Bernard GoldbergBesprekingen

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.

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.

This was an entertaining and easy read. I really enjoyed the voice of the author in the book. I actually read it in one day, which for me, rarely happens with a nonfiction book. The author made lots of interesting and entertaining points.

This was an entertaining and easy read. I really enjoyed the voice of the author in the book. I actually read it in one day, which for me, rarely happens with a nonfiction book. The author made lots of interesting and entertaining points.

Substance: Laments the decline of civilization in America and names names. The book's central idea is to name and blame a long list of specific individuals for making the United States a "far more selfish, vulgar, and cynical place." Rounds up "the usual suspects" and a few I either didn't know by name or didn't know about at all and "also exposes some of the people who operate away from the limelight and behind the curtain, but still manage to pull a lot of strings and do all sorts of harm to our culture." (from the Introduction).
Includes mostly persons on the "left" because they currently have the greatest opportunity and "because of their willingness -- make that their eagerness -- to live up to the most embarrassing sterotypes many of us hold about today's cultural-elite liberals.."
Update: He could alter this list as of 2014-11 to drop some has-beens, and include several more schlock-meisters, but the major ones are still screwing up the country, even worse than before.
NOTE: This is not about the powerful politicians who are really screwing up the country, but about cultural "icons".
And, it was written in 2005 - let that sink in for a minute.
This link has a list of the people and types (the book starts at #100 and works upward). http://www.philosophistry.com/specials/100-people.html
See also Wikipedia for responses to the book. And read Goldberg's book "Bias" about terminating his career at CBS when he finally realized how much they slanted the news.

Style: Personal and chatty. Goldberg is funny even if you don't agree with him. However, he does rant a bit, because he takes some of this personally (especially the "journalists" who lie and spin to discredit America).
Goldberg in an interview, via this link, describes his book. http://www.adherents.com/people/100_people_harming_America.html

"The book covers a whole variety of things. It is not just the TV schlep-meisters to people on television and put things on in what used to be the family hour, and you want to watch a situation comedy and it is one cheap sex joke after another that embarrasses you that you are sitting there. It's those people- it is the Hollywood blowhards who think that Bush is a Nazi is civil discussion, and people on college campus that impose speech codes. Things you can say and can't say because no one wants to offend students or those in these protected groups. What is liberal about that? It's about lawyers who file insane lawsuits that make you want to laugh until you cry. There was a lawsuit a prisoner in Florida who was there for murdering five people, lightning hit the satellite dish in the prison and they could only get network television. So, he sues the state of Florida because he said network television is too violent...

I described myself, in my first book Bias as one of those old-fashioned liberals. I'm the liberal the way John F. Kennedy used to be a liberal but not like Michael Moore. Those guys in the old days were upbeat and optimistic. They were hopeful about the country and really the optimist. And today when you look around the cultural - and I am not talking about regular liberals, they're good folks, they work hard, they care about their families - but the cultural elitist and the people who speak for liberalism in this country. I mean, it is a dark, dark America as far as they are concerned. It's blame America first... if we make a mistake. Not because we made an honest mistake, it is because our motives are wrong."

NOTES:

Tells it like it is though we wish it weren't so.

Bernard Goldberg’s brief but memorable A Slobbering Love Affair recounts the myriad ways in which the USA’s mainstream media lionized – indeed, nearly deified – Barack Obama as he ran for president in 2007-2008: the gushy, embarrassing news stories; the ‘journalists’ swooning on camera; and perhaps most serious, the utter lack of interest in Obama’s background, character and associations, i.e. the media’s refusal to do their jobs and investigate.

Goldberg’s tone is sardonic; at times it borders on despairing. How can the great majority of journalists, whose role is so central to the American system, sell their integrity so cheaply? Goldberg suggests it’s a combination of these liberal journalists’ desire to ‘effect change’ and ultimately to feel good about themselves.

Recommended.

Bernard Goldberg’s Bias starts with a harsh, over-the-top comparison of the major TV news outlets to the gangsters of the Godfather movies. He says that he was given a set of cement footwear for breaking their code of silence and talking publicly about inside secrets that many in the business are aware of, but simply agree not to discuss.

While this comparison is undoubtedly hyperbole (he has had, as far as I know, no attempts on his life) his treatment after he dared accuse his own colleagues of a clear and consistent liberal bias is completely out of proportion, especially considering the media’s pride in defending freedom of speech.

Continuing a stand that began with a Wall Street Journal editorial in February of 1996, Goldberg describes the pervasive and generally unconscious liberal bias in the major TV news networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC. The pernicious nature of this bias, he says, is largely due to the sheltered circles the media elites travel in; they rarely encounter people who don’t share their political views, and thus soon grow to think that their views are simply what all reasonable intelligent people believe.

Goldberg gives a detailed account of the results of this bias in several areas. The problem of homelessness was drastically exaggerated during the Reagan era, as well as being “prettified” for the consumption of the average viewer. If you rely unquestioningly accept the word of the Big Three, homelessness magically disappeared during Clinton’s presidency, only to suddenly reappear when the Bush was elected in 2000. AIDS in America never reached anything like the epidemic proportions the major networks would have had us believe. To those not in clearly defined high risk groups (hemophiliacs, IV drug users, gays) it simply was not a threat. But this was not the picture we were repeatedly presented with.

More intellectual dishonesty can be found in the media’s selection and presentation of valid targets. Men, and especially white men, can be demonized and persecuted with an unholy venom. Natlie Angier of the New York Times can even question whether we today even need men, whether the sex, as a whole, is “worth the trouble”, and instead of being regarded as a vicious lunatic is considered reasonable and intelligent. Is 50% of our species “necessary” and “worth the trouble”? If this kind of question were applied to any other group, the writer would instantly become a pariah in liberal circles.

Along similar lines, politicians, scholars, and other public figures are not given a balanced presentation, even in a simple introduction. Any Republican politician is consistently introduced as “conservative so-and-so from Ohio.” Any representative of a conservative think tank or activism group is clearly labeled as conservative when being introduced or even discussed. No such labeling appears necessary for liberals, though. It is as if those with liberal inclinations are simply people, while those with conservative views are some dangerous, alien creatures, and must be clearly labeled as such.

Regardless of the political inclinations, the reader should worry about the impact of such a clear and consistent liberal bias on the public debate. This narrowing of permissible viewpoints is, in the most meaningful sense, the direct opposite of liberalism, which, translated to common English, means simply “freedom”.½

read this tome as a contrast to 71 days, the only reason to read it and see what the opposing arguments are.

It's hard to disagree with most of this book. My only quibble is that the author is a conservative so he doesn't blame enough conservatives. In my book there would be an equal number of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians taking blame for the death of our glorious land.

He lists Michael Moore at number one and simply uses Moore's quote that Americans are the dumbest people in the world. I don't like Michael Moore, but he's right in this case. We are pretty dumb. But so is the rest of the world. We are human after all.

For me, this was the first book to really lay out the bias in the news media. I consider it the godfather of the raft of such books that came out in the years immediately following it. It opened the floodgates and led the way to a conservative activism that in turn led to the tea parties.

Nothing Rush hasn't pointed out already, but now it's an ''insider'' saying it, so people are listening.

The facts about how the mainstream media helped to orchestrate the election of Obama as president of the United States. This book is not only good investigative journalism, it's something we don't often get from media hacks: The Truth.

Let us review: an outsider, no documentation, no paper trail, no legitimate credentials, little political experience, persuasive only by their oratory. Yes, this can only end well.

The lamestream media is characterized by their timidity and lack of professional investigative skills. They are responsible for the abysmal state of understanding by the American people.

Goldberg may be strident but in this pamphlet as a book he does document what journalists should have already known. They failed to inform the American people about the false image they portrayed to voters.

Obama smirked all the way through the campaign and mocked reporters thereafter stating: "Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me. Apologies to the Fox table" (10 May 2009, annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner).

"A Slobbering Love Affair" is an entertaining, devastating and sobering book, outlining the bias exhibited by the American media towards Barack Obama during the 2008 general election. Bernard Goldberg effortlessly skewers the largely liberal press, a group he seems to hold in utter contempt. Goldberg generally writes in a clear, no nonsense fashion although his sarcasm can get a bit tiresome. Overall, the book makes its case very well and in a way that is hard to argue with. A good book for those interested in becoming a journalist or simply curious as to how the whole thing works.

There's certainly a strong case that the mainstream media favored Obama in the 2008 US Presidential election. A large number of studies show the imbalance in reporting, and for example, the Washington Post ombudsman wrote "Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got" in analyzing their own coverage. Even scarier, people such as Tom Brokaw admitted after the election that we really don't know much about Obama - even after he had been covering the candidate for almost two years. This trend in the mainstream media is a dangerous slippery slope and the American people deserve better.

Bernard Goldberg's A Slobbering Love Affair makes these points, but does so in a way that is seemingly designed to offend as many people as possible - or play solely to the right wing. It's unfortunate that he chooses to do so, since there are legitimate discussions we should be having about the relationships between the media and politicians and the media and the public. But that discussion is not to be found here, and the useful information is buried in polemic.½

Easy read, could have been better.½

Bernie's best book, he outlines the reasons he left CBS and I can see why he didn't want to hang around.

Pretty sweet book from the inside of the liberal media. Thanks bernie for coming out of the closet

A short account of Goldberg being blackballed from the MSM because he grew more conservative.

More than anything else, Goldberg fights back full-throttle at "The Dan." His case that the media has a liberal bias is clear, and he tempers it appropriately with discussion of the underlying dynamics and the (perhaps even scarier fact) that such bias is mostly unconscious.

Entertaining and often insightful take on American society and culture.

Because I enjoyed Bias so much, I was especially surprised to find this book so mediocre. Perhaps it really is true that saying negative things never impresses, but I think the main obstacle is this format. Goldberg can only be superficial in commenting on a field of 100 people. It would have been more impressive if he had stuck to his opening chapters about the various types of people who are screwing up America. I also disagree with his world view more than I expected. His views are in lock step with the neocon advocacy of the war in Iraq, and he sees little abuse of power by the conservative regime.

Goldberg takes another popular shot at idiots he thinks are ruining America. I wish there were citations, so you know where his quotes are coming from. And, of course, you can quibble with what number he gives people. I doubt Mary Mapes (#14) is as scary as Ward Churchill (#72). Mapes is out of a job, Churchill has the aura of scholarly respectability. And he tends towards the cultural filth: Ludacris, Paris Hilton, and Eminem. I like Eminem, he's joking, and, you don't have to listen to him - nor must you let him affect how you act in society. But what is lacking are politicians, federal politicians. These are scary guys because they have power over everyone. Nut-jobs like Barney Frank, Charles Schumer, and Hilary Clinton - people who can march us down the road to socialism and destruction (they aren't mutually exclusive) aren't listed. True there are idiots like Maxine Waters, Al Gore is mentioned as a dishonest fellow, Ted Kennedy shown to be a meanie, but, I could fill this book up with 100 crypto-socialists in the government. Still, it is an entertaining read. The first 54-pages are quite good, laying out his philosophy on what is ruining America. Goldberg comes off as what they now call a "classic liberal." Individual rights filtered through social mores, but social mores not restricting individual rights. Now liberalism is defined as the minority ruling over the majority, because the minority is always right, because it is oppressed by the majority and ipso facto righteous. A victim. But I talk too much.

Bernie Goldberg is a frustrated man and his new book speaks to, and for, the millions of Americans who feel the same as him about the current state of politics in this country. On the one hand, Goldberg sees a political party that has allowed itself to be dominated by some of the most hate-filled crazies imaginable. On the other, he sees a party that has lost the courage to stand up for its conservative principles and has, instead, adopted the same big government, big spending ideas that it used to complain about in others.

Goldberg's personal journey from the left side of the political spectrum to its right side has been a long one. He grew up in the Bronx during the 1950s surrounded by his blue collar family, friends and neighbors and only knew of Republicans because he read about them in the newspaper. Even as a junior high school student, he knew that he wanted to become a newsman and he became the first in his family to go to college when he enrolled at Rutgers to prepare himself for that job. After college, Goldberg was lucky enough to get his dream job at CBS where he became an important, and liked, part of the CBS news team.

But about 1980 Goldberg began to realize that he was more comfortable with the policies of Republican president Ronald Reagan than he was with those of his beloved Democrats. His slow, inevitable move to the right had begun. By 1996 he could no longer contain his frustration and he wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal about how television networks regularly slant their news broadcasts to the left. As a CBS insider he found that other insiders looked upon him as a traitor and that the op-ed piece was a bad career move. He left CBS News in July 2000 and wrote Bias, a bestselling book in which he discussed how liberals who dominate the most influential newsrooms in the country regularly slant the news in that direction.

Now Goldberg wonders where to turn next since the Republican Party has largely abandoned the principles that attracted him to that party in the first place. He sees a party that has decided that staying in power is more important than standing up for the core beliefs of its constituents, a party willing to outspend Democrats and to create an ever-bigger government if that will buy them the votes they need to win the next election. He doesn't see a dime's worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans anymore.

Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right is Goldberg's wake up call to a political party that has lost its way. He has had it. He's tired of hypocritical Republicans who are trying to outspend Democrats, Republicans too cowardly to fight race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Republicans who have abandoned conservatism. Like millions of conservatives, Goldberg wonders who represents him in Washington these days. He still believes that conservatives are correct on the important issues of the day but here he wonders out loud whether Republicans are. He uses his sense of humor to skewer both parties for their mistakes and flaws, but he sees as his best hope for the future a Republican Party that comes to its senses before it is too late. Time will tell if anyone is listening.

Rated at: 3.5½