Proving that irony is alive and well post-Sept. 11, a book deriding the national press corps for its flagrant liberal bias has been the subject of enormous attention in the same mainstream media that, the book argues, suppress conservative views.
Bias, by former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg, is long on name-calling and vitriol, but short on substance. “Delusional,” “hypocrites,” “Lilliputians”—these are just a few of the words Goldberg uses to describe journalists in general, and his old CBS colleagues in particular. He quips that if CBS News were a prison, many of its employees would be Dan Rather’s “bitches.”
It’s ironic that Goldberg’s book has come out during a time when right-wing media watchdogs—who can find a socialist tilt in the weather report—are offering virtually nothing but praise for mainstream journalists’ coverage since Sept. 11.
Goldberg marshals little documentation for his claim that the news is packed with the views of liberal advocacy groups and rarely includes conservative opinions. In reality, year after year, right-leaning think tanks are cited in far more broadcast and print reports than either centrist or left-leaning think tanks. A survey by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting of Nightline‘s guest list found that for every representative of a labor union invited to debate economic issues, there were seven representatives of corporations.
If, as Goldberg argues, there’s a media tilt toward Democrats, then why have Republicans received a majority of newspaper endorsements in all but two presidential elections since 1932?
Goldberg left CBS four years ago after accusing his colleagues of bias in a 1996 Wall Street Journal column. The piece focused on a CBS Evening News segment scrutinizing a flat-tax proposal made by Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes. The story was one-sided, giving no time to flat-tax supporters, but was it really proof of liberal bias?
Consider the four flat-tax critics featured in the segment: House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an adviser to the senior President Bush, a former Nixon era IRS commissioner, and a tax expert.
A single segment featuring mostly right-of-center sources criticizing one Republican’s tax proposal is hardly smoking-gun evidence of a left-wing media tilt. Yet five years later the CBS flat-tax report is still Goldberg’s “Exhibit A,” the main evidence of liberal bias in his skimpy book.
Large chunks of the book aren’t about liberal bias at all. For example, Goldberg chides NBC anchor Tom Brokaw for failing to do a story about a defective airplane engine made by NBC parent General Electric. This kind of pro-corporate bias is a standard complaint of left-leaning media critics.
Later, Goldberg delivers a lengthy and stinging indictment of the networks for making profit-based decisions valuing White and middle-class demographics above all else, and skewing news and entertainment accordingly.
He concludes, “Advertisers like White audiences, they have more money to spend”—again sounding more like a progressive media critic.
But don’t mistake Goldberg’s seeming sensitivity for compassion. For years he has accused the media of expressing too much sympathy for the homeless and other underdogs. “So what if many of the homeless are truly drug addicts or alcoholics or simply lazy?” he asked in a 1990 New York Times Op-Ed, which also chided the media for excessive compassion toward AIDS patients.
Goldberg couldn’t muster much sympathy for laid-off workers either: “How many stories have you seen on TV or read in the newspaper—in your entire life—that attempt to find out how many of these laid-off workers took school seriously? How many thought kids who studied were wimps, and worse?”
The only claim Goldberg makes that has real documentation behind it is about the elite mentality of big-time journalists, but it’s a charge that undermines the case for liberal bias. A 1998 FAIR survey of the opinions of the Washington press corps found that journalists were more conservative—not more liberal—than the general public on major economic issues such as trade, taxes, Social Security, health care and corporate power.
Here’s a reality check for Bernard Goldberg: The mainstream media are no more liberal than the conglomerates that own them or the advertisers that pay their bills.
A version of this appeared in the Arizona Republic (1/20/02).
