The liberals have been licking their chops in the hope that, as Ronald Reagan’s term comes to a close, big media might be able to reassert the kind of total control of the news that they manifested in Watergate. But they shouldn’t crow too soon. Something is coming along that can checkmate liberal news manipulation as much as Ronald Reagan’s communication skills.
When television went into every home, that gave the media elite at the network level total control over the selection, bias, and manipulation of television news, which is the way most Americans get their news. But now comes the VCR (already in 27 million homes) to give conservatives a way to fight back.
Conservatives have discovered they can make a video cassette with a political message that can be seen on home TV and replayed to small audiences. This technique was pioneered in behalf of several conservative candidates (such as Jesse Helms) in the 1984 election.
Now this offspring of the electronic age has burst out of its shell with a bang in California as a device in the campaign to defeat Rose Bird for reelection as chief justice of the California Supreme Court. California State Senator H. L. (Bill) Richardson is the political entrepreneur who produced this tool: a half-hour video that tells the Rose Bird court record in dealing with convicted criminals.
The film opens with the telling of several actual cases of murderers convicted by local juries which ordered the death penalty, only to have those convictions overturned by the California Supreme Court. The crimes were particularly heinous: one confessed to torturing, raping, and strangling a 2-year-old girl plus 150 previous acts of child molestation; one confessed to the rape and murder of two teenage girls; one sexually molested and then murdered a 10-year-old girl by grinding her up in a trash compactor.
Since Rose Bird was appointed to the California Supreme Court by Governor Jerry Brown in 1977, the California Supreme Court has overturned the death penalty conviction in 34 out of 37 cases it heard, and Rose Bird voted to overturn the death penalty in all 37 cases. Judge Joseph Grodin voted to overturn the death penalty in 22 out of 22 of these cases that he heard, and Judge Cruz Reynoso voted to overturn in 25 out of 26 cases that he heard. All three are on the ballot in November.
In order to evade the death penalty, the California court invokes obscure technicalities and never-before-heard-of rules. Sometimes successive decisions are completely inconsistent. One of these Supreme Court reversals required 100 murderers to be retried.
Some public officials assert that Rose Bird has politicized the court. She can’t say that the 1978 California death penalty law is unconstitutional, yet she uses her powerful position to impose her bias against the death penalty on the state in defiance of the will of the people (expressed in initiative and referendum), of the State Legislature, of the juries that convict the criminals, and even of all public opinion polls.
The film includes interviews with prosecutors, legislators, and judges who say that these Supreme Court reversals have demoralized prosecutors, law enforcement officials, lower court judges, and victims. They complain that the California Supreme Court is the laughing stock of the country. When they go to national meetings, their friends in other states ask, what new “weird and bizarre” ruling has she handed down lately?
Much of the liberal media are rallying to Rose Bird’s support in this political fight of her life. Even the TWA Ambassador Magazine, placed free in the pocket of every seat of every TWA plane, had a feature article on Rose Bird.
When Richardson previewed his Rose Bird video at a recent news conference, it created quite a stir—not only because of its dramatic political message, but because the media recognized a powerful challenge to their control of the news. The video allows conservatives to go directly to the public with their own news films and thereby circumvents those who seek to control the news.
Richardson expects to distribute more than 10,000 Rose Bird videos over the next few months at the modest price of $15. If all recipients show it to only 20 people a month for the next ten months, 2,000,000 people will see it.
The film is deliberately low-key and doesn’t tell you who to vote for. It doesn’t need to. If you can’t figure that out after seeing the film, you won’t be able to find your way to the polling place in November.
