Editorial Review for “bias”Essay Preview: Editorial Review for “bias”Report this essayDont Let the Facts Stand in the Way of a Good Story!(Editorial Review for Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News)After twenty-eight years working for CBS, Bernard Goldberg decided that he no longer wanted to work for a news station he didnt admire. Thus, he resigned and began work on his book Bias; a book in which he merely draws attention to the media for reporting from a leftist perspective, preventing the audience from receiving an objective, unbiased view of what really goes on in our world. As an “old-fashioned liberal,” as he calls himself, he does not attempt to gain conservative support for accusing liberals of bias. Rather, he would prefer liberal support for acknowledging this problem in hopes of changing the face of news. He bases his book on his personal experience as a former news anchor for CBS. Despite popular belief, he meant no harm in his book (or in his editorials) to his previous employees. His only hope was to point out an alarmingly, already well-known fact; that reporters, even if unintentionally, at news stations like CBS, NBC, and ABC report the news from their liberal viewpoint, inhibiting their audiencess right to an accurate portrayal of our news.
It all started out with an opinion editorial Goldberg wrote for the Wall Street Journal. After a man named Eric Engberg (and a once close friend to Goldberg) discussed upcoming presidential candidate Steven Forbes flat tax proposal from a painfully, liberal view, attacking Forbes proposal by using “tendentious terms like Ðscheme and Ðelixir” (Blowing the Whistle on CBS News, 1996) instead of just giving the straight facts, Goldberg wrote an op-ed in which he discreetly and politely discussed the bias that is so apparent in news stories such as Engbergs. Goldberg mentioned in his book several times the crap he got from all of CBS and other news anchors for writing that article. Since then, his career at CBS went further and further down the drain until its eventual collapse. Goldberg makes several references of reporters like Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw, showing them in a not-so-flattering light as anti-conservative anchors who not only attack anyone who dares differ in opinion from them, but who are also so close-minded in their views and beliefs that any critic who has something to say about their methods (such as Bernard Goldberg himself) better prepare themselves for these mens wrath.
Goldberg does a great job of integrating all perspectives and sides when writing his book. As well, he has surely done his share of research. He cites numerous newspaper and magazine articles, as well as quote upon quote upon quote from CBS insiders and fellow reporters. He refers to the constant refusal to have a single left-winger be labeled as “liberal” anywhere in the news, while always labeling those on the right as “conservative.” He laughs at how the news has introduced Catherine MacKinnon (who once implied that all sexual intercourse was rape) as a “noted law professor” while Phyllis Schlafly is a “conservative spokeswoman” (CBS This Morning, 1981). By the same token, the Wall Street Journals editorial page is conservative, but the equivalent editorial page in the New York Times is simply “middle of the road,” as the Dan (CBSs nickname for Dan Rather) so elequently puts it.
The authors, and others of the media, have a tendency to make the media seem more biased or sensationalist than they are. They are all right to try to make their message more mainstream and therefore more “conservative” while actually not being particularly liberal/liberal.
Of course, it would be much easier to have the media and the American people see the article as they see the article from above. However, the media have often been quick to interpret the article as such when a headline shows it as it does. One author, James Patterson, found his “conservative” column “wrong” in a New York Times article entitled “The New Media Is The Worst Left Media I’ve Ever Heard.” The headline read “The ‘New Media’ Shouldn’t Be Called A Media.”
The headline of my article in The New York Times was the following by author of “Conservative Media is Wrong: the “new media” is an unjustifiable, unjustified media that is “biased about” every media that uses information that has actually been available, that has been widely reported. You see, the media isn’t the enemy or the enemy of the “radical left” or the “liberal left.” Their goal is to make the media behave better so that people will think twice about supporting a candidate when he appears on your front page. And since that is not what they are about, their goal’s is to make the media behave more liberal while still also having liberals on its side.
So, is the mainstream media right or left?
One of the reasons the media seems to have been such a right-wing media is that conservatives are able to maintain their power of “liberal” media to an astonishing degree. They may be able to portray their media (including all those on the right) as being “conservative,” but how could they do this? They may be able to portray the press and the mainstream media as “liberal.” Instead, they simply have to be able to turn liberal into conservative and the truth into truth. This isn’t easy as the mainstream media frequently publishes negative articles concerning their leaders. In fact, an article on the cover of The New York Times magazine is often a lie and a disgrace. In the case of the New York Times, they published a false article about then-President George HW Bush. They used an article by Steve Forbes to claim that Clinton is a Democrat but actually was a Republican, because Forbes was a Democrat. However, Forbes, then President Bill Clinton, declared that he did not consider himself a Democrat, and Clinton was therefore a Democrat. Since they published this article, they have no clue what they are talking about. Therefore, they usually get an anti-Clinton article in order to confuse the viewer with the mainstream media.
In the end, mainstream media is now the enemy and so it seems that there are no progressives in it. These are those who would just like to see the government take down the corporate Democrats who want to privatize the public schools. So there are progressives in the top political positions within the media because progressives must be given a position on all those issues.
If the American people had had access to the facts and data about how the world works and how to stop this madness, there would be countless others more people capable of defending this insanity. But they can’t because the world is controlled by the media and by the media is controlled by private citizens.
This is because America is not
But the fascinating reason why this book is so compelling is not just what is being said, but by whose mouth it is spewing from. A former CBS news correspondent for nearly three decades, Goldberg is surely not conservative. His motive is not to gain conservatives approval. In fact, his own political views, being that hes pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and he has never voted for Ronald Reagan (a fact he mentions quite frequently), make it rather difficult to label him a “right-winger.” All he wanted was his voice to be heard. He repeatedly voiced his concerns about the one-sided nature of coverage to the network executives over at CBS, only to have them either dismissed or completely ignored. Finally, after numerous attempts in all his twenty-eight years, he was left with no choice but to “blow the whistle” on his own industry. The result is Bias.
To further make his point about liberal bias in the news, Goldberg shows us who decided to discuss and print commentary on his first editorial. After its release in the Wall Street Journal, it was a very widely-talked about piece, bringing about lots of controversy from all sides. And while he was getting interviewed by so many news stations and newspapers, CBS, NBC, ABC, and the New York Times (all which happened to be liberal-oriented) left out any mention of his piece. The New York Times printed absolutely nothing about his op-ed, when all other papers couldnt get enough of it, only lending credence to the belief that anything anti-liberal that might challenge these papers and shows credibility gets no coverage, whatsoever. Had they been credible and unbiased sources, as Goldberg points out, then surely theyd have no problem bringing Goldberg on their news shows to interview him and discuss his op-ed, or printing an article which bears at least a slight mention to the popular piece that no one could get enough of.
For the few people who did make some mention of Goldbergs piece, they ended up looking rather stupid. Johnny Apple, of CNN, says “Theres no suggestion that Goldberg went to CBS over a period of time and said, ÐOur stuff is all one-sided, weve got to do something about this” (Reliable Sources, 1996). In response, Goldberg adamantly wonders how the hell Johnny knew that he didnt go to CBS. Not only was Johnny unjustified in making such a claim for he lacked any evidence to back himself up, but in fact, Goldberg had gone to CBS several times throughout his years and had Johnny taken the time to make the slightest effort and call him, then hed have known. Not only that, but Howard Kurtz, of the Washington Post wrote that “Goldberg has told friends he feels bad about hurting Engberg, but that he has complained to CBS management about a liberal tilt for several years and been consistently ignored” (Washington Post, 1996). Had Johnny picked up the Washington Post (which he surely reads, for he lives in Washington), then hed retract his previous comment with an apology for his ignorance. And there goes another ignorant example of the medias bias and lack of competence in portraying all sides of the story.
Throughout his book, Goldberg uses the art of examples