Hand_Rifle_Guy
New member
Hokay, I just got finished with reading Bernard Goldberg's Bias, a book dealing with the dirty details of the major broadcast network's liberal/leftward tilt in their prime-time news shows, as experienced from the inside.
This book will make you ANGRY. I highly reccomend it.
Bernard Goldberg, who had worked at CBS News for twenty-five years, and whom Dan Rather considered a good friend, had the temerity to write an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal pointing out an issue that he had been unable to get any kind of response about from the network execs he worked with/for for YEARS: The liberal bias of broadcast network news.
That was a mistake. Dan Rather, who's Da Man Who Calls Da Shots for those boys, was a lot less than pleased. In fact, he was infuriated, as if an editorial opinion was a factual news story presenting a direct personal attack on his integrity.
Which, in a way, the op-ed piece was. It was written by one of the people working directly in the field. If the piece had originated from some sort of acknowledged conservative source, it could have been dismissed as another "right-wing rant". Coming from an insider with a quarter-century's worth of legitimate history and experience, the complaint could not be so casually brushed off. However, Rather's personal affront to the allegations was unjustified, as Goldberg's essay didn't drop names, it addressed the attitudes of the entire network machine in denying that the possibility of bias even existed, this from agencies that purport to present news as the "truth".
The book details not only the fallout from the op-ed piece on Goldberg's carreer, but lots of egregious examples of excactly how the bias manifests itself, and also the whys and wherefores behind the bias, explained from the point of view of someone who implemented some of that slant himself. Goldberg doesn't have a conservative political viewpoint, by his own admission. He does, however, have an idea that news reporting comes with a requirement to have something resembling balance (What? Blasphemy!
) when representing what is nominally the state of public opinion on a nationwide basis.
The chapters deal with a variety of subjects: "The News Mafia" (about the insider's lock-up of the industry, "the good-ol' newsboys club", as it were.), "Identity Politics" (about the identification and exploitation of percieved "victims" in America.), "Epidemic Of Fear" (regarding the misrepresentation of liberal concerns as "crises" in order to drum up political support.), "Targeting Men" (about the vilification of the white American male as the Sum Of All Oppression.), "Liberal Hate-Speech" (listing/contrasting how conservative rants are "vile, bigoted insults", versus liberal rants presented as reasonable viewpoints without questioning their tone or name-calling.), and a REALLY chilling chapter, "Connecting The Dots...To Terrorism" (which shows how media stated that conservative talk-radio contributes to a "climate of violence" within the U.S, but repeatedly refused to address the Arab culture of hatred that continuosly spawns an arsenal of suicidal fanatics.).
That's by no means all there is. The only thing missing, as regards to this forum, is a direct look at the issue of gun control. You'll just have to extrapolate how the bias illustrated in detail about other subjects is applied to that issue. Goldberg doesn't give it a chapter of it's own, but he DOES acknowledge it. He just doesn't address it as directly as he does other, more familiar issues.
In each chapter, the reasons behind the bias are explored (rather sarcastically, in some cases.) in detail. There is a lot of commonality in the causes, based largely on percieved guilt for excesses/successes of the American lifestyle. The liberal media machine seems to feel a need to atone for the past oppression of gays/females/blacks REGARDLESS of the current state of solutions or "restitution". The same thing applies to the 14th-century state of fundamentalist Arab culture, as if we need to "make up" for the lack of cultural advancement of a group of people who don't live here.
This is where elitism rears it's ugly head, as media-heads refuse to challenge their positions because they believe in the nobility of their "motivations of the moment". This is also where the most subtle bias is almost universally applied: Conservative views are always presented as far off-center, or even "right-wing extremist". Liberal viewpoints, no matter how extremely left-of-center they may be sometimes, are presented as reasonable, middle-of-the-road positions.
That's a big one, and a primary reason why the media refuses to acknowledge the degree of bias that exists: the pricipals involved cannot SEE the leftward bias, because they don't see their positions as off-center. When they look at themselves, they see only views that they regard as completely reasonable, middle-ground perspectives! That's when they get angry about questioning their viewpoints, because they see that as questioning their integrity about reporting what they see as the TRUTH, not their OPINION. They have very high opinions of their own integrity, it's part of the job description.
Goldberg cites a few unhappy statistics. Like how 89% of reporters voted for Clinton, versus the 43% of the rest of the country. (89%! That's a friggin' LANDSLIDE! People named Mao and Hussein get numbers like that.) Or how 74% of Repuclicans see the media as left-biased, but that 47% of DEMOCRATS ALSO see the media as left-biased. That's pretty ugly, right on the face of it.
The Media Machine refuses to see that as any sort of problem. Snotty elitists.
Network news ratings are in a steady decline. The Internet and cable, combined with a perception on the part of viewers that the news elite has lost touch with the actual opinions of the populace have caused a steady decrease in the percentage of Nielsen audiences tuning in. The Network Media Machine has only itself to blame, with a substantial amount of help from the television industry itself. Once network news had to toe the line on Making Money, it's integrity was compromised in a fundamental way. Unfortunately, the Media Elite has a high-and-mighty attitude leftover from the days when News was Something Special, brought to you for the purposes of INFORMING you rather than ENTERTAINING you. The entertainment aspect of the news business these days has destroyed any hope of worthwhile, informative reporting in favor of sensationalism and fear-mongering. "If it bleeds, it leads" is an unfortunate truism that points out how the positive stories of our society get marginalized, leading to a broader perception that the State Of The Union is an ugly thing, except folks now are starting to realise otherwise.
At the expense of the News Media's credibility. That's something that puts the moguls in an absolute froth, as it's costing them viewership, and therefore, money. You'd think that'd get there attention, and motivate 'em to DO something about it, instead of foaming at the mouth about Fox News, an agency that isn't conservative per se, but is labeled as such by virtue of being more truly balanced, as opposed to liberally biased. The Media Machine loves to gripe about Rush Limbaugh, too, but refuses to acknowledge their role in the success of an alternatively-slanted presentation through failure to show both sides of issues.
From the frontispiece:
"When it comes to arrogance, power, and lack of accountability, journalists are probably the only people on the planet who make lawyers look good."---Stephen Brill (Added---of Brill's Content, a television industry trade publication that tracks, monitors, surveys and comments on the content and state of the industry.)
Read Bernard Goldberg's book. It's short and to the point, a real eye-opener, and it'll start a burn of righteous anger deep down in your hindbrain. You'll never look at the major media the same way again.
That could only do this country, and our concerns and issues with rights and power, significant good. We ought to make it required reading in school. (As IF. MUCH too frightening for the great unwashed. The NEA would never stand for it. )
This book will make you ANGRY. I highly reccomend it.
Bernard Goldberg, who had worked at CBS News for twenty-five years, and whom Dan Rather considered a good friend, had the temerity to write an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal pointing out an issue that he had been unable to get any kind of response about from the network execs he worked with/for for YEARS: The liberal bias of broadcast network news.
That was a mistake. Dan Rather, who's Da Man Who Calls Da Shots for those boys, was a lot less than pleased. In fact, he was infuriated, as if an editorial opinion was a factual news story presenting a direct personal attack on his integrity.
Which, in a way, the op-ed piece was. It was written by one of the people working directly in the field. If the piece had originated from some sort of acknowledged conservative source, it could have been dismissed as another "right-wing rant". Coming from an insider with a quarter-century's worth of legitimate history and experience, the complaint could not be so casually brushed off. However, Rather's personal affront to the allegations was unjustified, as Goldberg's essay didn't drop names, it addressed the attitudes of the entire network machine in denying that the possibility of bias even existed, this from agencies that purport to present news as the "truth".
The book details not only the fallout from the op-ed piece on Goldberg's carreer, but lots of egregious examples of excactly how the bias manifests itself, and also the whys and wherefores behind the bias, explained from the point of view of someone who implemented some of that slant himself. Goldberg doesn't have a conservative political viewpoint, by his own admission. He does, however, have an idea that news reporting comes with a requirement to have something resembling balance (What? Blasphemy!
) when representing what is nominally the state of public opinion on a nationwide basis.The chapters deal with a variety of subjects: "The News Mafia" (about the insider's lock-up of the industry, "the good-ol' newsboys club", as it were.), "Identity Politics" (about the identification and exploitation of percieved "victims" in America.), "Epidemic Of Fear" (regarding the misrepresentation of liberal concerns as "crises" in order to drum up political support.), "Targeting Men" (about the vilification of the white American male as the Sum Of All Oppression.), "Liberal Hate-Speech" (listing/contrasting how conservative rants are "vile, bigoted insults", versus liberal rants presented as reasonable viewpoints without questioning their tone or name-calling.), and a REALLY chilling chapter, "Connecting The Dots...To Terrorism" (which shows how media stated that conservative talk-radio contributes to a "climate of violence" within the U.S, but repeatedly refused to address the Arab culture of hatred that continuosly spawns an arsenal of suicidal fanatics.).
That's by no means all there is. The only thing missing, as regards to this forum, is a direct look at the issue of gun control. You'll just have to extrapolate how the bias illustrated in detail about other subjects is applied to that issue. Goldberg doesn't give it a chapter of it's own, but he DOES acknowledge it. He just doesn't address it as directly as he does other, more familiar issues.
In each chapter, the reasons behind the bias are explored (rather sarcastically, in some cases.) in detail. There is a lot of commonality in the causes, based largely on percieved guilt for excesses/successes of the American lifestyle. The liberal media machine seems to feel a need to atone for the past oppression of gays/females/blacks REGARDLESS of the current state of solutions or "restitution". The same thing applies to the 14th-century state of fundamentalist Arab culture, as if we need to "make up" for the lack of cultural advancement of a group of people who don't live here.
This is where elitism rears it's ugly head, as media-heads refuse to challenge their positions because they believe in the nobility of their "motivations of the moment". This is also where the most subtle bias is almost universally applied: Conservative views are always presented as far off-center, or even "right-wing extremist". Liberal viewpoints, no matter how extremely left-of-center they may be sometimes, are presented as reasonable, middle-of-the-road positions.
That's a big one, and a primary reason why the media refuses to acknowledge the degree of bias that exists: the pricipals involved cannot SEE the leftward bias, because they don't see their positions as off-center. When they look at themselves, they see only views that they regard as completely reasonable, middle-ground perspectives! That's when they get angry about questioning their viewpoints, because they see that as questioning their integrity about reporting what they see as the TRUTH, not their OPINION. They have very high opinions of their own integrity, it's part of the job description.
Goldberg cites a few unhappy statistics. Like how 89% of reporters voted for Clinton, versus the 43% of the rest of the country. (89%! That's a friggin' LANDSLIDE! People named Mao and Hussein get numbers like that.) Or how 74% of Repuclicans see the media as left-biased, but that 47% of DEMOCRATS ALSO see the media as left-biased. That's pretty ugly, right on the face of it.
The Media Machine refuses to see that as any sort of problem. Snotty elitists.
Network news ratings are in a steady decline. The Internet and cable, combined with a perception on the part of viewers that the news elite has lost touch with the actual opinions of the populace have caused a steady decrease in the percentage of Nielsen audiences tuning in. The Network Media Machine has only itself to blame, with a substantial amount of help from the television industry itself. Once network news had to toe the line on Making Money, it's integrity was compromised in a fundamental way. Unfortunately, the Media Elite has a high-and-mighty attitude leftover from the days when News was Something Special, brought to you for the purposes of INFORMING you rather than ENTERTAINING you. The entertainment aspect of the news business these days has destroyed any hope of worthwhile, informative reporting in favor of sensationalism and fear-mongering. "If it bleeds, it leads" is an unfortunate truism that points out how the positive stories of our society get marginalized, leading to a broader perception that the State Of The Union is an ugly thing, except folks now are starting to realise otherwise.
At the expense of the News Media's credibility. That's something that puts the moguls in an absolute froth, as it's costing them viewership, and therefore, money. You'd think that'd get there attention, and motivate 'em to DO something about it, instead of foaming at the mouth about Fox News, an agency that isn't conservative per se, but is labeled as such by virtue of being more truly balanced, as opposed to liberally biased. The Media Machine loves to gripe about Rush Limbaugh, too, but refuses to acknowledge their role in the success of an alternatively-slanted presentation through failure to show both sides of issues.
From the frontispiece:
"When it comes to arrogance, power, and lack of accountability, journalists are probably the only people on the planet who make lawyers look good."---Stephen Brill (Added---of Brill's Content, a television industry trade publication that tracks, monitors, surveys and comments on the content and state of the industry.)
Read Bernard Goldberg's book. It's short and to the point, a real eye-opener, and it'll start a burn of righteous anger deep down in your hindbrain. You'll never look at the major media the same way again.
That could only do this country, and our concerns and issues with rights and power, significant good. We ought to make it required reading in school. (As IF. MUCH too frightening for the great unwashed. The NEA would never stand for it.
)