Posted on 03/24/2002 11:43:14 PM PST by sleavelessinseattle
Too Long to include but really telling coverage of Bernie Goldberg's state of mind swimming through the liberal press's vicious backlash to "Bias". http://www.nypress.com/15/12/news&columns/feature.cfm
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next delete the blank spaces immediately after each of the two < things. I put the spaces in, only to keep them from acting, rather than displaying only.
Next, in go to the article you wish to link and copy the 'address' from the top of your html (Microsoft or Netscape), and bring it and paste it into the first blank line in the small html program above. And then into the second blank line, either type or paste the title or what you wish displayed.
This will make a link, and if you keep the format, as I do, on a file on my desk top, it is about as easy as it gets to link a file.
< a href="
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next delete the blank spaces immediately after each of the two < things. I put the spaces in, only to keep them from acting, rather than displaying only.
Next, in go to the article you wish to link and copy the 'address' from the top of your html (Microsoft or Netscape), and bring it and paste it into the first blank line in the small html program above. And then into the second blank line, either type or paste the title or what you wish displayed.
This will make a link, and if you keep the format, as I do, on a file on my desk top, it is about as easy as it gets to link a file.
Heavens in Our Mind Russ Smith MUGGER Q&A: Bias Bernard Goldberg Celia Farber Feature The Bushies Deadly Arrogance Michelangelo Signorile The Gist Taking It on the Lump Jim Knipfel Slackjaw Aidan Higgins Flotsam & Jetsam John Strausbaugh Publishing I Got WTC Cough Tim Hall First Person 21 Things Ill Never Admit Meredith Broussard First Person |
Feature Celia Farber Bias Attacks Bernard Goldberg Bites Back at His Critics Bias Attacks Something has always eluded me about the deep emotional connection Americans supposedly have with the Big Three tv networks and their three mighty evening news anchors. When I think of Dan Rather, for instance, all I see is that empty chairthat astonishing moment of broadcast anarchy when he got peeved enough to walk off the set. That was great television. That eruption of emotion was fascinating to me, since network culture is nothing but a gigantic organ of psychic repression (kind of like the British royal family). There are are two common criticisms of network tvone lateral, one vertical. Theres the battle between the dumbers-down and dumbers-up, and the far more complex one about whether network tv slants news to what is somewhat erroneously called the "left. I think its very simple: The nearly two-decade-long phenomenon known as Political Correctness created a rigid template for the mass homogenization and banalization of all discourse and thought in America. Every storypoltical, economic, medical, socialwas pressed through this warping ideology that eliminated complexity and shattered the very principle of fact-based reportage. Every story took on the same familiar gloss of a fixed set of emotionsan ideologythat wasnt so much "left as it was centrist, or Correct. The runaway success lately of CBS veteran Bernard Goldbergs book Bias has galvanized a roiling disaffection with mainstream media, and in so doing hastened an already momentous movement to cleave media into two essential blocks: Insider and Outsider. Another, less commented-on book documenting the same critique (from a conservatives viewpoint) is William McGowans Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism. Both argue the tremendous cost of politicizing news, and the triumph of p.c. groupthink. Goldbergs indictment of tv news, a culture he spent 28 years working in, is not limited to his core thesis that network news has a systemic "liberal" slant. The real dynamite is the way he documents and describes the mindset of network newspeople, painting a disturbing and often hilarious portrait of network culture that is every bit as smug, elitist, pseudo-left and ultimately racist as media bashers on the right have always claimed. Because the critique had always been dominated by the right, it never had any real potency outside the growing conservative wing of new media. Goldberg, by virtue of his staunch Democrat credentials, has provided a new space for media disaffection to rush in. In so doing, he has removed the most effective barrier that protected mainstream media from criticismthat only right-wing zealots had a problem with "them." Published by Regnery books in December, as of March 24, Bias has spent 14 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, and occupied the number-one spot for seven weeks. Goldberg has been on more than 400 radio shows and dozens of (perhaps too many) cable tv shows. Hes been interviewed from Brazil to Sweden to China. He has not been invited to do a single interview on any of the three networks. I interviewed him by telephone last week from his home in Miami. Celia Farber: What was your reaction to Frank Richs attack on you in the Saturday, March 2, New York Times? Bernard Goldberg: Get your hands on a piece that just came out. The guy writes for New York Press. CF: Russ Smith ["MUGGER," March 6]. Thats the paper Im doing this interview for. BG: Really! Give me his number. I have to call him and thank him personally... I am so grateful that somebody came to my defense, because Im tired of coming to my own defense. It just gets a little old. But about Frank Rich Im ambivalent. On the one hand I thought what Frank Rich did was despicable. On the other hand, I almost want to write him a thank-you note and say, "You know, Frank, there are a couple of you out there who are so vicious, who are so nasty, who are so meanspirited, that I cant thank you enough, because you are making people wonder what is in this book, and theyre flocking to it." I think Frank Rich is very intelligent and very corrupt. I think hes the kind of guy who is very ideological and works for an institution thats very ideological. The New York Times is an excellent newspaper. I want to make that clear. Excellent newspaper with bureaus all over the world. But its a very ideological newspaper. And Frank Rich is the kind of guy who has always been a slave to his master, willingly. And he knows that this is the kind of thing that may get him points at the Times, and if thats not why he did it, it was someplace lurking in the back of his mind. Thats why I say hes smart, and hes corrupt, and he doesnt have an ounce of courage. And he omitted something important, by the waynamely, that he is criticized by name in my book. He also neglected to mention that he is very very good friends with [CBS News president] Andrew Heyward. CF: What was the scene like in your living room the day Richs column came out? BG: I received a ton of e-mails and phone calls from media people who said, "This is so foul. This is so wrong. This is so terrible." I didnt ask them but not one of them volunteered to say so publicly, like in a letter or something. CF: Isnt it weird the way theyre all so afraid of each other? BG: Everybody is afraid. Its beyond weird. Its pathetic. But I did get a lot of calls from media people, saying that they thought this was so far over the line, so unfair, and they all said dont worry about it, it makes him look much worse than it makes you look. CF: Are there others in the media besides Frank Rich you would describe as corrupt? BG: There are others who I think are very smart, but they just cant let their emotions get in the way of their intelligence. So thats different from corrupt... There are some people who are undeniably intelligent, but when it comes to media bias youd never know it because their emotions are always getting in the way. Michael Kinsleya self-described liberal. I would put Jonathan Chiat of The New Republic in that. I assume that Tom Shales is intelligent, but he is so nasty that How intelligent can you be when youre that nasty, you know what I mean? CF: Don Imus attacked you as well? BG: Oh yeah. Ive done 400 radio programs and he was by far the worst. By far. And yet he told me on the air that he agrees with my premise. CF: Why the animosity then? BG: Because hes friends with Dan Rather and hes friends with Bob Schiefer and he has these other people on. You see, Don Imus is really the anti-Imus. Don Imus presents himself as the tough guy who takes no prisoners. But hes a pansy. Hes a semi-senile pansy. And what I mean by pansy is because hes got these friends who come on, almost every one of them who kisses ass shamelessly on the air, hes going to take off after me to show them what a good guy he is. CF: What was your gut reaction to the Koppel-Letterman shakeup? BG: Do you have the Barbara Walters quote? She said that journalists deserve more respect. Is that something like what she said? CF: Yeah. BG: She ought to think about that the next time she decides to interview Anne Heche and ask her whether shes crazy, and about her sex life with Ellen DeGeneres. Part of the reason journalists dont have respect is because of what Barbara Walters does for a living. CF: But did you come down on the side that said its despicable that they would mess with Nightline, or on the side that said BG: I have a different point of view, a new and original one. I think Nightline is an excellent program. I think Ted Koppel is one of the five top journalists in the business. I think it would be a great loss if Nightline went away. Having said that, Ted Koppel sat by as journalism became more tawdry, more sensational, more irrelevant. The newsmagazines started basically doing murders-of-the-week, many of them. And then he sits there and says, "But were relevant. Well, he may be one thats relevant. But hed be a lot better off if all those other shows were relevant also, because then nobodyd ever think about fooling with Nightline. The networks Its not a mens club or a womens club. Its a little boys club and a little girls club. Because these people arent menthe males. Theyre little boys. They dont criticize anybody. And they dont like when I criticize them. So here comes Barbara Walters, who once interviewed Anwar Sadat, and now shes interviewing Anne Heche in the most embarrassing interview in recent times. Ted Koppel? He doesnt say anything. He doesnt say anything when any of the other shows become more and more like entertainment. If all those other shows were more relevant, then news in general would be more important and have more respect. But when they squander their respect, voluntarily squander their respect, then all of news is taken less seriously, including Nightline. Then Nightline is easy to pick off. They figure, hey, weve turned all these other shows into entertainment, now well pick off Koppel, who cares? Koppel could have prevented, or at least helped the situation, if he had been a vocal critic of the marginalization of news by newspeople. He wasnt. The reason he wasnt is because like all the other good boys and girls at the networks, he doesnt like criticizing anybody else by name. CF: What do you think it is about you that gave you the courage to do this? Was it courage? BG:You know what, Ive heard that word and Im flattered by it, but I dont know that that was it. I really think that it was either stupidity at worst or naivete at best. Because I believed the big lie. I mean I honestly at the time never thought, not for a second, that one editorial in The Wall Street Journal in 1996 was going to lead to everything its led to, the bad and the good. Because I really believed that I was only writing about journalism... I mean, even as I say it now it sounds incredibly stupid, but thats what I really thought at the time. CF: Your book touched off not so much a debate as a divide. It was a lightning rod for all these currents of feeling that had never really been exorcized before. Tell me about the after-life of the bookafter it got published and started selling. BG: Thats even more interesting, youre right. Several things happened, simultaneously, that were very similar to what happened after The Wall Street Journal article. One thing is that I started hearing from regular people, whether they were people I knew in lifeand almost of them liberal peopleor people who sent e-mails to me through the publisher. Or letters to the publisher. Those were uniformly favorable. Then the second thing was the media response. That was broken down into two groups also. People who in my view got it, and said nice things. And people who said not-nice things. But even the not-nice things are fair game. Im not complaining about that. Im not even saying they were wrong, but their observations were different from the civilians, from the non-journalists. They were looking at very, very focused things, and they may have been right on any particular point. But the civilians didnt care about that. They saw the big picturethey got it. And then there was a little third thing, but that was a sliver. The sliver was truly vicious, nasty people in the media. CF: Who got truly hysterical. BG: I mean I could have written and called these guys racist. I could have probably written and called them child molesters, and the reaction wouldnt have been as ugly and as nasty as it was in some circles. CF: Dont you think its not so much the charge of liberal bias itself, which is actually a sort of benign charge, as the temerity of them being looked at, much less criticized, much less publicly criticized? Because I think they do have a really totalitarian mindset that they are above scrutiny. BG: Thats a great point. Heres what I think happened. Its not healthy for human beingsforget about what job youre in, this has nothing to do with television or journalismto have too much power, because in some way the old line is right about how power corrupts. When you have the tv studios and the cameras and the microphones and all that, and in the back of your mind you know that the most anybody can do is write a letter that you could either read or not read or take seriously or not take seriously, something happens to you. Im not a psychologist or psychiatrist, and Im not going to even attempt to figure out what it is that happens, but it has something to do with getting real arrogant. And then, out of the blue, here comes somebody, not from one of the usual groups, you know, not some academia crap...or the usual suspects from the right, which are easily dismissable by the media elite. Here comes somebody who is absolutely, literally, one of them for 28 years. And heres where your argument comes in. They say, "Wait a second. We refuse to respond to this." Which, incidentally, is the response from the very highest level. The presidents and the anchors of the three major news divisions. I mean thats not like they just havent. Theyve been asked and wont. Time magazine called me a while back and they were writing like three lines, and they said that they went to the three network anchors for response and they all said no comment. My point is that they are so unused to this kind of criticism, it makes them feel real uneasy. CF: Its interesting to watch how they react. BG: The other fascinating point is that Ive heard from people at all three networks who agree with what Ive said. Theyve been feeling threatened for a while now. Here comes Fox, and 20 other cable operations. Theyre not what they used to be. Dan Rather is not Walter Cronkite, and Tom Brokaws not Huntley or Brinkley. And maybe in some respect they see it crumbling. They realize that the evening news is not the institution it once was, and that bothers them. They dont have the control they used to. Now the idea of a network newscast at 6:30 at night is sort of quaint. If I hung up right now, I could find out whats going on in the world on CNN, on Fox, on MSNBC, on the Internet and probably a couple of more places if I thought about it. CF: It raises the question of why are they in business at all. BG: Well, dont underestimate the power of habit. 60 Minutes makes money for CBS. 48 Hours makes money. Dateline and 20/20 make money. So we understand why those are on. We even understand why the morning shows are on, because they make money. God knows how that works, but they make money. But the evening newscasts are sort of there because theyve always been there. Now, when Sept. 11 happened, you want a news division. But I dont think were going to see it in five years the way we see it now. Theres got to be some mergers. I mean, if CNN is in business to cover news all over the world, then you cant bet against one of the three networks actually merging with them and losing their evening newspeople and using CNN, which is probably going to be cheaper. Theres got to be some change. Economically I cant figure out how this continues to work. CF: Lets back up a bit. You say in your book that you traced the phenomenon of liberal bias to the beginning of the Reagan administration. BG: Thats where I noticed it. I want to make clear that this isnt a history book. CF: And what youre talking about is getting to the truth about a particular matter, a particular story. I think what characterizes the major media is a contempt for facts, actually. For truth as having an intrinsic value. BG: But its a contempt for fact when the facts dont meet this liberal vision. I mean, lets say we had a fact that the NRA was made up of a bunch of people who are mentally incompetent and escaped from lunatic asylums. That fact they would have no problem with. So its only certain kinds of facts they have contempt forand having contempt gives it a little too much credence. Its like they just dont want to get into it. And lets not underestimate the power of ratings. The reason they put on the wrong [experts speaking about] homeless people and the wrong AIDS people for a very long time had a lot to do with ratings. Even before we get to the bias part. And heres the bulletin: the people Im calling liberals arent real liberals. Real liberals are people I personally admire. I admire people who put it on the line for something they believe in. Lliberals in our history, in the 1960s for instance, put their lives on the line. I admire that. CF: Didnt you coin the term "liberals of convenience" in this book? BG: I never heard it before. I dont know if anybody else has said it. I didnt check. Before you give me credit for it, just punch it [online] and see if anybodys said it before me... These are people who, while they can spot a bigot a mile awayliberals do that so wellwhen it comes to their careers and their perks and their lifestyles, which stem from their ratings, theyll throw a black person over the side. Right over the side. Now, of course the top people will deny this, but everybody else who works there...they all know its true. CF: That raises the question also of accountability, and thats I think the thing that the American public is also so angry about, that theres no accountability in the media. Theres accountability in the government, in the police force. With the possible exception of the IRS, or the CIA, all of our other institutions are accountable. Isnt it true that the media is the only institution that is totally unchecked? BG: Well, the only accountability in the end is with your remote control device. Where you can say, "You know, Ive had it with this, and Im not going to watch it anymore." Journalists hate to admit theyre wrong. They just hate it. More than any other people hate it. Because, first of all, they made the mistake in front of millions of people. Second of all, how the hell are we going to fix this? Theres no mechanism for it in television. Lets say you made a mistake on a magazine show. If you have to go on the air the next week and say we were wrong... "Jeez, do we want to do that?" CF: The networks do have a few renegade characters whom I wonder about. Like John Stossel. How does one explain a phenomenon like John Stossel in the context of your critique? BG: Because hes successful. He tries something and it works. And Roone Arledge, before the guy that theyve got at ABC now, says hey, this works. Hes connecting with our viewers. Lets do more of this. That doesnt mean that John Stossel isnt given funny looks at ABC News parties. CF: Is there anybody in tv news besides Stossel who you really like? BG: I would say Tim Russert. Mike and Morley at 60 Minutes...and Stossel. Thats basically it. I mean, there are a lot of people I like, but if I told you some name whos got five years on the job it wouldnt mean anything. So, of the major players, I like those four guys. CF: Stossels success raises the possibility that the networks could change their spots altogether. If we got into a new paradigm whereby they realized the real market is this new set of ideas. BG: You would think that theyd be thinking about it, but they havent even made a move in that direction yet. But I dont want them to pander to the audience. I dont want them to do a poll and say, Oh, the audience wants this, well give it to them. But youd think that there might be a whole new thing thats hot. Because what they are is as cold as can be. Youd think that maybe theyd say, "Why dont we find people who resonate with the audience?" But they continue to amaze, dont they? Volume 15, Issue 12 |
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BG: Because hes friends with Dan Rather and hes friends with Bob Schiefer and he has these other people on.
BG is like so many others who have not figured out that Don Imus is a provocateur and just loves a good fight. People come on his show and make THEIR point(s), and I don't believe the I-Man could give a rat's a** what position they take. He has people around him like Bernard McGuirk to help him stir the pot, and straight people like Charles McCord to keep him in line. A Limbaugh or O'Reilly or Matthews he's not.
One other thing: I'm starting to lose a little respect for Bernard Goldberg, and those who interview him, for not bringing up the subject of Brian Gumbel and his relationship with him.
You're welcome. Glad I made your day . . . . I think.
Couldn't quite read the body language.
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