Bernard Goldberg

With humor tinged with indignation, Bernard Goldberg wrote 1CBias 1D after finally being let go by CBS News after 28 years in the employ of the broadcast network 19s news department. The slow decline of his star at the network began in early 1996 when, after years of unheeded complaints to his superiors about a liberal bias in the reportage of television news at CBS, Goldberg finally decided to submit an opinion piece on the subject to the editorial page of 1CThe Wall Street Journal. 1D

In his newspaper essay, Goldberg criticized bias at his network in general and in particular wrote about a recent news segment that he felt had been particularly skewed. Pretending to be factual, the segment had attacked a political candidate 19s tax proposal in an extremely one-sided way. Goldberg noted that if it was supposed to be factual, then opposing points of view ought to have been included but were not; the segment should have been presented as opinion and its sources 14if not its reporter 14should have been identified as partisan.

The issues raised by Goldberg 19s essay poked uncomfortably in a number of directions. Both CBS news anchor Dan Rather, and the reporter who created the segment that Goldberg singled out, took the matter personally. Subsequently, the news anchors of the three major networks all declared that there is no liberal bias in television news reporting.

Goldberg reports a conversation with Rather about whether or not the 1CNew York Times 1D editorial page is liberal. Rather said that it is 1Cmiddle of the road. 1D Goldberg wonders how Rather might account for the fact that 1CThe Times 1D editorial page takes liberal positions on every issue of the day and has not supported a conservative candidate since the 1950s. He concludes that so many members of newsrooms, whether on television or in print media, are so steeped in liberal attitudes that they are incapable of seeing themselves as liberal. They see themselves as merely being reasonable, and they consequently see liberal sources and public figures as being reasonable and 1Cmiddle of the road. 1D In their skewed world view, observes Goldberg, what is right of center is conservative and what is left of center is moderate. 1CNo wonder they can 19t recognize their own bias, 1D Goldberg says.

This observation jibes with my own impression, after living for sixty years, that the center has moved to the left since the 1960s. When listening to Bill O 19Reilly on the radio on my way home from work, I used to think that, had this man flourished professionally in the 1960s rather than the present, he would have been considered a moderate. Now he is considered an archconservative not because his views are eternally conservative (rather pragmatic, actually), but because the left has seized and redefined the center. The old center has been forced to join the right.

Goldberg himself was forced to take fewer assignments and not allowed to present analysis of the news. He was relegated more and more to forgettable newsmagazines. After being dropped from the list of correspondents considered for 1C60 Minutes II, 1D a now forgotten clone of the original 1C60 Minutes, 1D Goldberg asked only that he be allowed to retire with his pension. News chief Andrew Heyward granted this gallows request and allowed Goldberg to retire in 2000.

The most interesting aspect of Goldberg 19s perspective 14aside from the fact that he is actually not a conservative 14is that he does not see liberal bias in the media as a conscious intent to skew the news. If the bias were conscious, he argues, it could be pointed out and fixed. 1CWhat happens in reality is far worse, 1D he says. Newsmen with a liberal worldview dominate the media. While only 43 percent of the electorate voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, 89 percent of journalists did according to one poll cited by Goldberg. But it isn 19t even a matter of going easy on Democrats and hard on Republicans (though I think the current administration 19s cozy relationship with the press indicates that it is that also); for Goldberg what is key to the bias in the news is rather the media 19s advocacy of only one side of the social issues of the day. On feminism, affirmative action, abortion, gay rights, even daycare, the media in general, and even more so the broadcast media, take one side of the debate and either do not report the other or make fun of it 14often in absentia since they tend not to invite the opposing view on the network news.

Chapter by chapter, issue after issue, Goldberg cites examples of biased reporting. He cites contrary evidence that is not mentioned on the newscasts and points to newsworthy stories that go unnoticed by the big media, evidently because they contradict the media 19s preferred narrative, which the media drum into viewers over and over.

Even more insidious, Goldberg thinks, is the focus on sensational news items at the expense of more substantive issues. (Less time on the latest sex scandal would make room for opposing viewpoints, except that one wonders if Mr. Goldberg forgets that the media wouldn 19t go into both sides of the substantive issues even if they had the time.)

In two appendices, Goldberg republishes his controversial editorials and the (favorable) reactions to them, including letters from media colleagues. One letter from 1996 struck me as emblematic of the way in which media bias can be invisible to those who selectively block it out. One respondent praised Goldberg for his criticism of bias at the commercial networks. 1CThat is why serious students of broadcast news tend to watch the Lehrer News Hour [sic: it should be 1CNewsHour 1D], where a serious attempt is made to present all sides of an issue. 1D Yes and no. The last time I watched the NewsHour was a couple of years before that letter to Goldberg was written. In the episode that made me stop watching, an oversized panel of about nine men and women addressed a recent national service proposal. All were liberals with but one exception (and he was a libertarian rather than a conservative). The moderator let one liberal college president dominate the discussion. The lone naysayer was given about two 30 second opportunities to refute everything that had been said by the other side (and he did an impressive job of reciting as many bullet points as he possibly could in the time he was given), and when he tried to interject an objection toward the end of the segment, he was told by the moderator to wait his turn, but there was, in fact, no further opportunity for him to speak. Well, at least they HAD a different point of view, but they buried it under the avalanche of liberal arguments. No liberal bias on the NewsHour? Give me a break.

Today, the big networks as well as the big newspapers are just tweaking their formats in an attempt to keep from losing viewership and circulation. (Recently, CBS television announced it has hired skilled but highly liberal interviewer Charlie Rose to take over its failing morning news show.) They are missing the point, Goldberg says. Their tweaking is futile if readers and audience are actually leaving because they no longer trust the media to tell them the truth without bias. It 19s the content, not the format that more and more customers object to.

This book is over a decade old. Surely, its observations might have been ameliorated by subsequent events and possible reforms. Perhaps things at the networks have changed and bias has been banished during the time that so many of us have been surfing for our news or watching it on cable. Today I tuned in to ABC News for five seconds and heard the anchorman introduce a segment on foreign aid by saying that this was a story that might convince the doubters that foreign aid does good. Now, this is a statement of advocacy journalism as blatant and crass as it could be. And no one would argue that foreign aid never does any good, but rather that on balance it does less good than it costs, but, as Goldberg observed, such advocacy for liberal causes is most egregious because the network will never run the contrary opinion to elaborate on the counterargument that I just suggested. Though I did not watch the rest of the segment, from the pictures I gathered it was about how foreign aid helps sick or malnourished children in third world lands, which reminds me, I happen to know that many 1Cevil, 1D capitalist pharmaceutical companies spend millions ( and possibly billions) each year dispensing medicines to third world nations at a complete loss to their 1Cmoney-grubbing 1D corporations. (How could they be so heartless?) That 19s non-governmental foreign aid, by the way.

But the ABC anchor completely misses the boat when he fails to consider that most people who doubt the efficacy of foreign aid are not watching his network 19s broadcasts. He doesn 19t wonder why because it doesn 19t occur to him that the big three are no longer the important sources of news that they once were.… (lisätietoja)

No matter where you stand politically, this is worth a read. Goldberg backs up his words with hard facts. For instance, the homeless crisis: if you went to jr high or hs during the Reagan/Bush era, chances are good you wrote a paper on the homeless. The story was everywhere. Goldberg tells you just how prevalent the story was, by documenting the number of times it was reported on by The Big 3 & the major newspapers. Then he looks at the same sources after Clinton took office, and documents the story's presence then. The story of the homeless all but disappeared, but the homeless themselves didn't.
So what happened? Why the drop? It's up to you to read it & decide if/how much you buy it. But it's worth considering & keeping in mind as you peruse the news.… (lisätietoja)