Bias
A CBS Insider Exposes How
the Media Distort the News
Bernard Goldberg
234pp, Regnery
The Dan
Liberal bias in the media is so blatant that it seems not worth discussing anymore. The president of CBS News admitted that “of course there's a liberal bias in the news. All the networks tilt left.” What is worth discussing is how the media deal with those who address this slant. When Bernard Goldberg wrote an editorial decrying liberal bias, he signed the death warrant on his own 28-year career at CBS. That is the topic of this book.
The News Mafia dishes it out but can't take it. Happy to blow the whistle on anyone but themselves, they are self-important humorless hypocrites. Showing his sense of proportion, the president of CBS News likened the editorial to “raping my wife and kidnapping my kids.” Breaking their omerta is punishable with career death. Goldberg was shunned by his colleagues, and the Godfather of the CBS Family, ‘The Dan’ Rather, never spoke another word with him.
The News Mafia is completely out of touch with the American people, and so far to the Left that everything this side of Lenin is right-wing fascism. Goldberg quotes a journalist famously exclaiming her disbelief at the 1972 presidential election, when Nixon won 49 states to 1, though “she didn't know a single person who voted for Nixon.” Contrary to The Dan's assertion that “most reporters don't know if they're Republican or Democrat,” statistics clearly show that journalists are overwhelmingly more likely to vote Democrat: for example, 89% voted for Clinton in 1996. Even Democratic voters believe that the media are more left-leaning than they are.
Why are conservatives always identified as such, but not liberals? Goldberg believes that liberals arrogantly see themselves as ‘right’ and cannot conceive of any reasonable person thinking differently from them. That is how The Dan can honestly claim The New York Times is “middle-of-the-road.” Even supposedly liberal bookstores refuse to carry books with a conservative viewpoint. Brian Brown: “Liberals these days have forgotten how to be liberal.”
Why do the media never show homeless as substance abusers or with mental problems? Why are AIDS sufferers always portrayed as non-abusing heterosexuals, who CDC statistics show comprise less than 7% of all cases? The answer is ratings. Viewers are less likely to watch programs they don't identify with, and the cynical lobbies are always ready to provide white middle-class poster boys to promote their agendas. Ratings also explain the obscene hypocrisy of the networks hiding black protagonists during the key ratings ‘sweeps’ months.
Interestingly, Goldberg shows how the major networks report heavily on the homeless when Republican presidents are in office, and barely at all when Clinton was. He exposes the absurd political correctness of identifying a Jamaican man as ‘African-American.’ But PC somehow does not extend to “Jesus freaks” or “putzes” (i.e., men).
Bernard Goldberg is hilariously funny. “If CBS were a prison […] 100 percent of the vice presidents would be Dan's bitches.” But the book makes serious points, documenting with hard statistics the disparity between the liberal media and reality.
Network newscast ratings are plummeting in favor of stations that offer a balanced perspective. When Rush Limbaugh is blamed for inciting McVeigh, but the Arab river of hatred toward the West is not connected to September 11, viewers ‘get the picture’ and vote with their remotes.