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<des>

     FAIR study found ABC Nightline's most frequent guests were
     Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Elliott Abrams and Jerry
     Falwell. (Lee Unreliable Sources 1990)

<doctype>book
<author>Lee, Martin A.
<author>Solomon, Norman
<title>Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News
Media
<city>New York
<publisher>Carol Publishing Group
<year>1990
<pages>26-7
<foreword author>Asner, Edward

<quote>

     In 1989 the media watch group FAIR--Fairness & Accuracy In
     Reporting--issued the results of a painstaking tabulation of
     40 months of Nightline shows--a total of 865 programs with
     2,498 guests. FAIR chose to study Nightline because of its
     acclaim as one of the best TV news programs.

     "The narrow range of guests," the FAIR report concluded,
     "makes Nightline a fundamentally conservative political
     program." The leading guests, with 14 appearances each,
     were Henry Kissinger and another former secretary of state,
     Alexander Haig. Next came State Department official Elliott
     Abrams and the Moral Majority's Jerry Falwell (12
     appearances each). Out of the 19 American guests who could
     be termed Nightline "regulars" (more than five
     appearances), all were men, all but two were white, and 13
     of the 19 were conservatives. "Nightline's coverage of
     domestic and foreign affairs results in significant
     distortions," said the study, compiled for FAIR by Boston
     College sociologists William Hoynes and David Croteau.

     Over 10 million Americans watch Nightline on a given weekday
     night; the offerings they see are out-of-balance to an
     extreme....

<comment>

     The most salient characteristic shared by Kissinger, Haig,
     Abrams and Falwell is not their conservatism but their
     strong pro-Israelism: they are all forceful supporters of
     hardline, right-wing forces in Israel. The reasonable
     conclusion is that Ted Koppel has developed close relations
     with and offered a platform to these people for precisely
     that reason. Conservatives who are not especially
     enthusiastic about Israel are not represented in any great
     numbers on Nightline.

     Koppel and Nightline favor neoconservatives, for whom Israel
     is at the top of the agenda, not traditional American
     conservatives. Koppel and Nightline are pushing a heavy
     Israeli agenda.

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