NYPost

HILLARY WATCH

By VINCENT MORRIS

May 9, 2001 -- Hill won't play ball with media's heavy hitters

WASHINGTON.

JUST as she did during last year's Senate campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton is pitching a total news shutout to the national TV and radio corps.

She'll talk with newspaper reporters, but Clinton refuses to sit for network or cable news shows - only for small, local outlets whose reporters ask pre-arranged questions on noncontroversial topics.

Aides say she hasn't ruled out interviews with national broadcast media, but spokeswoman Karen Dunn says, "Our priority is, and always will be, the New York media."

In a tiny step toward the spotlight, Clinton will hit the airwaves Saturday when PBS airs her interview with host Bonnie Erbe, who has a reputation for asking softball questions.

The Post learned Clinton agreed to the interview with Erbe shortly after missing a recent ceremony held to honor the PBS host.

*

Clinton attended a Senate hearing yesterday morning at which she complained that giant pharmaceutical companies should do more to help children.

By evening, she was dining out at an event, geared toward aiding kids, underwritten by those same pharmaceutical companies.

The occasion was a fund-raiser for the US Dream Academy Inc., which raises money for 1.9 million children around the country who have parents in jail.

Tickets ran $1,000 a plate, but the really big bucks were kicked in by drug companies Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Glaxo Smith Kline, Merck & Co. Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Pharmacia Corp., which each gave a whopping $100,000.

Clinton co-hosted the event with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a Mormon who, like many congressional Republicans, was harshly critical of former President Bill Clinton.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2001