Bill Bennett's Hypocrisy Is No Virtue (11/1/95) By Jeff Cohen & Norman Solomon Just when you thought gangsta rap music, Geraldo and Jenny Jones were devouring the soul of American civilization, here comes a savior -- the ever-virtuous William Bennett. Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease. Bennett, a former secretary of education, once aspired to be president. That requires getting elected. Guardians of national virtue are self-appointed. When you see Bennett in the media -- he's hard to miss these days -- promoting the Republican agenda or his book on morality, or leading his new campaign against trashy TV talk shows, you'd be well-advised to remember his occupation: politician. Like other skilled politicians today, Bennett has a finely honed ability to seize on issues and garner big media attention -- all the while masking his essential contradictions and failure to generate solutions. Take the issue of TV's sleazy, sex-saturated talk shows -- profit-mad programs that are going deeper into the gutter at the same time that a half-dozen giant corporations are increasing their dominion over the television industry. If you don't believe there's a connection between these two trends, ask Phil Donahue. He's the pioneer in daytime talk TV who now finds himself off the air in New York City and elsewhere -- and replaced by shows that aspire to an all-smut-all-the-time format. Donahue sees media monopolization as a key factor in the dominance of sleaze -- and in the shrinking of diverse voices and issues on television. Behind each oily talk show host is a media conglomerate -- Jenny Jones (Time Warner), Gordon Elliott (Rupert Murdoch/Fox), Geraldo Rivera (Tribune Co.), Montel Williams and Maury Povich (Paramount/Viacom), Jerry Springer and Sally Jessy Raphael (Multimedia/Gannett), and Ricki Lake (Sony). It's quite a feat of hypocrisy for a politician like Bennett to target TV talk hosts after his Republican allies in Congress just passed a telecommunications ''reform'' bill giving unprecedented monopoly powers to the same corporations polluting the airwaves. And there's more than a little hypocrisy in Bennett denouncing violence in rap and prurience on television when his party has led the charge for years against the one broadcast TV network that's almost free of violence and prurient sex -- PBS. There's also duplicity in Bennett's adroit selection of media targets. While raging against daytime talk television, he avoids criticism of another talk medium -- also rife with vulgarity -- that has played a big role in building the clout of Bennett and other conservatives. That medium is talk radio. One of the strongest voices in all of talk radio is New York's Bob Grant, who abuses callers and uses racist, often violent rhetoric. Bennett waxes eloquent when he criticizes rap songs in which fictional characters seem to revel in gang violence and killings. But he goes silent on Grant, who is distinctly nonfiction, when he expresses his wish that police machine-gun New York's gay-pride marchers. Or when Grant says: ''I'd like to get every environmentalist, put 'em up against a wall and shoot 'em.'' Bennett has paid for political ads on Grant's program -- and Grant boasts of Bennett's appearances on his show. At Bennett's news conference on trash TV, criticism was leveled at an episode titled ''Get Bigger Breasts or Else.'' Last year, Rush Limbaugh used more than one broadcast to wail: ''We're in bad shape in this country when you can't look at a couple of huge knockers and notice it.'' Is Bennett rankled by Rush Limbaugh's lewd comments about women? Does he find it less than virtuous that Limbaugh mocked a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton as ''the White House dog''? Apparently not -- since Bennett has praised Limbaugh as ''possibly our greatest living American.'' Don't expect consistency from a man who is more politician than media critic. During a recent TV show, we pressed a spokesman from Bennett's ''Empower America'' organization as to why he was ignoring talk radio filth. The response was that Bennett needed to focus on one issue at a time. The day Bennett takes on Rush Limbaugh is the day we risk heart attacks. Luckily for our health, that day is a long way off. Indeed, the evidence suggests that Bennett would not be targeting Ricki, Jenny and Montel if they were as helpful to Republican power as radio talkmeisters Rush, G. Gordon and Bob Grant. Bennett says he's trying to organize resistance to ''the giant popular culture sleaze machine.'' But it's hard to really oppose that machine when you subscribe to a ''free enterprise'' ideology that equates the public good with the unrestrained pursuit of profit. --- Jeff Cohen is executive director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Norman Solomon is co-author of ''Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the News Media.'' PR for Dictators (10/25/95) By Jeff Cohen & Norman Solomon By now, most Americans are aware that the public relations industry serves a wide array of clients, from auto manufacturers and cosmetics companies to rock stars and politicians. But public relations for dictators? Sad but true: Every month, brutal governments on several continents shell out millions of dollars to PR firms based in the United States. And they get their money's worth. When the leaders of more than 140 countries posed for a group photo at the United Nations recently, quite a few cutthroats and torturers were in the picture. Some might have fallen from power long ago if not for the talents of well-paid professionals on Madison Avenue. For a thoroughly modern tyrant, a strong PR arsenal is as necessary as plenty of tanks, troops and spies. Acceptable images are crucial for regimes seeking diplomatic support and hefty aid from Uncle Sam. Bad press in the United States can lead to big problems back home. So repressive regimes frequently try to buy themselves some good press, one way or another. A few days ago, a prominent half-page ad in the New York Times -- headlined ''Nigerian Military Government Prepares for Return to Democratic Rule'' -- showcased a 1,000-word statement by Z.M. Kazaure, Nigeria's ambassador in Washington. Suffused with double-talk, the ad pledged to restore democracy... three years from now. When negative coverage of a country is unavoidable, ruling elites spend fortunes to deflect the blame. Early in this decade, the government of Colombia paid a few million dollars a year to the Sawyer/Miller Group -- a leading PR outfit in the United States -- to finger drug-trafficking outlaws as the cause of Colombia's widespread and deadly violence. Sawyer/Miller Group generated a steady wave of ads, video news releases, pamphlets and letters to editors -- as well as press interviews and meetings with editorial boards. The PR onslaught worked; U.S. journalists rarely cited the substantial evidence linking Colombian murder and mayhem to that nation's army and police, which remain deeply involved in the drug trade and death-squad activities. Madison Avenue's clientele includes regimes as near as Mexico and as far as Pakistan and China. Often, the top staffers at PR agencies are former White House advisers. The process is distinctly bipartisan. A revolving door has spun savvy media manipulators (like Republican Craig Fuller and Democrat Howard Paster) into hyperdrive PR firms, such as Hill & Knowlton. In one recent year, Hill & Knowlton took $ 14 million from governments with ample reasons to be concerned about their reputations. Some of the big checks were signed by officials of Kuwait, Turkey, Indonesia and Peru -- nations that routinely abuse human rights. Two Hill & Knowlton clients known to have engaged in torturing political prisoners, Egypt and Israel, each receive U.S. foreign aid amounting to billions of dollars each year. The petro-monarchs of Kuwait have enjoyed a mutually rewarding relationship with Hill & Knowlton -- which received $ 10.8 million from the Kuwaitis withinsix months after Iraqi invaders forced them into exile in August 1990. Overall, Kuwait's royal family retained the services of more than a dozen PR and lobbying firms during the lead-up to the Gulf War. That war was great for business at Hill & Knowlton. But after the shooting stopped, the company slipped from the top rank of America's PR agencies. Taking its place was Burson-Marsteller, which got a big lift in 1993 when one client -- the Mexican government -- spent upward of $ 50 million to promote congressional passage of the NAFTA trade agreement. In a new book about the PR industry, ''Toxic Sludge Is Good for You,'' John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of Madison write that Mexico's blitz is ongoing: ''By the mid-1990s, advertising giant Young & Rubicam -- Burson-Marsteller's parent corporation -- was raking in yearly Mexican revenues of over $ 100 million.'' That retainer comes from a country with two dozen billionaires and 15 million people living in horrendous poverty. ''As the world moves toward the end of the 20th century, it seems to have solved many of its image problems but few of its real ones,'' Stauber and Rampton say. ''Foreign policy planners have developed a frightening sophistication in their ability to combine military strategies with propaganda and psychological manipulation, but they have failed to eliminate starvation, disease, economic exploitation and violence -- the root causes of international conflict.'' The USA's top 15 public relations firms netted $ 1.04 billion last year. With their eyes on the financial prize, truth and justice are not in sight. --- Cohen is head of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Solomon is co-author of ''Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the News Media.'' After 'Million Man March,' Still No Urban Policy (10/18/95) By Jeff Cohen & Norman Solomon However you view the recent Million Man March, it's time to consider the powerful messages sent by the multitudes of African-Americans who converged on the troubled city of Washington -- most of them traveling from other troubled cities. A major theme of the daylong rally was personal atonement, as religious leaders exhorted the assemblage to take greater responsibility for their families and communities. This message was widely applauded in mass media -- even by white commentators who've long stood against civil rights. But another theme also resounded from the steps of the Capitol: a call for a new urban policy and opposition to current attacks on federal programs that benefit workers, minorities, the elderly and the poor. Unlike the personal redemption message, this rally refrain won little praise -- or notice -- from media pundits. After the massive demonstration, Jesse Jackson urged President Clinton to convene a White House conference on urban policy and economic development. But devising programs to confront urban problems -- like high unemployment, inferior schools and inadequate housing -- seems to be the last thing on Clinton's mind. On the day of the march, Clinton delivered an eloquent call for racial harmony, but he offered no agenda to rebuild our cities. Unfortunately, atonement and eloquence alone will not bridge the racial gap, nor the gap between inner cities and well-off suburbs. Public policy and resources are needed to address the underlying conditions that breed crime and broken homes. But in today's body politic, attacking symptoms (by getting ''tough'' on crime and welfare) is how we avoid confronting the disease: central cities devoid of capital, credit, jobs and well-functioning educational institutions. It's not just Bill Clinton who evades serious discussion of urban policy. So do Republicans and mass media -- although the Los Angeles riots of 1992 (now seen as ancient history) sparked a brief flurry of intense news coverage. One person who's spent years trying to generate political debate about our cities is Larry Agran, formerly a liberal mayor in conservative Orange County, Calif. In 1992, Agran campaigned for president -- with little press attention -- on a platform of redirecting billions from military spending to America's cities, towns and school districts. Agran saw up close that the presidential campaign focused more on suburbs than cities and that largely rural states, like Iowa and New Hampshire, exerted undue influence over the process. So, with the help of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Agran developed CityVote, a cost-effective way to prod presidential candidates to debate the issues of concern to city dwellers. It's a simple plan: When voters in participating cities go to the polls for local elections this November, they also get to vote in a presidential preference poll (with Democrats, Republicans and independents all on one ballot). For taxpayers, the cost of the piggy-backed balloting is negligible -- and the potential benefits are appreciable. By early 1995, many cities had expressed interest in joining the ''national urban primary.'' Televised candidate debates on urban policy were scheduled, with broadcasters like Bill Moyers and Sander Vanocur agreeing to moderate. But recently, CityVote has encountered some big obstacles: namely, Democrats, Republicans and national media. In September, the Democratic National Committee began pressuring cities to either delete Bill Clinton's name from the CityVote ballot or cancel the polling altogether. Why? The DNC seems to fear that Clinton won't do well enough with city voters -- especially compared to Colin Powell and Jesse Jackson. Several leading Republicans -- perhaps unwilling to defend their cuts in social programs popular with urban voters -- have shunned CityVote. Sen. Bob Dole refused to submit a 500-word statement on urban policy requested by CityVote. He did, however, authorize a 12-word statement on fixing the cities through ''conservative, pro-growth ideas of lower taxes, reduced regulation and greater economic opportunity.'' The plight of the urban primary has received scant attention from national media -- even from news outlets that took seriously the recent Iowa straw poll where candidates could virtually buy votes. But CityVote won't be stopped. An estimated 200,000 voters will cast presidential preference ballots on Nov. 7 in more than 15 cities, including Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn.; Tucson, Ariz.; Rochester, N.Y.; Tacoma, Wash.; and Spokane, Wash. A gran remains undaunted about CityVote's future: ''The goal in November 1999,'' he told us, ''is to be on ballots in 25 major cities, preceded by three nationally televised debates.'' Let's hope we won't be waiting until the next millennium for a thorough debate on reviving our ailing cities. -- Jeff Cohen is executive director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Norman Solomon is co-author of ''Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the News Media.''