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American Morning

America's Talking: Did Negative Coverage Push Bush Administration to Change Mideast Strategy?

Aired April 05, 2002 - 09:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now to the first installment of a new weekly call-in segment we've named "America's Talking." Each week, we will cover a variety of topics involving the media. For instance, how do you like your news? Unfiltered, or with views?

Joining us now to talk about that, and answer your calls and e- mails: from Washington, Howard Kurtz, "Washington Post" media critic, and host of CNN's "RELIABLE SOURCES."

Good morning, Howard.

HOWARD KURTZ, "RELIABLE SOURCES": Good morning to you, Paula.

ZAHN: Good morning to you, too.

Jonah Goldberg, who joins us. He with "The National Review." Good to see you again, Johah.

JONAH GOLDBERG, "THE NATIONAL REVIEW": Good to be here.

ZAHN: All right, I am going to let Howard start off the segment this morning. Very quickly, we haven't had a chance at all to talk about Bryant Gumbel here on the morning. He is leaving CBS. Why?

KURTZ: Well, it turns out comebacks are hard. Just ask Michael Jordan, who also hung it up this week because of his ailing knees. I mean, here Gumbel, is a guy who was on top for 10 or 15 years at the "Today Show," comes back with CBS's "Early Show," doesn't pull in the numbers, doesn't do the ratings.

I think three things. He was paired with a relatively unknown cohost in Jane Clayson. Some viewers see him as a bit arrogant. And also that show never provided a compelling reason for viewers to switch from "Good Morning America," or "Today," or "Paula Zahn" or anybody else in the morning. It's very competitive in the morning, and it's a big disappointment to CBS, no question about it.

ZAHN: So was it a matter of money? Were they just not going to pay him what he wanted, or was he just really fed up with the whole thing?

KURTZ: They were paying a very healthy $6 million a year. They built a new studio for the show. But his contract came up for renewal, and the people at CBS had to be wondering, was this worth another $6 million a year investment if he's not putting people in the seats. I mean, who knows why folks chose Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer in the morning but it was striking that Gumbel, who such a czar of morning television when he was at NBC, and then his second incarnation at CBS, it just didn't quite work, the show never quite jelled.

ZAHN: All right, Jonah, on to the issue "America's Talking." There has been a lot of debate about whether some of the fiercely negative editorials that have been written and the negative coverage, perhaps of what some people described as the Bush administration's inaction in the Middle East is what has changed its strategy. Do you equate the two?

GOLDBERG: Well, there's no question as -- and there's no shortage of commentators who pointed this out, that Bush has had his worst week or two since the war on terrorism began. All of a sudden, the message got muddled, and it was not clear whether terrorism was a universal concept or only applied to when Americans were attacked and that short of thing, and took Bush off the strategy of going after Iraq.

And so I kind of give the media a pass on this one in the sense media in many ways reflecting the reality, and was reporting on the reality that Bush stumbled, and you can get into huge chicken-or-the- egg argument about what that means for Bush to correct himself. Is he correcting because of media criticism, or is he correcting himself because he stumbled? It's probably a mix of both.

KURTZ: Jonah, you're being way too generous here. The press was pounding this president day after day, why wasn't he more engaged? Why wouldn't he do what Bill Clinton do and bring the parties together? They were an underlying tone in the questions being asked at the White House. Every single day that the strategy of less engagement was a failure, and I am not saying that the president stepped up his involvement solely because of the media, but there's no question there was a lot of media pressure, and even in the news reporting, the straight reporting, not the opinion monitors, not the editorialists, the underlying assumption was that Bush had screwed up by not being more actively engaged with Israel and the Palestinians.

ZAHN: On to our first e-mail, Jonah. I'll let you add more when we analyze this first e-mail this morning. It comes Ken Phillips (ph) of California. He writes, "I am concerned with the United States media, print and broadcast, with respect to the Israel/Palestinian conflict. Please make an effort to add some balance to your coverage. I'm being forced to go 'abroad' for news coverage that is even handed. The U.S. government has a pro-Israeli bias, the U.S. media should not."

Jonah, pro-Israeli bias, by and large, among the media.

GOLDBERG: There, I just don't see it, at least not in the recent events. I say the bias that's been in the media so far is a different one, and it's a typical one in the media, which is to personalize this whole conflict. They've made it into a fight between Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat, and when the reality is that this conflict is a lot bigger than that, has a lot more historical antecedents. People don't realize that Yasser Arafat does actually reflect the views of many, many Palestinians right now, and Ariel Sharon is basically, to the extent that these words mean anything, to the left of the Israeli public right now, and his only real threat is from Bibi Netanyahu to his right.

And what the media has done is sort of made this into a personal little spat between the two guys, and I think that's the real disservice to viewers.

ZAHN: Howard, you get to take our first phone call. It comes from Fernando. He joins us from North Carolina this morning.

Good morning, Fernando. What's your question for, Howard?

CALLER: Good morning. I actually have a comment first before a question. I would like to express my feeling, in that I do think that news media in the western world has portrayed a very biased -- I think that a lot of newscasters are quickly to jump on sides of issue, as opposed to trying to take a look at all the issues that involve, specifically when it comes to the Middle East. Of course, I think it's contradictory for a lot of Americans to look at the Palestinian side of the issue, because of the way the administration stands on this issue.

ZAHN: All right.

CALLER: But on the same note, I think it's important for us to look at the whole issue. Let me give you an example.

ZAHN: You're going to have to do it quickly, Howard.

KURTZ: I would differ with the caller on what Jonah was saying, that Yes, I think that most journalists are sympathetic to Israel as a democracy, that they see under assault by terrorist suicide bombings. We can certainly relate to that after 9/11. At the same time, in the last week, Israel has gotten some terrible press, both for the severity of the incursion into the West Bank and for just today, you know, Israel soldiers firing stun guns at reporters, that's going to do a lot for their international image.

So I think over time it balances out, and we have devoted some airspace and ink to the plight of the Palestinians, who are under this military occupation. But, you know, the suicide bombings, interestingly enough, have almost become routine now , which is almost unthinkable in the way the media covers them. In other news, another suicide bombing today -- I think that's a mistake.

ZAHN: All right, we're going to take more of your e-mails and more phone calls on the other side of this break.

Gentlemen, please stand by. We will come back right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAHN: And we're back now with our guest, Howard Kurtz of "The Washington Post," media critic, host of CNN's "Reliable Sources," and Jonah Goldberg with "The National Review."

We're going to take one more of your phone calls now. George is on the line from New Mexico.

Jonah, I'm going to let you take his call.

Go ahead, George. Good morning.

CALLER: Good morning.

I have a comment regarding the bias part. It seems like the media seems to focus on one or two issues at a time, and pounds away at it and pounds away at it until it's deemed important by the public, and it's almost as if the reporters or writers, if they were in charge, they think that the government or whatever should do it their way, and they really seem to be influencing policy, because they pound away at it with the public so often.

ZAHN: George, you raise an interesting point.

Jonah, is there or is there not a pack mentality?

GOLDBERG: I think it's obvious that there is a pack mentality, primarily because there is so much competition out there, and I'm not sure it's a conspiracy of any kind. It's more the fact that a lot of networks want to beat the other networks at the big stories, same thing with newspapers, so you do get this sort of critical mass covering one issue, beating it to death, and then inevitably there will be the sort of counterspin, which says it's too big a deal and there was too much hype, which is what we just saw with Enron.

ZAHN: All right, Howard, we'll let you attack this next e-mail. It comes from Heather from Ohio, and she writes, "I wish the media was more objective with its news reporting. It's interesting to find out what other people are thinking about different subjects. But as far as the reporting goes, just the facts please. In my opinion, Fox News Network is much more guilty of opinion-based news reporting than CNN, despite their claim of being "fair and balanced."

You want to take a stab at that one, Howard?

KURTZ: There's a lot more opinion mongering going on today throughout cable TV. The success of Fox has prompted -- I shouldn't say it's caused, but CNN has hired James Carville, and Paula Begala and Bill Bennett, and MSNBC is bringing back Phil Donahue. So there is a lot of opinion there.

I think it is true, that people in their reporting, there are great news stories, they do want the facts, but on a subject like Israel and the Palestinians, where such passionate feelings on both sides, Middle East reporters are telling me that they can't please anyone. Everybody sees them as being pro-Israeli or too sympathetic to the Palestinians. In other words, sometimes readers and viewers do bring their own very strong opinions to their view of whether we're objective or biased. ZAHN: Sometimes, Howard? Jonah, isn't that what everybody does everyday, they bring own prism of understanding to a story, and that dictates how they're going to react to your coverage.

GOLDBERG: It dictates how they react to our coverage, but that doesn't mean the media is never biased, and I do think the media is sometime actually biased, and I do think that there's also a -- there's another phenomena going on here, which is there is so much information these days, you see it reflected in the newspapers. Well, they're actually doing more -- quote, unquote -- "news analysis" on the front pages of the papers just because people get so bombarded that it creates an incentive for people to put their opinion and frame the issues for them.

ZAHN: All right, we're going to leave it there this morning. Look forward to having you all back almost every Friday to do this. Jonah Goldberg and Howard Kurtz.

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