Bernard Goldberg: Liberal Media Bias Detector
Update: Christian discusses his article with Pajamas Media's Ed Driscoll on this weekend's edition of PJM Political.
Bernard Goldberg isn’t the most popular name in today’s newsrooms, and that was before he wrote A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of a Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media. Goldberg reinvented himself from long-time CBS newsman — with six Emmys to his credit — to liberal media bias detector with bestsellers Bias and Arrogance. Needless to say, mainstream media types didn’t take kindly to his criticisms. CBS mainstay Bob Schieffer echoed the thoughts of many of his colleagues regarding Goldberg’s complaints, rejecting his arguments and stating the former CBS employee now makes a living off of criticizing his old network.
See no bias. Hear no bias. Speak no bias.
Today’s MSMers may be a lost cause. But what about journalism school professors? What do they think of Goldberg’s books? Do they take his criticisms to heart? Or can they successfully poke holes in his arguments? These professors are molding the minds of tomorrow’s media gatekeepers. What could be better than for them to engage their students with Goldberg’s thesis? Even if they disagree with Goldberg, they could spark the kind of healthy debate all budding journalists should consider.
So I decided to ask some journalism professors myself. I spent the last month directly reaching out to more than 20 professors from across the country, as well as several university PR divisions, to get their take on Goldberg’s critiques. I even turned to my Facebook and Twitter accounts to seek out anyone who might comment for this article. I should have expected the result.
Silence.
In one case, multiple professors from a single university declined to comment. In another, a university contact said that not only was he unfamiliar with Goldberg’s books but that none of his fellow faculty members knew enough about the media critic to comment. Shouldn’t a journalism professor be a mite curious about Goldberg’s highly publicized critiques? To be fair, one professor — Craig Allen at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix — responded:
Basically, we take the Goldberg books with a grain of salt. Some good points are made but he provides nothing original. “Sour grapes” accounts of the news media by disgruntled former employees go all the way back to Fred Friendly. They say the same things about bias-this, bias-that, corporate greed, pandering to the public time and time and time again. I prefer more penetrating works, such as those written by my scholarly colleagues, that pursue not the “what” but the “why.”
Actually, Goldberg’s works don’t speak about corporate greed or pandering to the public. They describe an insular community, which delivers its groupthink to media consumers. But since Professor Allen was the sole person to respond, I’ll applaud his willingness to at least join the discussion.
If the MSM does die or diminish in importance dare we hope the same with academia? I have a BA & an MS in Liberal Arts studies. Upon entering the real world, I tossed aside much of what I learned simply because it had little application for dealing with reality. Many academics overestimate the usefulness of their “knowledge” and unfortunately so does society. In Washington DC the people that run things are always labeled “the best and the brightest”, attend the “best” schools and look at the mess they have created and continue to create. Surely, there must be a better higher education option.
Not to despair. As the Era of Obama unfolds and we find that, yes we can serve Alpo as a substitute for unaffordable sirloin, we might turn our attention to trimming the gobs of useless fat from our taxpayer funded universities. Always a silver lining.
Four years ago, a close friend who burned out in a Wall Street job took his PhD and several years teaching experience to find a university job. He taught part time at a large university in the midwest…when a job opened on their faculty he applied and was interviewed, but not chosen.
When he checked back with a friend on the committee, he was told frankly, that his qualifications were amazing…but others on the committee feared he might be a Republican…and they could not have one of those on campus.
The job went to a leftist, critical theorist. A female, with no real experience, but she had a newly minted PhD in…critical theory…whatever that is.
My friend finally found a job in the South.
There is nothing that causes a leftist to show his cowardice and sophistry faster…than to be faced with the arguments of a “Classic” liberal.
Where SOME conservatives go off the reservation…is in becoming reflexively antagonistic to centrists, moderates, “issue-ists”…and especially “classic liberals”.
Let’s face facts, the leftists have effectively stolen the information stream. They dominate the very places where the masses gather to obtain “facts” and guidance on the formation of their “informed opinions”. Regardless of any statistics one might see to the contrary the following outlets still form a powerful base of operations:
1) TV news rooms
2) Daily metropolitan newspapers
3) Wire services that feed “stringer” stories and photos
4) Daytime talk shows
5) Nightly “comedy” and political satire
6) Sitcoms and movies
7) Teachers and professors…the in loco parenti of our youth
If one were to tally the combined impact of the above Seven Streams of Sophistry, it would underscore just how devastating the effect on the American conscious and subconscious mind could become, if placed solely in the hands of extremists and those prone to propaganda.
Essentially, if one extremist group could cut off principled dissent almost entirely in just those Seven Streams, if one could strangle debate, if one could isolate/marginalize EVERY argument to the contrary….the one could effectively gang rape the entirety of the information flow in this country without fear of retribution.
Of course, anyone who would actively promote such a process of kidnapping and gang raping the information stream OUT LOUD…would be shunned and dismissed as a crank. So, the movement attracts almost exclusively sneaks, pimps and cowards.
These are people who cannot stand the light of day, hate debate in the sunshine and the thing they fear the most…is exposure. And nobody can shine the spotlight more brightly on them…than those who stood up when day and stopped drinking the Kool-Aid. Whistleblowers, insiders who know where the bodies are buried, men and women of honor who looked at the “message” and said to themselves that knowing where the line is crossed from liberalism to leftism is just as important as knowing any other line…which should never be crossed.
A classic liberal is NEVER afraid to consider other points of view…a leftist is a coward who must shut off all debate.
A classic liberal would NEVER stoop to forgery of documents, photoshopping pictures, staging fake deaths, promoting half-truths and distortions in order to make their “argument” more “persuasive” by presenting “truthiness” in the stead of facts and honesty…a leftist is a propagandist who doesn’t care about truth.
A classic liberal does not denigrate his own country to others in order to curry favor with them, a leftist is more interested in currying favor with other leftists and places his allegiance to leftism…not where he currently is domiciled. If he needs to be a traitor, it will be against his domiciled land…never against leftism. A leftist would sell out America in a heartbeat, a classic liberal would NEVER do such a thing.
If you want to watch a leftist duck and cover, hide and cower in a corner…have him confront an honest, articulate and “out in the front lines” classic liberal. A “reformed” or “converted” insider. It shames them into silence. It terrifies them.
Unfortunately, there are so very few brave souls willing to be shunned or to “blacklist” themselves. We ought to thank every one of them, every day. The battle cannot be won without them. In fact, the battle cannot even be joined without them.
7
It’s too late. ‘Way too late.
We now stand neck deep in the sixth decade of Doublethinking, knee deep into the fourth generation of Newspeakers, and we just annointed Big Brother.
That’s Orwell. We’re entering Huxley’s “Brave New World” now. Read again its ending.
It’s irreversible, escape, though difficult, is the only option.
Ha! This is the guy who said not too long ago that the dictionary was written by “some liberal.” Sorry, but when Bernard Goldberg starts spouting off about liberal bias, my bull$hit detector goes off.
Yes despair.
At Suffolk University, I chose my semester project on the emergence of Pajamas Media and the descent of NYT.
During my presentation, students started asking questions if I thought that if the NYT moved to the middle if they would increase business. Before I could answer, the professor stopped the questions, cut short my presentation and quickly dismissed the class.
In the hallways however, I do have conservative students come up to me and thank me for voicing the opposite view in an otherwise liberal only brainwash education.
When newspapers look like they will go under, Obama will just bail them out. Doesn’t matter if they lose half their readers.
Journalism perfessers are the same as ed school types. They are largely responsible for the imbecility of their charges, they have a vested interest in keeping it so, and would rather both rule AND ruin their states. Any surprise about what J-school teachers think about Goldberg can’t possibly be real. You might as well ask Rahm Emmanuel what he thinks of Rush Limbaugh.
Maybe The Professors don’t like Goldberg, but evidently Librarians do. Even our skinny Palm Beach County Library system has his books including some large print versions and CD’s.
Ah, it’s Herb.
The troll.
Can’t you ever come up with a reasoned argument or is ad hom all you know how to do? Must have learned that from your journalism professor.
Groupthink is a dangerous thing; it leads to stagnation & ultimately, it’s own demise. MSM might have well stabbed itself in the back then robbed its own money for the deed. Good going fellas.
As de Tocqueville noted, “Intellect proceeds directly from God and man cannot prevent its unequal distribution”. Obviously, the lesser intellectual gifts from God were bestowed on the Liberal Arts university crew.
According to wikipedia, Bernard Goldberg won 9 Emmys.
We should remember the classic folk wisdom about teachers (which seems all to true, too often). Those that can, work, those who can’t, teach,
It is so stunningly ironic. “Liberal” has come to be the exact opposite of the dictionary meaning of the term. Political “liberal” is the least liberal system. It has become least inclusive, least inquisitive, and most closed minded and totalitarian belief system. Classic mind-bending doublespeak.
I am somewhat amused by the discussions concerning bias in the media as if this is a relatively new phenomena. The media has always been biased and always will be biased. It is the nature of the business. People go into this business because they have a point of view that they want to express to others in the hope that they will persuade them to enlist in their cause. Through out our history newspapers were clearly aligned to one polticial thought or another and proudly expressed that thought.
The problem with today’s media is two fold. One, the continuous charade that they are objective and only seek to expose the “facts”. It is through this charade that we want to judge whether or not they are biased. Accept this for what it is. It is a charade they tries to parade around the media as somehow they are a legitimate “profession”. What they really are is a bunch of people with a point of view hoping you are willing to buy what they are selling. In that regard they are no more a vaunted profession than a used car salesman (with my apologies to the used car salesman).
The second and more insidious problem is the hijacking of this outlet by the leftist academics whose whole goal is to create a single point of view consistent with theirs. In years past, before we pretended that this was a profession and worthy of an academic degree, the bias was rampant and above board. But the bias was also multifacted. There were multiple points of views competing against each other (much like we now see on the internet) that allowed individuals to choose whice source of information best fit their individual needs. Up until the internet, the academic conspiracy wrapped in the cloak of objectivity and a meaningless “professional code of ethics” slowly reshaped the media to a single point of view – the academic leftist agenda.
The failing of the traditional media is actually a godsend to the republic. As each one heads into bankruptcy and closure we are being forced to find other outlets for news. The shifting of news and opinion content to the internet may yet prove to be the primary driver to a revitalization of our political lives.
” my bull$hit detector goes off. “….Back away from the mirror.
The MSM deserves exactly the demise that awaits them. Their bias in this past election was indefensible.
“Ha! This is the guy who said not too long ago that the dictionary was written by “some liberal.” Sorry, but when Bernard Goldberg starts spouting off about liberal bias, my bull$hit detector goes off.”
Goldberg is right. Look up the word “marriage” in one of today’s dictionaries, for instance, and compare it to one written thirty years ago – you’ll then see how it has had the rearing of children in a stable environment for the benefit of society edited out.
Anyone besides me notice how much Bernie Goldberg and Donald Trump look alike?? Seriously, the next time you see Bernie on tv picture him with The Donald`s toupee……
When you have the McLaughlin Group talk about newspapers going belly up, and not one refers to
“Bias” or “Arrogance” by Bernard Goldberg as an
explanation – the herd instinct is very strong.
#7 cfbleachers
very well said, I completely agree about the cowardice they exhibit.
The hijacking of these “seven streams of sophistry”, in my view is maybe the single biggest reason for the decline of our country. Does anyone else see it that way? I mean haven’t we already been defeated once the media and educational institutions threw in the towel and admited that they’re not interested in rational debate anymore and instead morph into a closed minded cheerleading society for leftist ideals? I see no way out of this because there is no longer a sufficiently large enough base of informed clear thinking human capital to make any difference. We’re now largely a nation of mendicants.
11. geokstr:
Sorry, but if you’re going to call me the troll, at least have the decency to capitalize it. As in the Troll.
PS, what makes you think I went to J school? Ooooooh, that’s right. I called out Bernie Goldberg, so….must be a journalist!
“18. Edward Lunny:
” my bull$hit detector goes off. “….Back away from the mirror.”
I don’t know about your bull$hit detector, but mine doesn’t operate by sight. It’s purely acoustic. So backing away from the mirror is going to have little effect……
“20. TurfMonster:
Goldberg is right. Look up the word “marriage” in one of today’s dictionaries, for instance, and compare it to one written thirty years ago…”
Um…your logic needs some work, turfmonster. Changing definitions does not prove liberal authorship. Especially when, as we saw last week with Iowa and Vermont, the definition has actually changed!
Bottom line is this….Bernie Goldberg rails against “liberal bias” but he’s just as guilty of “conservative bias.” Here’s a guy who wrote a book saying that Michael Moore was the number 1 person “screwing up America.”
Not a drug lord…not a corporate swindler…not a crooked politician, you know, the people with the power, influence, and capacity to “screw up America.”
No, Bernie puts a fat little documentary filmmaker in the number 1 spot…
The collapse of newspapers is definitely due in part to their disdain for half their audience. People weary of being told what to think and cancel. The LA Times is a flawless example: George Skelton endorses higher taxes in every piece he writes; he is organically incapable of endorsing a cut back in state pensions and benefits or anything else. There is no news: local news is only of interest if its one illegal out of millions that was mistreated. It ambushed Gov Schwarzzeneger three days before the 2000 recall election with a “major” story on alleged fondling of reporters over past years, but ran not one major piece lambasting LA’s photo-op mayor this year who they endorsed. Diversity means more people of different colors and more women who all think the same. Even at half the price of the NY Times, its sinking. The staff is as blind to other views and convinced of their own infallibility as the catholic church in the 1400′s. At some point, people just stop wasting money and cluttering their house with it.
Critical theory, ah yes, remember it well. Basically the fundamental postulate is that all “knowledge” is socially situated, except, of course, for the intellectual practicing critical theory. The situational relativism never applies to them because they’re, well, special, and uniquely socially situated. You see?
Twenty years ago, I used to by a Chinese newspaper called Tsing Tsao off the racks in San Francisco. It was a very low-budget publication whose advertising revenue was basically limited to some classifieds.
It had no editorial page and its news stories were unexpurgated wire reports from different parts of Asia. When I say unexpurgated, I mean grammatical errors, typos, jargon, everything. Every story was unedited.
Following events in a certain country, I compared
what Tsing Tsao reported and compared that to
all the MSM print and electronic media I could find. Keep in mind, that these worthies were writing/reporting their news from the identical sources that I was reading.
How many of the MSM stories were altered to fit
the leftist line? As Butch said to Sundance: “All of them”. Indirect quotes from one figure were reported as direct quotes from another, every death was spun to fit a communist perspective, and on and on and on.
And as Historical Perspective noted above, the alterations were presented to the public as objective reporting.
I sort of regret that these people are only going bankrupt. I wish they could be convicted and given a suspended sentence. By the neck. Until deceased.
The reason why you found a lack of replies, interest, or even knowledge of Bernard Goldberg when you asked at schools of journalism is because there is a divide between BROADCAST journalism and journalism at many major universities. Journalism departments generally means PRINT journalism, and they care little and know nothing about what is going on over on the broadcasting side. That is how things were at some of the schools I went to and taught in such as Northwestern and the Univ of Missouri-Columbia. They were in separate buildings, far, far away from their broadcasting brothers. Did you think to contact BROADCASTING departments????? If you had contacted the department I just retired from, boy would you have gotten some responses! We sliced and diced Goldberg’s claims, and even came up with some of his own jack-ass reports such as when he argued with Cuban citizens instead of interviewing them. Print journalists don’t care about Goldberg because they never considered him (and many other broadcast journalists) actual journalists.
Folks like Goldberg insist news outlets are disrespecting roughly half their audiences with their consistent bias. That’s hardly a way to run a business, especially one dealing with devastating market forces brought on by the Internet.
But the editors and reporters who entered the profession to ‘make a difference’, or ‘set the agenda’, or ‘frame the discussion’, had no intention to be involved in the sordid part of the organization that hired the workers and paid the paychecks and the bills. That’s what corporations do, and reporters and editors have higher aims and more lofty ideals than selling product for profit.
We were treated in the Seattle Times to an op-ed from The Nation, entitled ‘Finding Ways to Breathe New Life Into Journalism’, by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. They say:
After years of neglecting signs of trouble, elite opinion-makers now recognize that things have gone horribly awry. Journals ranging from Time, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The New Republic to The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times concur: Newspapers are disintegrating and are possibly on the verge of extinction.
Their candor is breathtaking. They consider journalists not reporters and editors, but ‘elite opinion-makers’. They don’t provide a whole spectrum of facts to fully inform the citizens – that would interfere with their mission as ‘elite opinion-makers’. Their life goals are to bulldoze public opinion in their preferred direction, period.
Bernard Goldberg has noticed that the emperor has no clothes, and Mr. Nichols and Mr. McChesney blatantly confirm it. Their whole article proposes financial and legislative skulduggery to INSULATE ‘elite opinion-makers’ from the economics of profit, so that they can survive to ensure that opinions are correctly bulldozed from now to infinity.
This bull#### detector you speak of herb: Does it suffer from some sort of autoimmune response?
There were no comments from the professors because they had not yet consulted Journolist.
Hey Herb et.al.,
Just go to your local library and review the microfilm files from the ’60′s. Pick a story and diagram the adverbs and adjectives used and you’ll quickly learn what I figured out in high school. Back then the NYT would slant the story in the headline and lead paragraphs, but included all the details body of the story. If you skimmed the headline and lead you got one impression, if you read the whole story you might draw a different conclusion. Today, I don’t read the times anymore.
Many years ago, after graduating from a state teacher’s college in Pennsylvania with a degree in secondary education, majors in English and History, I applied for a job as a reporter with a small newspaper chain in Ohio noted for training young journalists in competition with a number of other applicants. After being hired, I was told that while other applicants were equally qualified, I was picked because of the fact that I HAD NOT gone to J-School to study journalism.
Re “Stella’s” comment above, here in Pennsylvania, our Obama-like governor Ed Rendell has already proposed a $10 million state grant to bail out the leftish Philadelphia Inquirer.
RE: Bailout Papers:
If any newspaper is indeed bailed out by the government, I believe this will act as a catalyst to lose even more of their audience. In the meantime, the media will completely miss the irony…
You gotta wonder about yourself when the dictionary evolves quicker than you do. Wow.
Poor Bernie, only 35 comments. Won’t somebody please talk about Bernie? How about if he calls Meghan McCain a slut, would that help?
It’s interesting to talk about bias in the media because you tend to lose an audience portion if you are bias. I think the industry is more heading in the way of sites like http://www.newsy.com/ and http://www.newser.com/. The first, Newsy, gives a media snapshot of how different media outlets are coving a story, from US companies, like CNN and Fox News, to global outlets such as Russia Today. The latter site, Newser, is less refined in terms of coverage but still has the right idea.
Notice interesting fact.
See comments in agreeing with article, some in disagreeing. Agree: some discuss article, some using ad hominem argument. Disagree: all using ad hominem argument.
Don’t think ad hominem useful.
Addressed to the sneer at #35:
The dictionary is not a living thing. It is created by people. What those people choose to write may or may not reflect mainstream thinking.
And it’s not at all clear that the elites have any awareness of, or respect for, mainstream thinking, not since at least the 1960s when the radicals began their long march through the institutions.
On of My Own (#35), how does a dictionary evolve? You’re implying in your flawed metaphor, dictionaries are living things. Dictionaries–like any other book–are inanimate objects; they do not evolve. They are rewritten, edited, rewritten, & revised several times before they are published.
Really, On of My Own, stop insulting yourself with your flawed analogies. Ever heard of the “Silence is golden?” Live by this idiom. In other words, speak ONLY when you have something to say.
MJB – good pickup. Craig Allen’s journalism focus is broadcast. He teaches journo history, local news vs. national, and the interaction between media groups.
Perhaps both journalism groups think of the internet as belonging to the other camp. Academics in general need to feed off each other, recording the Current State of The Question and who’s up, who’s down. This works okay in the sciences, and is about a tossup in the social sciences. In the humanities, it means that no one reads to learn anything, but only to join the discussion. There is no body of work to comment on about the alternative media – yet. Until there is, they don’t know what to think – so they don’t. (That’s the translation of Allen’s comment about scholarly works.)
Regarding the ad hominems: progressives generally put more energy into making the insult clever than making it accurate. That is not merely a return sneer on my part – it is a window into how they come to their beliefs and how they are maintained.
First comes #39 . . . “The dictionary is not a living thing.”
Then comes 40. Sebastian Shaw: . . . “How does a dictionary evolve? You’re implying in your flawed metaphor, dictionaries are living things. Dictionaries–like any other book–are inanimate objects; they do not evolve. Really, On of My Own, stop insulting yourself with your flawed analogies.”
This is the true face of ignorance, and thus the face of the American Right. These two remedialists rub their hands together with glee . . . “We’ve GOT him. We’ve finally GOT him.”
One problem – the dictionary definition of “evolve” as follows:
e⋅volve [i-volv] Show IPA verb, e⋅volved, e⋅volv⋅ing.
–verb (used with object)
1. to develop gradually: to evolve a scheme.
2. to give off or emit, as odors or vapors.
–verb (used without object)
3. to come forth gradually into being; develop; undergo evolution: The whole idea evolved from a casual remark.
4. Biology. to develop by a process of evolution to a different adaptive state or condition: The human species evolved from an ancestor that was probably arboreal.
You see, guys, you just can’t THINK you know what you’re talking about, in this case the definition of “evolve.” You have to ACTUALLY KNOW what you’re talking about. Like me.
Tomorrow, lesson #2 – “The meaning of irony” as seen when someone who doesn’t know the difference between a metaphor and an analogy decides to criticize another person’s use of the word evolve when discussing the dictionary, but who doesn’t look up the word first. Advanced courses will examine the role of such ignorance as it relates to a similar conservative certainty known as intelligent design.
Hell yes, I am biased!
Bias is not what’s wrong. The illness is uniform bias, the unmistakable signature of tyranny. When you have freedom of speech in a republic, the bias should be omnidirectional, otherwise debate is impossible.
I have so much more to learn by talking with folks who are not biased in my own direction!
I listened to the exchange today between Bernie Goldberg and Sean Hannity and was disappointed in Sean but not surprised. He did take the comments personally that were not intended to be personal and he totally missed the point Bernie was making.
What Bernie was trying to say (and I think did say) was for Sean and other Conservative commentators to concentrate on the big items, like a trillion dollars for bailout, pork barrel projects, health care, etc. and cut some slack on things like, for example, criticizing the president for swatting a fly. No big deal and something to let PETA worry about. I like Sean and enjoy listening to him, but he is rock headed and feels like he must win every battle.
Regards
Gary Ballard
Bel Air MD