: Oct. 1: "If the U.S. Senate race were a war...Gantt's speech Sunday evening to a gathering of Democrats would have sounded like the boast of a general who had seriously wounded his enemy." Oct. 8: "The decision- makers in the Helms campaign consist of white males, who operate largely in back rooms. The Gantt campaign has an unusual number of women and blacks, and it is a relatively open operation." Oct. 22: "...Helms is the darling of the scotch-and-soda crowd of corporate board rooms, while...Gantt rates highly with the beer-and-shot guys of union halls." (Another funds story, on Nov. 3, listed such "beer-and-shot" Gantt supporters as David Rockefeller, Jr.; Edgar M. Bronfman of Seagram Co., the megabuck Canadian conglomerate; and Jerome S. Kohlberg, described as a "Wall Street buy-out specialist.")
Stories about Helms accused him of dozing during a meeting with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia ("Baloney!" Helms replied), and claimed, "tourists in the Senate gallery sometimes giggled" when Helms argued for amendments stopping federal funds for pornographic "art."
Stifling Conservative Criticism
AIM members in North Carolina have been criticizing the Raleigh News and Observer for many years. Dick Kania, a retired attorney who lives in the Raleigh area, encountered difficulty in getting letters published in which he exposed the paper's factual errors and glaring imbalance in its news stories, editorials, opinion pieces and letters.
For example, Kania found that in the first six months of 1989 the paper published nine editorials and 31 columns "hewing to the standard liberal line" on Nicaragua, El Salvador and U.S. policies in Central America. It ran only eight columns on the other side. Kania pointed out that the letters-to-the-editor section "published 28 letters from supporters on the left, but only six from those who disagreed with the overwhelming liberal barrage on these issues." Kania interviewed writers of the few dissenting letters the News & Observer published. He found many had encountered censorship problems.
Kania eventually sent publisher Frank Daniels, Jr. a 10-page single spaced letter detailing instances where editors had ignored letters or severely censored them. Daniels ignored Kania's evidence and claimed in his reply that the paper gave preference to letters that disagreed with its editorial positions. He said letters with a strong ideological spin were subjected to close scrutiny to insure that no one misstated verifiable facts. Kania said, "Under this verification policy the News & Observer remains the guardian of the facts; if a statement is not within their knowledge it is effectively treated as a misstatement and therefore not publishable."
Editing of letters seemed arbitrary. The News & Observer didn't like letters supporting the democratic resistance in Nicaragua, nor those noting Sandinista arms supplies to the communist terrorists in El Salvador. Ethics problems of House Democrats got short shrift, as did racist comments by black Democratic politicians. And although the News & Observer attacked an FBI investigation of CISPES, it would not publish a letter describing how Salvadoran and U.S. communists worked together to organize this support group for the Salvadoran terrorists.
Kania formed FACT (First Amendment for Conservatives Too) and arranged a meeting with publisher Daniels, editor Claude Sitton and their aides. (Because of a physical disability, Kania could not attend; J. Edgar Williams and Ronald Pappalardo represented FACT.) They asked two things: that the News & Observer publish, "a clear encompassing statement coveting the rules" for letters and op-ed submissions, and that the paper appoint an "impartial ombudsman to consider and respond to reader complaints of censorship and extreme bias."
Daniels rejected both requests. He saw no need for printed guidelines, and he said his editors acted as de facto ombudsmen. Kania's careful documentation had shown that the paper was biased against conservatives and was suppressing their criticisms. He told Daniels that FACT had hoped moral suasion would be enough to get the Raleigh News & Observer to strive for fairness and accuracy. Daniels' response was that he did not intend to respond to any more of Kania's letters exposing factual errors in the News & Observer.
The full-court media press in North Carolina didn't succeed in defeating Senator Helms. After the voters had spoken, CNN showed Helms apologizing for being late for his victory party, saying, "I'm sorry I'm so late, but I've been at home watching the grieving face of Dan Rather. Well, there's no joy in Mudville tonight." (CBS showed the same footage a few minutes later, but omitted Helms' statement about Rather.) Helms added, "The mighty ultra- liberal establishment, the liberal politicians and editors and commentators and columnists, have struck out again."
This report shows that the media problem is local as well as national. Dick Kania and his group deserve your support. They want to buy space in the paper to run letters Daniels won't publish, but they need help. Two cards are enclosed, one to the Raleigh News & Observer and the other to Dick Kania. Send the cards or your own letters. Contributions to help FACT buy ads in the Raleigh paper may be made to AIM earmarked for this purpose.
AIM REPORT is published twice monthly by Accuracy In Media, Inc., 1275 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005, and is free to AIM members. Dues and contributions to AIM are tax deductible. The AIM Report is mailed 3rd class to those whose contribution is at least $20 a year and 1st class to those contributing $30 a year or more. Non- members subscriptions are $35 (1st class mail).
AIM Report NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF
A GROUP OF ELEVEN WASHINGTON APPLE GROWERS PLANS TO SUE CBS AND THE Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), charging them with product disparagement in their attack on Alar-treated apples last year. Acting as the Alar Class Action Committee, they will ask damages totaling $250 million. They claim that apple growers suffered losses of $150 million and processors $100 million because of the actions of the defendants. The suit is to be filed in Yakima County, Washington on November 28. It will charge that the defendants used "bogus" science to destroy consumer confidence in apples and apple products. Andrea Arnold's book, Fear of Food, which I recommended in our September-B AIM Report, has a wealth of important material bearing on this case, including a very good discussion of the law of disparagement. It also includes a chapter entitled "The Alar Lawsuit" by J. Jarette Sandlin, an apple grower who has been largely responsible for bringing the suit to fruition. The book is available from AIM for $8.95 postpaid.
SANDLIN CONCLUDES HIS CHAPTER WITH THIS STATEMENT: "CBS AND THE NATURAL Resources Defense Council and David Fenton and others have done grave damage, and they should reimburse those they have harmed in accordance with the law. This is a grassroots claim and it is going to be addressed by grassroots people in the jury room. That's how I'm going to deal with the issue." He also writes, "Accuracy in Media has been a very strong supporter of the harmed apple growers, assisting us in acquiring the portfolio of all the half-truths and misleading statements that have been made that developed this Alar scare. The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise has also been helpful in publicizing our plight through this book." Sandlin and his fellow plaintiffs are going to need all the help they can get to fight this case. They will be up against the best lawyers money can buy, but the truth is on their side. Floyd Abrams, one of those high-priced lawyers who may very well be involved in the case, made this comment on the suit: "The Washington apple growers cannot escape the First Amendment by calling their suit 'product disparagement.' Beyond any mistakes, they have to prove that CBS lied. That is a very difficult burden and is supposed to be a difficult one."
I HAVE CITED THE "60 MINUTES" SEGMENT ON ALAR MANY TIMES AS A PRIZE EXAMPLE of lying by the media. The EPA had disclosed on Feb. 1, 1989 that its rodent tests of Alar had mined out "statistically negative for cancer response." In other words, it didn't cause tumors in the mice even when administered in massive doses over a prolonged period of time. That was put out in a press release that was no doubt sent to CBS News. On Feb. 26, 1989, the "60 Minutes" segment opened with correspondent Ed Bradley standing in front of a picture of a red apple emblazoned with a skull & crossbones and saying that daminozide (Alar) was the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply. I'll be surprised if a Yakima County jury doesn't conclude that Bradley uttered a lie and that the picture of the poisonous apple was a graphic lie. If by some incredible sloppiness, no one at CBS News saw the EPA press release before the "60 Minutes" program was aired, that still won't get them off the hook. I personally discussed it by phone and faxed a copy of it to Don Hewitt, the executive producer of "60 Minutes" after the program aired. I felt sure he would follow the CBS rules and make a correction on the air. Instead, when "60 Minutes" aired a second program on Alar in May, it said ten times that Alar was a carcinogen or potential carcinogen.
THESE PEOPLE ARE APPARENTLY STILL LYING ABOUT ALAR. I HAVE A CLIPPING FROM The Daily Gazette of Schenectady, N.Y. of Nov. 3, 1990, sent to me by an AIM member. It reports a speech given there by Ed Bradley, saying he shared with the audience "one of his favorite stories...about alar, a cancer-causing chemical that used to be applied by apple growers to regulate growth of their crops." Bradley was proud of his role in getting this dangerous chemical taken off the market in the U.S. Of course, CBS hasn't informed its viewers that the U.K. evaluated the new test data in 1989 and concluded that there was no risk of cancer from consuming apples treated with Alar or products made from them. This was reported in the October Reader's Digest article on Alar. Reprints of this article are available from AIM if you send a SASE.
ONE OF THE BEST THINGS TO COME OUT OF THE NOV. 6 ELECTION WAS THE STUNNING defeat of the so-called "Big Green" proposition in California. Jane Fonda, her former husband, Tom Hayden, and her husband-to-be, Ted Turner, together gave or loaned over $1 million to the Big Green campaign. The proposition would have barred pesticides that could be shown to cause cancer in mice or rats even if the amount of the residue on fruit and vegetables was too small to pose any danger to human health. Eminent scientists such as Dr. Bruce Ames, head of the biochemistry department at the University of California at Berkeley, denounced this as irrational. He says the natural chemical pesticides produced by the plants themselves exceed any man-made pesticide residues in our food by a factor of 10,000. Very few have been tested for carcinogenicity, but over half of those that have been tested cause cancer in rodents.
DR. AMES SAYS, "IT IS PROBABLE THAT ALMOST EVERY FRUIT AND VEGETABLE IN THE supermarket contains natural plant pesticides that are rodent carcinogens." If the Big Green ban were applied to them, we would have to quit eating broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes and orange and grapefruit juice to name but a few. That would be ridiculous, since there is good evidence that fruits and vegetables improve our health. Why aren't these foods with abundant natural carcinogens giving us all cancer? Dr. Ames' answer is that they are obviously not human carcinogens, at least not in the amounts present in a normal diet. He says we should quit labeling chemicals carcinogens just because they may produce tumors in mice or rats when administered in massive doses over prolonged periods. He says these huge doses tend to wound the cells of the animals, causing the cells to divide rapidly and making them vulnerable to mutations that may result in cancer. He charges that the testing method is fundamentally flawed, and many scientists agree with him. The National Academy of Sciences is now looking into this.
WALTER CRONKITE, ONCE DUBBED THE MOST TRUSTED MAN IN AMERICA, IS LOOKING less and less deserving of that trust. In a recent talk at Harvard, excerpts of which were printed on the op-ed page of The New York Times, Cronkite confessed that in 1968, shortly after he had aired his famous special in which he mined against the war, he met with Sen. Robert Kennedy and urged him to run for the Democratic nomination for president against Lyndon Johnson. As Cronkite tells it, Kennedy, who was trying to decide whether or not to run, initiated the meeting. He found Kennedy's views on Vietnam in harmony with his own, so he told him, "If you feel so strongly on the subject, it seems to me you certainly ought to run for the presidency." Kennedy, in turn, urged Cronkite to run for the Senate from New York, which he declined to do. He said that to do so would give the public reason to question whether he had been "tailoring the news to build a political platform." Do you recall the fuss made in 1980 about George Will, writer of a syndicated opinion column, advising candidate Ronald Reagan? Will took a lot of lumps from the liberals over that. I'll send a free copy of Fear of Food to the first penon who finds an editorial or column criticizing Cronkite for mixing anchoring the news for CBS and giving political advice to Bobby Kennedy.
THE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. PLAGIARISM SCANDAL IS BEING UNDERSTATED BY THE media, according to Ted Pappas, assistant editor of Chronicles, a magazine published by the Rockford Institute of Rockford, Ill. Pappas says Chronicles will be publishing an article about this. It will charge that the plagiarism was "overwhelming" and that it has been known for years. He says the London Sunday Telegraph got wind of it in December 1989 but that the King Papers Project director Clayborne Carson told the paper that it was not true that there was any plagiarism. Later, an American journalist connected to a college tried to break the story, but he backed off when threatened with loss of his job. Pappas also charges that the National Endowment for the Humanities, headed by Lynn Cheney, learned of the plagiarism over a year ago but did nothing about it. The NEH has provided major funding for the King Papers Project, which has fallen far behind schedule in publishing King's papers as it has tried to decide how to handle the plagiarized works. In the meantime, Arizonans are taking a beating for voting down a paid holiday honoring King.
THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE ACCESS TO A COMPUTER AND MODEM WILL BE PLEASED TO know that AIM now has an on-line information service--AIMNET. This is a bulletin board system that brings the latest information from AIM and other conservative groups directly to your computer. It will include material from the AIM Report, The Washington Inquirer and Campus Report, the publication of Accuracy in Academia. We have just added the new AIM book and tape catalog, and we will soon be adding our Media Monitor radio scripts, the schedules of AIM Speakers Bureau speakers and their biographies. There is also a message section. Your comments and questions are invited. There is no charge for the use of this service. Just call 202-371-9053 via your modem.