Don Hewitt's Biased Spector Haunts Us By Lowell Ponte Don Hewitt, who created the popular CBS news show “60 Minutes” and controlled it for 36 years, died Wednesday at age 86. It is customary in our culture to speak no ill of the dead, but as William Shakespeare wrote: “The evil that men do lives after them.” The specter of Don Hewitt continues to haunt both the network news he shaped and American politics. Whatever part of Hewitt's soul was an honest journalist would want us to report his shortcomings and his liberal legacy truthfully. Hewitt boasted that he elected two presidents. The reporters and executives he put in charge of “60 Minutes” prior to his retirement in 2004 went on to help elect a third, President Barack Obama. After serving as director for ultra-liberal CBS newslord Edward R. Murrow, Hewitt became producer-director of Nixon won the debate handily, according to those listening on radio. Kennedy won among those who watched the slanted images Hewitt contrived to put on national television. In his book "Presidential Debates: Fifty Years of High-Risk TV," Northeastern University Journalism Professor Alan Schroeder described how Kennedy and Nixon together had refused makeup, but before the debate began, “unknown to Nixon, Kennedy got a touch-up [i.e., makeup] from his own people.” Nixon, years later, recounted how he and his staff were misled about the debate stage lighting, the color of its background (lightened by repainting on debate day), and hence the color of suit, shirt, and necktie he should wear. On that set, wrote media historian Erik Barnouw, Nixon appeared “haggard; the lines on his face seemed like gashes and gave a fearful look.” Kennedy's makeup and clothing somehow were perfectly coordinated to make him look like a star on Hewitt's suddenly-changed stage set. Hewitt’s camera shots during the debate outraged a Nixon aide in the control room. Whenever Kennedy spoke, the camera tended to stay on him. When Nixon spoke, the cameras often cut away to show Kennedy’s reaction, distracting viewers from what the Republican was saying. Hewitt gave Kennedy 39 percent more time in such reaction shots than he gave to Nixon’s reactions while Kennedy spoke, and this made Kennedy appear to dominate the debate. In 1992, Hewitt helped another Democratic presidential candidate win. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was sinking when Hewitt offered him and his wife Hillary an interview to air moments after that year’s Super Bowl on CBS, the primest of prime airtime worth more than a million dollars per minute. Then-Clinton hatchet man George Stephanopoulos, who now anchors ABC’s Sunday show “This Week,” recounted in his memoir "All Too Human: A Political Education” what he witnessed at this “60 Minutes” videotaping: “Don Hewitt. . . told the In this interview, What Americans were not told was that the Hewitt had also promised the Clintons that if they disliked the way a "take" was going, they, like prima donna Hollywood stars, could halt the videotaping and do a new take — or three, four, whatever the Clintons needed to sound and appear the way they wanted to. Don Hewitt gave the And in the 2008 elections the “60 Minutes” that Hewitt shaped and staffed was up to its old dirty tricks, pretending to be even-handed while smearing Republican moderate candidate John McCain and promoting the Chicago’s Democratic machine’s far-left candidate Barack Obama. In CBS’s softball Obama interview by Steve Kroft — the same lapdog reporter Hewitt had used in the 1992 Clinton infomercial — Obama was repeatedly pictured before adoring, cheering crowds. CBS even showed him embracing an African-American woman who “wanted to tell Obama that she had just lost her husband of 70 years, and that he tried to live long enough to vote for him.” Whenever Obama spoke, Kroft let him orate almost uninterrupted. After merely mentioning that Obama had “never run anything,” Kroft left unchallenged Obama’s dishonest retort that “if the question is executive experience, then Senator McCain and I are on equal footing.” In fact, McCain commanded the largest fighter squadron in the U.S. Navy, but viewers would never know this from CBS. By contrast, the McCain interview was conducted by attack dog Scott Pelley, notorious for his one-sided alarmist global warming reporting. When asked why he unethically refused to interview anyone with contrary views, Pelley snidely dismissed warming skeptics as “Holocaust deniers.” More than 22,000 scientists, including MIT’s chief atmospheric scientist, have signed a petition expressing skepticism about Al Gore-like, Pelley-like climate alarmism. CBS showed McCain not with friendly crowds like Obama, but alone facing a bright Pelley repeatedly interrupted McCain’s answers with accusatory statements. “Can you see [your running mate Sarah Palin] as president of the Palin was governor of The specter of Don Hewitt will haunt © 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved. | |
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
By Sarah Palin
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Washington Post
There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America's unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won't bring jobs. Our nation's debt is unsustainable, and the federal government's reach into the private sector is unprecedented.
Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.
There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.
Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.
In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.
The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.
The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will "necessarily skyrocket." So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.
Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, "poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity."
We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.
In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.
We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.
For so many reasons, we can't afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.
Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?
Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama's energy cap-and-tax plan.
The writer, a Republican, is governor of Alaska.
Barry Farber | |
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Let me try to make this riddle sufficiently agonizing.
It's a straight riddle. No tricks. Liberals have long nourished a dream with an intensity not even social equality and the end of racism and poverty could equal. More "What ifs." More "Why nots." More breasts were bared and beaten and more prayers frisbee'd upward toward Heaven on behalf of this dream than any other. Suddenly, in mid-2009, dramatically and unexpectedly, that dream came true.
And, not only did the liberals not like it. They hated it. Question: What was that dream?
This is a blazing example of failure to recognize what you've always dreamed about and prayed for. An old joke illustrates. A rabbi in the Pennsylvania flood-lands is dispatching his congregation to safety during the rising of the flood waters. As the last of them are carried to safety he goes to the roof of his synagogue to escape the rampaging waters.
A motorboat with rescuers comes along and the crew says, "Jump in, Rabbi. It's getting bad." "No, thanks," replies the rabbi. "God will save me." The waters rise to the rabbi's knees even up there on the roof and another motorboat comes along and a yell issues forth, "Come on, Rabbi. It's still rising." "I choose to remain here," said the rabbi. "God will save me." As the water rose beyond the rabbi's hip yet another motorboat appeared and the rescuers beg the rabbi to hop aboard to safety. "Thank you," he gently replies. "But I'll stay here. God will save me."
By the time the water had risen to the rabbi's neck a helicopter took up position directly over his head and a voice through a loudspeaker said, "Rabbi, we're going to lower a rope ladder. Just put your foot in the stirrup and grab hold and we'll lift you up and you'll be okay." "Thank you very much," said the rabbi. "I'm remaining here. God will save me."
The waters rose higher still and engulfed the rabbi and he drowned. When he arrived in heaven and faced God he said, "Lord, God of the universe. Forgive my impertinence, but I'm confused. I spent my entire time on earth believing in you and spreading your word among my flock. And at the end I had faith you would save me. Why, dear Lord, did you not save me?"
"What do you mean, why didn't I save you?" thundered an irritated God. "I sent three motorboats and a helicopter for you!"
Didn't the Bible tell us the big flood started with a cloud "no bigger than a man's hand?" The great liberal dream started materializing in the Central American nation of Honduras, geopolitically no bigger than a "man's hand." The Liberal Dream was always as follows: "Why didn't and why don't the great capable powers move in and stop a leader somewhere between his initial grab of dictatorial powers and his first aggression against neighbors and his first political murders, genocide, or holocaust? Why, oh why, for instance, didn't the civilized nations jump in and stop Adolf Hitler at some point between his burning of the books, torching the Reichstag, officially persecuting Jews and sending German troops into the Rhineland in 1936; a biggie, that one, because that was a blatant violation of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War 1? Better yet, if the outside world isn't going to do anything more than sit there and watch and wait and complain and offer limp protest resolutions, why don't forces inside the country threatened with dictatorship save themselves? I mean, after all, any dictator is just one guy!
Ah, big problem. So many dictators are "democratically elected," including Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Liberal DNA paralyzes any move to overthrow a democratically-elected dictator. Or, it did until Honduras! Honduras got it right. The minute a democratically-elected leader shuts down the opposition, dismisses his parliament or, as in the case of Honduras, contravenes a direct order of his supreme court, that leader is no longer kissed by the radiance of democratic election. He becomes a fully-qualified candidate for removal. Please don't waste your life-force trying to convince your liberal friends anything this virtuous is what happened in Honduras. The liberal imagination can no more imagine anything but a strongman-military takeover in Latin America than they can imagine Icelandic wine, Norwegian suntan lotion, or a book entitled "Irish Gourmet Recipes," or "Ten Thousand Years of German Humor."
The rest of us can rejoice that when democratically-elected Honduran President Jose Manuel "Mel" Zelaya decided to stage a referendum on whether he could remove the Honduran constitution's limit of a single term for president, his supreme court said no. When the ballots, printed in Venezuela, continued to arrive and Zelaya ordered the army to distribute them, the head of the army refused to obey this illegal order. When Zelaya ordered the military chief arrested, soldiers arrested him instead and, in a refreshing break from Latin American tradition, did not shoot the president dead on the spot, but rather ushered him in his pajamas to a plane and exile in Costa Rica. No shot was fired during this dictatorship-prevention procedure.
The man who sits in the president's chair for the time being, Roberto Michelleti, is not a colonel or even a corporal, much less a caudillo. And he belongs to the same party as the ousted Zelaya. Some classic Latin American coup!
Meanwhile, certain American news channels are showing footage of the "crowds" of Hondurans who want Zelaya back, ignoring the fact that the anti-Zelaya crowds total many times (some say 10) as large as the pro-Zelaya crowds. Any newsroom chief who knowingly does that should be banned from newsroom-type employment for life.
And America — beginning with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — ought to be ashamed of bringing Zelaya to the United States to "show support."
Instead, they should make a donation to the new Honduran president's military — a package consisting, maybe, of three motorboats and a helicopter.
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