Bernard Goldberg - Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News

CONTENTS

Introduction: "They Think You're a Traitor"

1 The News Mafia

2 Mugged by "The Dan"

3 "The Emperor Is Naked"

4 Identity Politics

5 How Bill Clinton Cured Homelessness

6 Epidemic of Fear

7 I Thought Our Job Was to Tell the Truth"

8 How About a Media That Reflects America?

9 Targeting Men

10 "Where Thieves and Pimps Run Free"

11 The Most Important Story You Never Saw on TV

12 Liberal Hate-Speech

13 "The Ship Be Sinking"

14 Connecting the Dots... to Terrorism

15 Newzak

Appendix A: The Editorials

Appendix B: The Response

On September 11, 2001, America's royalty, the TV news anchors, got it right. They gave us the news straight, which they don't always do. They told us what was going on without the cynicism and without the attitude. For that, they deserve our thanks and our admira-tion.

But it shouldn't take a national catastrophe of unparalleled magnitude to get the news without the usual biases. Before September 11, the media elites, too often, behaved badly. And they will again. It is, after all, who they are. And that is what this book is all about.

"They Think You're a Traitor" I have it on good authority that my liberal friends in the news media, who account for about 98 percent of all my friends in the news media, are planning a big party to congratulate me for writing this book. As I understand it, media stars like Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings will make speeches thank-ing me for actually saying what they either can't or won't. They'll thank me for saying that they really do slant the news in a leftward direction. They'll thank me for pointing out that, when criticized, they reflexively deny their bias while at the same time saying their critics are the ones who are really biased. They'll thank me for observing that in their opin-ion liberalism on a whole range of issues from abortion and affirmative action to the death penalty and gay rights is not really liberal at all, but merely reasonable and civilized. Finally, they'll thank me for agreeing with Roger Ailes of Fox News that the media divide Americans into two groups - moderates and right-wing nuts.

My sources also tell me that Rather, Brokaw, or Jennings - no one is sure which one yet - will publicly applaud me for alerting the networks that one reason they're all losing viewers by the truckload is that fewer and fewer Americans trust them anymore. He'll applaud, too, when I say that the media need to be more introspective, keep an open mind when critics point to specific examples of liberal bias, and systematically work to end slanted reporting. According to the information I've been able to gather, this wonderful event will take place at a fancy New York City hotel, at eight o'clock in the evening, on a Thursday, exactly three days after Hell freezes over.

Okay, maybe that's too harsh. Maybe, in a cheap attempt to be funny, I'm maligning and stereotyping the media elites as a bunch of powerful, arrogant, thin-skinned celebrity journalists who can dish it out, which they routinely do on their newscasts, but can't take it. Except I don't think so, for reasons I will come to shortly.

First let me say that this was a very difficult book to write. Not because I had trouble uncovering the evidence that there is in fact a ten-dency to slant the news in a liberal way. That part was easy. Just turn on your TV set and it's there. Not every night and not in every story, but it's there too often in too many stories, mostly about the big social and cultural issues of our time.

What made doing this book so hard was that I was writing about people I have known for many years, people who are, or once were, my friends. It's not easy telling you that Dan Rather, whom I have worked with and genuinely liked for most of my adult life, really is two very different people; and while one Dan is funny and generous, the other is ruthless and unforgiving. I would have preferred to write about strangers. It would have been a lot easier. Nor is it easy to write about other friends at CBS News, including an important executive who told me that of course the networks tilt left - but also warned that if I ever shared that view with the outside world he would deny the conversation ever took place.

I think this is what they call a delicious irony. A news executive who can tell the truth about liberal bias in network news - but only if he thinks he can deny ever saying it! And these are the people who keep insisting that all they want to do is share the truth with the American people! It wasn't easy naming names, but I have. I kept thinking of how my colleagues treat cigarette, tire, oil, and other company executives in the media glare. The news business deserves the same hard look because it is even more important. Fortunately, I was on the inside as a news correspondent for twenty-eight years, from 1972, when I joined CBS News as a twenty-six-year-old, until I left in the summer of 2000. So I know the business, and I know what they don't want the public to see.

Many of the people I spoke to, as sources, would not let me use their names, which is understandable. They simply have too much to lose. You can talk freely about many things when you work for the big network news operations, but liberal bias is not one of them. Take it from me, the liberals in the newsroom tend to frown on such things.

And there are a few things that are not in this book - information I picked up and confirmed but left out because writing about it would cause too much damage to people, some powerful, some not, even if I didn't use any names.

But much of what I heard didn't come from Deep Throat sources in parking garages at three o'clock in the morning, but from what the big network stars said on their own newscasts and in other big public arenas, for the world to hear. When Peter Jennings, for example, was asked about liberal bias, on Larry King Live on May 15,2001, he said, "I think bias is very largely in the eye of the beholder." This might offend the two or three conservative friends I have, but I think Peter is right, except that instead of saying "very largely" he should have left it as "sometimes in the eye of the beholder." Because it's true that some people who complain about liberal bias think Al Roker the weatherman is out to get conservatives just because he forecast rain on the Fourth of July. And some people who say they want the news without bias really mean they want it without liberal bias. Conservative bias would be just fine.

Some of Dan, Tom, and Peter's critics would think it fine if a story about affirmative action began, "Affirmative action, the program that no right-thinking American could possibly support, was taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court today." But I wouldn't. Bias is bias.

It's important to know, too, that there isn't a well-orchestrated, vast left-wing conspiracy in America's newsrooms. The bitter truth, as we'll see, is arguably worse. Even though I attack liberal bias, not liberal values, I will be portrayed by some of my old friends as a right-wing ideologue. Indeed, I've already faced this accusation. When I wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in 1996 about liberal bias among the media elites, my professional life turned upside down. I became radioactive. People I had known and worked with for years stopped talking to me. When a New York Post reporter asked Rather about my op-ed, Rather replied that he would not be pressured by "political activists" with a "political agenda" "inside or outside" of CBS News. The "inside" part, I think, would be me.

Sadly, Dan doesn't think that any critic who utters the words "liberal bias" can be legitimate, even if that critic worked with Dan himself for two decades. Such a critic cannot possibly be well-meaning. To Dan, such a critic is Spiro Agnew reincarnated, spouting off about those nattering nabobs of negativism. Too bad. A little introspection could go a long way.