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| IN OTHER NEWS... | |
 December 30, 1998 
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Media correspondent Terence Smith talks with newspaper editorial writers and columnists about some major stories that may have been pushed aside by the media's coverage of the Lewinsky matter. |
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JIM LEHRER: Media correspondent Terence Smith has the neglected news story.
TOM BROKAW, NBC News: Monica Lewinsky scandal. DAN RATHER, CBS News: Monica Lewinsky. PETER JENNINGS, ABC News: Monica Lewinsky. SAM DONALDSON, ABC NEWS: Monica Lewinsky. TERENCE SMITH: The public, according to opinion polls, is sick of the Lewinsky saga, but the national press -- especially the television networks and their cable counterparts -- has devoted hour upon hour and headline upon headline to the story. ABC's Ted Koppel made an observation on January 22nd that could have served as the media motto for the year:
TERENCE SMITH: But what were some of the stories that were pushed aside? Would they and should they have received greater attention if not for Monica Lewinsky? In the United States, the crime rate dropped for the sixth year running. Murder rates in New York City now approximate those of the early 1960's. Campaign finance legislation died an unheralded death in the senate after barely making it through the house. Welfare reform entered its second year with a majority of the states meeting the law's requirements. And a sweeping 206 billion dollar agreement was reached between state attorneys general and the tobacco companies. Overseas, the Russian economic situation became even more dire. One
third of the Russian population now earns less than $30 per month. Asia
was wracked with economic troubles and political turmoil. Hong Kong
and Japan descended into recession.
According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, as of December 15th, the three broadcast networks had presented one thousand, five hundred and two stories on the Lewinsky saga. That totals almost 43 hours of air time. The runner up? The inspection standoff with Iraq, with one thousand fewer stories. In all, only one story attracted anything close to the attention given the tale of the president and the intern. |
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TERENCE SMITH: Now, how our regional commentators view the other news stories of this Lewinsky-saturated year. We're joined by Patrick McGuigan of the Daily Oklahoman; Lee Cullum of the Dallas Morning News; Bob Kittle of the San Diego Union Tribune; Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution; and joining them tonight is Susan Albright of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Welcome to you all. Bob Kittle, let me begin with you. From your perspective in San Diego, what were some of the overlooked and under-covered stories this year?
So, you know, I think the genie's out of the bottle on human cloning, but I don't think the world has quite grasped the significance of that yet. It really raises very profound moral and ethical questions about what it's like to create a human being out of you know an exact replica of someone else. It's a totally different story, of course, than in vitro fertilization and other reproductive methods. And we need to be discussing this issue. We need to understand it. For the most part, there's general agreement that there should be a moratorium on human cloning, at least a long-term moratorium. But I think the reality is that while it may not occur in the United States, it's likely to occur within the very near future. Somewhere in the world a human being will birth will be given to a human being who has been created from human cloning.
ROBERT KITTLE: I think it's a more difficult story to understand, Terry. The Monica Lewinsky story got a great deal of attention but it deserved a great deal of attention. I mean, let's face it. The President of the United States has been impeached over this story. There was no more significant story in 1998 than the Monica Lewinsky story. And Mark McGwire I think he certainly got the attention he deserved as well. But you know that doesn't mean we can't cover a lot of stories at the same time. I don't fault the news media on the cloning story. I just think that this is the kind of issue that the world, in general, has not paid enough attention to. TERENCE SMITH: Lee Cullum, from your perspective in Dallas, what was the neglected news?
TERENCE SMITH: Pat McGuigan, the view from Oklahoma, what were the stories that you think should have been covered more than they were, perhaps because of the Lewinsky affair?
CYNTHIA TUCKER: Well, Terry, two of the stories that I believe were neglected by most news media in 1998 were mentioned in the setup piece, one in the category of good news, one in the category of not so good news. In the not-so-good-news I think that economic and political chaos in Russia is a very, very big story, that most of Americans still don't fully understand. I don't think that most Americans understand that Russia remains very, very important, very important to the stability of Europe. While its military may be in decay, it still has nuclear weapons. It can still threaten not only Europe but the United States as well. And, quite frankly, I worry less about all out war but more about the fact or possible the sale of some of those nuclear weapons. I think that many Russian soldiers and scientists are desperate for foreign currency, especially American dollars, and that if they could get their hands on a few nukes and sell them, they certainly would do so. |
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| Are Washington journalists to blame? | ||||||||||||||
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TERENCE SMITH: How directly do you relate what you see as the under-coverage of those stories to the perhaps over-coverage of the Lewinsky affair?
TERENCE SMITH: Susan Albright, do you accept that thesis, that some very important issues were crowded out?
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ROBERT KITTLE: Well, I'm afraid, Terry, we are still in for more of the same in terms of the Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton story. The debate, of course, now is over how much and how lengthy of a trial the Senate is going to hold. So I think this is going to occupy our time for a few more months. That doesn't mean that we won't turn our attention later in the year to other things, such as Social Security and the economy and the other issues that have been mentioned here, but, you know, when the president is on trial in the Senate, it cannot help but squeeze out the rest of the news; it's what everyone else is talking about, and so a lot of this is being reported the other stories are certainly being reported by our newspapers in particular because they have more room to report than a broadcast program does, but the people just for the most part are so absorbed with this big story of a president who conceivably could be removed from office, that they're not paying a lot of attention to other very vital and in many ways more important stories. TERENCE SMITH: Lee Cullum, briefly, if you can, the notion that important economic news was not covered might change that, and if the economic situation changed.
TERENCE SMITH: All right. More stories than we can do as well this evening. Thank you all. |
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TERENCE
SMITH: Since January 21st, one story above all has mesmerized the American
media in 1998. 
TED
KOPPEL, ABC's Nightline: Crisis in the White House: the story that pushes
all the others aside.
Indonesia's
president was forced from office, and North Korea resumed work on its
nuclear weapons facilities. The fragile cease fire in Kosovo began to
fall apart, and Kosovo represents only one of 25 regional conflicts
currently festering in 40 countries. The nuclear standoff between India
and Pakistan produced a new round of atomic tests. In the aftermath,
both countries pledged to sign the nuclear test ban treaty. 
The
weather phenomenon El Nino received substantial coverage, as did the
hurricane season, but the flooding in Mexico -- the worst in a century
-- got short shrift -- so did the devastation in China, where the Yangtze
River repeatedly overflowed its banks, leaving millions homeless. Bangladesh
was another disaster area. At one point earlier this year, 70 percent
of the country was under water. 
ROBERT
KITTLE: Well, Terry, one of the stories that I think should have gotten
a lot more attention because of its significance is the fact that in
1998 we have taken a giant leap into the uncharted frontier of cloning.
It's only a matter of time now and probably a very short period of time
before human cloning becomes a reality. And, in fact, just earlier this
month a group of scientists in South Korea reported that they had actually
created a human embryo through cloning but stopped short of implanting
it implanting it in a woman's uterus, where it would conceivably have
developed into a fetus and become a human being. 
TERENCE
SMITH: Arguably a more important longer-term story than the Lewinsky
affair, but was it the Lewinsky affair that kept that off page one or
denied it the kind of coverage you wanted to see, or is it because it's
a more difficult, complex story to get hold of?
LEE
CULLUM: Terry, I think that economic news was neglected to a serious
extent. The failure of the House of Representatives to give us fast-track
authority, or to give the president fast-track authority, so he can
negotiate new trade agreements that would then have to be voted up or
down by Congress without debilitating amendments that could rip apart
a fragile negotiation should have been covered. There was an op/ed piece
in the Dallas Morning News yesterday about it by the consul general
of Canada, but it didn't get the coverage it should have gotten. I think
that the need or the possibility of the need to control the flow of
capital to short-term capital to developing nations needs to be explored.
Paul Krugman has talked about the idea. The World Bank included in a
recent report -- Lee Kwan Hu, the senior minister of Singapore, says
it's going to be necessary. But it's not being covered. What perhaps
is needed is some sort of tax on investors who pull their money out
in less than a year. And this might prevent investors from flooding
a developing country with money, then leaving that country high and
dry six months later when they read something in the Wall Street Journal
they don't like. Now, your program covered this; Alan Greenspan opposes
capital controls; but I didn't see it covered anyplace else.
PATRICK
McGUIGAN: Well, I think it probably should be called the Clinton/Lewinsky
affair, but be that as it may, I believe what Bob and Lee have offered
are both worthy nominees, if you will, in this category of neglected
news. My own choice is a domestic policy issue of fundamental importance,
and that's what I see as an emerging consensus, although I don't know
if "consensus" is the right word, but emerging agreement that
broad changes systemic changes are needed for the long range health
of the Social Security system. This has gotten quite a bit of attention
but probably not adequate attention on the nation's editorial pages.
But not so much in the hard news. I went and did some reading after
this was the idea that I suggested when I was first contacted about
this, and I went and did some reading and found that Brookings Institution,
the New Democrat Magazine, both which could be regarded as moderate
to left of center perhaps, along with the Heritage Foundation, and Modern
Maturity Magazine, publication of the AARP, the American Association
of Retired Persons, all have done major analyses on this issue just
within the last few weeks. And the interesting thing about even the
AARP publication was that out of five policy wonks, if you will, that
they discussed the issue with, four out of five agreed with the need
for rather dramatic changes in order to have long-term fiscal health
for Social Security. And with the process that's begun in recent weeks
I think there's a chance a chance that we'll be able to come to the
kinds of changes not just tinkering with tax rates or with benefits
or with retirement age, but with broader changes that privatize or shift
towards markets' aspects of Social Security so that we can have this
thing still be a program that assists our retired people 75 years from
now.
TERENCE
SMITH: In fact, Pat, there was a vivid example. The day that the White
House Conference on Social Security was being held was also the day
that the impeachment issue was before the House Judiciary Committee
-- we both know -- which got the major attention. Cynthia Tucker, let
me ask you, from Atlanta, what are the stories that you would rather
have seen some of than the Lewinsky affair?
CYNTHIA
TUCKER: Well, it's pretty clear to me, although I would certainly agree
with what Bob said earlier the Lewinsky story or the Clinton/Lewinsky
story has been very important. But I don't think it needed the saturation
coverage it got, and I think it's pretty clear that most of the Washington
journalists were dedicated to covering that story day in and day out,
so if so much of their attention was devoted to that, very little else
could be covered, plus there's only so much newsprint every day and
only so many minutes for every news broadcast. So if you fill up a lot
of the space with news about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, you crowd
out other very important issues.
SUSAN
ALBRIGHT: I do, but I don't think it's just the media that is the cause
of it. I think just rememberClinton was talking about this all the
time; Congress was talking about this all the time not just the press.
And so I see this whole country as at least the political class
as being caught up in something that really say a wealthy family that
had a great chance with making a difference in the community squandering
it by squabbling and having self-righteous fights among themselves.
And I think that's what Congress has done. So I see all kinds of things
on the national and international scale. We had the expansion of NATO,
which barely was discussed all sorts of economic interlocking and
in this country we have labor shortages. We have a whole series of things
wrapped around demographic changes, such as Social Security but also
long-range health care, labor shortages, expertise shortages, immigrants,
all kinds of issues that didn't get much attention, either by the press
or by Congress.
TERENCE
SMITH: All sorts of stories. Bob Kittle, when you look ahead to 1999,
just around the corner, what's the prospect, more of the same, or has
perhaps some sense of proportion come into this?
LEE
CULLUM: Oh, yes, that's absolutely true. I do think there's been a great
sense of well-being in this country and perhaps a refusal to recognize
what the storms that blew across East Asia and into Russia and threatened
Latin America could eventually mean for us, but you know, Terry, defense
is a big issue that we're not discussing beyond Iraq either. The Department
of Defense is now trying to develop a strategy that will last until
the first quarter of the 21st century. We need to talk about
that. I mean, should we continue to insist on being prepared to fight
in two regions of the world at once? Should we switch our attention
to terrorism and ethnic conflict within states and do more peacekeeping?
Should we put more money into innovation? These are questions that are
being debated by the Department of Defense but not by the public, who's
going to have to pay the bill and also bear the security risk implicit
in some of these plans that eventually will be adopted.
