Mainstream media still ignoring Clinton-Enron ties
While the liberal media leave no stone unturned in their forever vigilant quest to implicate the Bush administration in the Enron Corp. debacle, they still ignore the well-documented ties the former administration held with the collapsed energy giant.
In the meantime, as the liberal media desperately clamor to find a GOP smoking gun, the rest of the news outlets without hidden agendas are objectively disclosing the latest revelations about how deeply the Clinton administration actually was involved in the largely unreported events that precipitated Enron’s financial demise.
In order to understand the enormity of the liberal spin that permeates the mainstream press, however, there is one lingering question that begs to be answered: How can news organizations, whose primary objective in political scandals is to ferret out the truth, so blatantly disregard the very sources that start subsequent controversies?
The only motive the media-at-large would likely have for collectively ignoring a particular source is to gratify their liberal biases. In this case, what the liberal media adamantly refuse to include in the Enron equation is the Clinton administration—the very ones who allegedly started it all; the one element sorely missing in their stories.
In fact, to further illustrate this point, the following stories will serve as examples of media bias in the Enron fallout and the former administration’s ineffaceable link:
· Associated Press writer Sandra Sobieraj reported yesterday that “the White House did some digging into old Clinton administration files on Friday to make the case that it was appropriate for Vice President Dick Cheney to help campaign supporters at Enron collect a $64 million debt from India.”
What’s especially interested about this story is that, although Sobieraj mentioned the Clinton administration, she never actually linked them to the Enron controversy—which is a paper trail that leads all the way back to the former administration’s initial involvement in the 1992 India project which Clinton reportedly orchestrated.
Instead of implicating Clinton in the current scandal, Sobieraj, by her particular choice of words, instead accused the Bush administration of political wrongdoing and cover-ups.
“The White House defended its handling of the long-running Dobhal case after The New York Daily News reported on government e-mails it obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,” Sobieraj wrote. “Those e-mails revealed publicly for the first time that Cheney "mentioned Enron" in his June 27 meeting with Sonia Gandhi, president of India's opposition Congress Party.”
Again, there’s absolutely no mention of the Clinton administration’s known ties to the very heart of the Enron controversy. Instead, the story takes a Republican focus.
· Miami Herald staff writer Joni James reported on Jan. 18 that “Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth…is investigating whether Enron and two other firms violated racketeering laws that led the state public employee pension fund to take a $306 million loss on Enron stock.”
James went on to report that “at the heart of Butterworth's interest: The fact that Alliance Management purchased 7.6 million Enron shares for the Florida retirement fund, including 2.7 million shares after Oct. 22, when it was announced that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating the Houston company. Alliance paid between $82 and $9 for the shares over the course of a year.”
Although James indicated that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed “Butterworth’s inquiry,” she subsequently made a significant point to interject that “Butterworth's announcement came the same day that Gov. Jeb Bush held a campaign fundraiser at the home of former Enron chief Richard Kinder in Houston.
James concluded her piece by mentioning that “Democrats called the fundraiser irresponsible, but Bush's campaign said Kinder severed all ties with the company six years ago, before any problems occurred.”
This is another example of the blatant media bias running rampant in the vast majority of the Enron stories.
James not only ignored the Clinton-Enron connection, she all but implicated Jeb Bush in the Enron probe, not to mention making sure to cite the Democrats’ observations concerning Jeb Bush’s alleged ties to Enron—an item she apparently made sure to include in the story.
Moreover, according to a 1995 Time magazine report, “at Clinton’s urging, Chief of Staff Mac McLarty contacted Enron’s Ken Lay and closely supervised a controversial $3 billion power-plant project with the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi. McLarty kept Lay informed of the project’s progress, and in 1996, just four days after Enron won the contract, the corporation gave over $100,000 to the Democratic Party.”
Despite this apparent political favor, like Sobieraj, James still failed to mention this crucial Clinton-Enron tie in her article.
· A Jan. 16 Boston Globe article entitled, “Enron: where’s the outrage,” clearly implicated the Bush administration, noting the “depth of [its] involvement.”
The article described the “excessive contributions to the campaigns of Attorney General John Ashcroft during his 2000 reelection bid for the US Senate and other politicians,” and that “Vice President Dick Cheney has finally admitted to having six closed door meetings with Enron over the past year.”
Again, like Sobieraj and James, this writer contentiously insinuated the Bush administration’s alleged involvement in the Enron scandal without the slightest hint of the Clinton administration’s original financial connection to the corporation.
Even though the leftist media continue muting the mounting evidence of the Clinton administration’s initial ties with top Enron executives, clearly, both political parties have established ties to Enron.
But that is not the concern. The concern is the liberal media’s refusal to accurately present both sides of the story.
The reality is the Enron story won’t go away because the Clinton-Enron connections will never cease crying out to be covered. After all, the mainstream press spent eight years downplaying every Clinton scandal imaginable.
There's no question that if either Clinton or Gore were the current embattled president, the media-at-large would definitely have an entire different take on the Enron controversy.
Rather than blaming or accusing the Clinton administration, the liberal media would be doing exactly what they did before: Run PR and damage control, spin all leveled allegations, and hurl potentially damaging accusations at the opposing side.
The liberal press, by and large, have always had sort of an innate cynicism when it comes to Republicans. However, it's their mandate to equally present both sides of the story, regardless of which political party is involved.
© Copyright 2002 by Doug Schmitz
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