November 7, 2001
Network Coverage a Target of Fire From Conservatives
By JIM RUTENBERG and BILL CARTER
s television news networks cover the war, they are increasingly coming under criticism from conservatives who say they exhibit a lack of patriotism or are overly negative toward the government.
Although the networks say the criticism is not affecting their coverage, they are having to sort through basic issues like whether patriotism can coexist with objectivity and how to raise tough questions about the policies of an administration that is receiving overwhelming popular support.
Much of the criticism comes from a group of conservative media voices and outlets, including Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show, The New York Post's editorial page, The Drudge Report and some commentators on the Fox News Channel. Much of the information for their critiques has been assembled by a conservative media watchdog organization called the Media Research Council, which hires full-time monitors to watch the network newscasts.
These outlets have kept tabs on the media for some time and were on the opposite side of the White House for the Clinton presidency.
How their criticism will affect coverage of the war in the future is an open question. But news executives at CNN, ABC and MSNBC said they were conscious of the criticism while making their day-to-day decisions about coverage.
"Any misstep and you can get into trouble with these guys and have the Patriotism Police hunt you down," said Erik Sorenson, president of MSNBC. "These are hard jobs. Just getting the facts straight is monumentally difficult. We don't want to have to wonder if we are saluting properly. Was I supposed to use the three-fingered salute today?"
One executive said that while there have always been conservative critics, the current criticism could have a more volatile effect because of the fears and sentiments of a major part of the audience.
Twice last week, networks made decisions, at least in part, to smother accusations that they lacked patriotism or were skewing coverage toward the enemy. CNN decided to require that reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan be balanced with reminders of the Sept. 11 toll.
And the president of ABC News, David Westin, apologized after being criticized by Mr. Limbaugh, among others, for telling a roomful of Columbia University journalism students that as the head of a news division striving for objectivity he had no opinion on whether the Pentagon could be considered a legitimate enemy target.
Executives at ABC News said Mr. Westin decided to apologize because he realized that the comment — made in answer to a question — seemed unduly cold and inappropriate. But they also acknowledged that they were eager to stop an onslaught of negative public attention.
Until Sept. 11, CBS and Dan Rather often drew the sharpest criticism from conservatives. But ABC News has now emerged as the leading target. This became evident early in the coverage when Mr. Limbaugh reported, erroneously, that the ABC News anchor, Peter Jennings, had been highly critical of the president on Sept. 11 for not returning to Washington immediately after learning about the attacks. ABC was flooded with complaints.
Though Mr. Limbaugh reported that Mr. Jennings had said, "Maybe it's wise that certain presidents just not try to address the people of the country," Mr. Jennings had actually made a general statement about presidents. "The country looks to the president on occasions like this to be reassuring to the nation," Mr. Jennings had said. "Some presidents do it well, some presidents don't."
Mr. Limbaugh corrected the report, but Mr. Jennings and ABC News have remained in the sights of some conservative commentators and journalists ever since. Yesterday, the Media Research Council released a report that said "World News Tonight With Peter Jennings" had shown far more reports about claimed civilian deaths in Afghanistan than had "NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw" or "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather."
"ABC knows that the despotic Taliban are using both real and phony instances of U.S. errors to undermine our war against terror," the report said. "But, at least so far, its correspondents have reserved most of their skepticism for America."
In an interview, Mr. Jennings disputed charges of bias but said he did not have time to investigate the claims.
Rich Noyes, the Media Resource Council's director of analysis, said, "CBS and NBC have been showing much more balance than ABC." He added, "Dan Rather has just been fine on this one."
Mr. Noyes said that the other conservative media outlets often fed off reports from his group. For instance, the group was the first to report Mr. Westin's comments to the journalism students, in an e-mail report it sends out to its supporters. From there, the item was first picked up by the editorial page of The Post. The following day, it appeared on The Drudge Report on the Internet and on Mr. Limbaugh's radio show.
Mr. Noyes said Mr. Westin was wise to apologize. "It defused the story," he said. "ABC wanted us to add the apology to our original report and we did that."
One ABC News executive, Tom Bettag, said: "I think David was smart to say, `You want an apology? You get an apology. I'll apologize and let's get on with the important things.' It's truthfully not necessary to have an apology for that."
Though the apology may have stopped the progression of the news item, it has prompted debate over journalistic etiquette in wartime. Brit Hume, the Fox News Channel anchor, said that in this conflict, traditional rules no longer applied.
"Look, neutrality as a general principle is an appropriate concept for journalists who are covering institutions of some comparable quality," Mr. Hume said. "This is a conflict between the United States and murdering barbarians."
Still, he has complimented CNN on its new policy on reporting civilian deaths.
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