http:\/\/www.fair.org\/extra\/8903\/reagan-popularity.html<\/a>)<\/p>\nNo Time for Critical Voices<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
\tMainstream media have relied heavily on Republicans and former Reagan officials to tell the story of Reagan and his accomplishments, which results in a decidedly one-sided version of events. A June 7 article in the New York Times on Reagan’s impact claimed that Reagan \u00a0\u00bbwas almost always popular and, many now say, usually right.\u00a0\u00bb The article stated that \u00a0\u00bbReagan lived long enough to enable many of his old lieutenants, and some more dispassionate chroniclers as well, to argue that he had also been right on some of the bigger questions of his time.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tSix of the eight sources the article quoted were former Reagan staffers or Republicans, one was longtime Reagan devotee Margaret Thatcher, and one was University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, who gave no argument that Reagan was \u00a0\u00bbright\u00a0\u00bb about anything. No other \u00a0\u00bbdispassionate chroniclers\u00a0\u00bb were quoted. Should readers be surprised that Reagan’s friends and former colleagues still think he was right?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tTelevision news has displayed an even more pronounced reliance on Reagan’s Republican admirers. The Sunday morning shows (6\/6\/04) almost exclusively featured Republicans; former Reagan chief of staff James Baker appeared on all three networks, as well as Fox and CNN. Fox News Sunday (6\/6\/04) featured, in addition to Baker, current national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Sheila Tate,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tformer press secretary for Nancy Reagan. MSNBC’s June 6 Hardball program featured Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Republican representatives David Dreier and Chris Cox, and Reagan strategist Richard Wirthlin.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tInterviewing Reagan’s admirers may have provided an intimate view of the former president, but it yielded virtually no acknowledgment of his flaws. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, when questioned by CNN’s Anderson Cooper (6\/6\/04) to name Reagan’s greatest weakness or failing, responded, \u00a0\u00bbI’m not going to criticize the President. And even if I wanted to, I would never do it on an occasion such as this. We should be grateful that the world was a better place because of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tEven when potentially critical voices were included, the tendency was to soften any disagreements over Reagan’s policy. On NPR’s Morning Edition (6\/7\/04), Susan Stamberg interviewed Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher along with Democratic strategist Paul Begala. Clearly, though, this was no time for disagreement, as evidenced by one of<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tStamberg’s questions to Begala: \u00a0\u00bbYou once famously said that politics is show business for ugly people. Ronald Reagan makes a liar out of you. He was an extremely handsome, attractive man.\u00a0\u00bb Begala’s response: \u00a0\u00bbBoy, was he.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Reagan’s Legacy<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
\tReagan’s influence over world politics and the direction of the Republican Party were important aspects of the media’s Reagan tributes. But more often than not, the more controversial aspects of Reagan’s legacy were either downplayed or recast as footnotes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tTime magazine (6\/14\/04) cheered that \u00a0\u00bbthe Reagan years were another of those hinges upon which history sometimes turns. On one side, a wounded but still vigorous liberalism with its faith in government as the answer to almost every question. On the other, a free market so triumphant– even after the tech bubble burst– that we look first to ‘growth,’ not government, to solve most problems.\u00a0\u00bb As NBC’s John Hockenberry put it (6\/5\/04), \u00a0\u00bbThe Reagan revolution imagined the unimaginable. When poverty and welfare were at crisis levels in the 1980s, Reagan declared war on government and turned his back on the welfare state.\u00a0\u00bb The long-term impact of cuts in social spending, gutted environmental protections and other casualties of Reagan’s \u00a0\u00bbwar on government\u00a0\u00bb were relegated to passing mentions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tReagan’s fervent support for right-wing governments in Central America was one of the defining foreign policies of his administration, and the fact that death squads associated with those governments murdered tens of thousands of civilians surely must be included in any reckoning of Reagan’s successes and failures.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tBut a search of major U.S. newspapers in the Nexis news database turns up the phrase \u00a0\u00bbdeath squad\u00a0\u00bb only five times in connection with Reagan in the days following his death–twice in commentaries (Philadelphia Inquirer, 6\/6\/04; Chicago Tribune, 6\/8\/04) and twice in letters to the editor (San Francisco Chronicle, 6\/8\/04; L.A. Times, 6\/8\/04). Only one news article found in the search (L.A. Times, 6\/6\/04) considered the death squads an important enough part of Reagan’s legacy to be worth mentioning. The three broadcast networks, CNN and Fox didn’t mention death squads at all, according to Nexis. Nor were any references found in the transcripts of the broadcast networks to the fact that Reagan’s policy of supporting Islamicist insurgents against the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan led to the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tThe Reagan administration’s friendly policy towards Saddam Hussein was also a neglected media topic. During the Reagan years, the U.S. offered significant support to Iraq, including weapons components, military intelligence, and even some of the ingredients for manufacturing biological weapons like anthrax (Newsweek, 9\/23\/02).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tThe rare opportunities for critical reflection about Reagan’s policies were turned into additional evidence of his strength, as when Time magazine (6\/14\/04) suggested, \u00a0\u00bbEven when his views were most intransigent– when he wondered out loud whether Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist or failed for nearly all of his presidency to speak the word AIDS even once– Reagan gave Reaganism a human face.\u00a0\u00bb Time followed that strange assessment with a comment from Bush adviser Karl Rove: \u00a0\u00bbHe made us sunny optimists… His was a conservatism of laughter and openness and community.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tJournalists seemed determined to show that any criticisms of Reagan could be turned upside down. As Dan Rather explained on CBS’s 60 Minutes (6\/6\/04), \u00a0\u00bbThe literal-minded were forever troubled by his tendency to sometimes confuse life with the movies. But he understood, like very few leaders before or since, the power of myth and storytelling. In his films and his political life, Ronald Reagan stood at the intersection where dreams and reality meet, and with a wink and a one-liner, always held out hope for a happy ending.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tEven Reagan’s contradictions were somehow construed as strong points. As Time put it (6\/14\/04), \u00a0\u00bbSo great was Reagan’s victory in making his preoccupations into enduring themes of the national conversation that it may not matter that his record didn’t always match his rhetoric. He insisted, for instance, that a balanced budget was one of his priorities. But by the time Reagan left office, a combination of lower tax revenues and sharply higher spending for defense had sent the deficit through the roof.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tThe Iran-Contra scandal, which loomed too large to ignore, was often written off by journalists. \u00a0\u00bbAs we look back today, it’s like just a speck in the eight years of his presidency,\u00a0\u00bb explained CNN’s Judy Woodruff (6\/7\/04). Meet the Press host Tim Russert (6\/6\/04) showed a clip of Reagan’s famous response to the scandal, in which he stated, \u00a0\u00bbA few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.\u00a0\u00bb Russert described this tortured evasion of culpability as \u00a0\u00bbvery believable.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tWhatever reporters made of Iran-Contra, though, Reagan’s triumph over such problems was more important than the incidents themselves. CBS reporter Anthony Mason (6\/6\/04) explained: \u00a0\u00bbThe deficit doubled during the Reagan years. His second term was scarred by the Iran Contra scandal, but he never lost that common touch…. Ronald Reagan had an uncanny ability to make Americans feel good about themselves.\u00a0\u00bb That bond with American citizens remained front-and-center throughout the media. As CBS anchor Dan Rather put it (6\/5\/04), Reagan \u00a0\u00bbwas the great communicator, yes. But he was also a master at communicating greatness. He understood that, as he once put it, ‘History is a ribbon always unfurling,’ and managed to convey his vision in terms both simple and poetic. And so he was able to act as<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\ta conduit to connect us to who we had been and who we could be.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Reagan and the Media<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
\tThe overwhelmingly positive coverage of Reagan struck some as a significant change. As Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz noted (6\/7\/04): \u00a0\u00bbThe uplifting tone with which journalists are eulogizing Ronald Reagan is obscuring a central fact of his presidency: He had a very contentious relationship with the press.\u00a0\u00bb Others would certainly disagree with Kurtz’s assessment– Mark Heertsgaard’s 1991 book, \u00a0\u00bbOn Bended Knee: The Press & the Reagan Presidency,\u00a0\u00bb for example, characterizes the press corps as being basically uncritical during the Reagan years. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tIn any event, it would be hard to argue that current coverage of Reagan carries any lingering traces of that formerly \u00a0\u00bbcontentious\u00a0\u00bb relationship. If anything, some reporters now seem to think that the main lesson learned from the Reagan years was not to be critical. As ABC’s Sam Donaldson put it (6\/4\/04), \u00a0\u00bbReporters over the years made the mistake of saying, ‘Well, he made this mistake, he made this mistake. He got that fact wrong.’ The American public got it right. It didn’t matter.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tFinally, Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (USA Today, 6\/7\/04) gave an interesting take on what he acknowledged were \u00a0\u00bbalmost completely uncritical\u00a0\u00bb media reports on Reagan: \u00a0\u00bbFor networks that are accused of being liberal, this is a way for them to show that they are fair.\u00a0\u00bb One would hope that such an overwhelmingly uncritical assessment of important political and historical matters would not meet anyone’s definition of \u00a0\u00bbfair\u00a0\u00bb journalism.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\t[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit \u00eatre lu avec la mention classique \u00e0 l’esprit, Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only..]<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
L’exceptionnalit\u00e9 de Ronald reagan L’unanimit\u00e9, pour ne pas dire l’unanimisme qui salue la mort de Reagan est un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne remarquable aujourd’hui en Am\u00e9rique. Il y a un devoir de ferveur et un devoir d’approbation absolue de l’uvre du pr\u00e9sident, en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral class\u00e9 parmi les plus grands de l’histoire de ce pays. Ce devoir n’est pas… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[625,3215],"class_list":["post-66000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-fair","tag-reagan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}