Goldberg's Bias

A couple of people have been asking me what I thought about Bernard Goldberg's recent book, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News.

For the sake of time, here's my take on the book from an email I wrote to a colleague:

Bias has been at/near the top of the NY Times bestseller list for some time. Conservative book clubs are practically giving the book away for free. Goldberg is also getting a lot of press: over the past few weeks it seems like if you turned on any cable news program, he was there.

Anyway, it's interesting that someone can yell and scream about 'liberal bias' and, at the same time, basically get the royal treatment for his book tour and the attention of the entire media. Is there no irony here?

I got the book from my library and read through it in about 2 days, just to see what the big fuss is about. I'm biased (pun), of course, but the book is really nothing to sneeze about. It's pretty short and it's definitely a polemic; it is very anecdotal, full of ad hominems, and not supported with much evidence (when some points are supported, it's usually with rather blatant, right wing sources). Goldberg does raise some substantial points, but most seem to be a comment, from my perspective, on the generally dismal performance of journalists - not necessarily their 'liberal bias'.

Interestingly, though, most of the solid points he makes - about corporate control, the dominance of advertising/revenue in determining content, etc. - have typically been the critiques you most often hear from 'leftist' media critics.

In the end, it's amusing (but not surprising) that this book gets alot of attention when you've had some much better written and supported stuff coming from critics on the left for some time (especially by Ben Bagdikian, Bob McChesney, Mark Hertsgaard, John Nichols, Chomsky/Herman, et al.). All of these authors, of course, have largely been ignored by the mainstream media.

Steve Rendall and Peter Hart of FAIR wrote a mini-review of the book and pretty much echoed my reaction.