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CBS's Goldberg Exposes Leftist Media Bias
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
WASHINGTON "The little nut from the Christian group. Thats how a staff editor at CBS News' Washington bureau described presidential candidate Gary Bauer in April 1999.
It was an inside conference call, but it was going out to CBS News bureaus all over the country. It was a planning session for weekend news coverage.
True, it wasnt said on the air for public consumption. But the bureau chiefs participating in the discussion met it with dead silence. No one protested.
What that tells you is that this reflects an attitude prevalent in much of the major media. A shrug of the shoulders and "Doesnt everybody think so?
It is OK to slur fundamentalist Christians. But anyone making a similar disparaging comment about any of the "politically correct minority groups would have been dismissed.
That is Bernard Goldbergs point, laid out in 223 pages of his new book, "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Regnery).
This is not Rush Limbaugh complaining for the 100th time of "bias in the liberal media.
This comes from the pen of a man who was a correspondent for CBS News, having worked inside the company for 28 years. Nor is the author part of the so-called "vast right-wing conspiracy imagined by Hillary Clinton. Since Bernie Goldberg first broke his silence and went public with an op-ed piece on media bias in the Wall Street Journal in February 1996, he had never voted for a single Republican.
There is an elitist culture at the major networks, he alleges, and that goes for the so-called "prestige press, as well. The electronic media steal much of their material from the New York Times and the Washington Post, the ultimate icons of the "Eastern establishment press.
Another former CBS News employee said to this writer that "anyone working at CBS News who is not a leftist knows how it must have felt to be a black kid in a white school in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, back in 1938.
The almost universal slant at the major networks is not the result of a left-wing conspiracy, the former CBS newsman says. The people who work there come from similar backgrounds. Many of them attended some of the best Ivy League schools. And theres contempt for "white trash out there. As one who grew up in a lower-middle-class family in the South Bronx, Goldberg resents it.
There is an inherent hostility to Heartland America at the "big three networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. They dont pretend to have much affinity for folks living in Omaha or Kansas City.
That was reflected at a Washington media party several years ago where this reporter witnessed loud guffaws from the group at the mere mention of having once lived and worked in Salt Lake City.
They Even Fool Themselves
Goldberg, who spent his last years at CBS in the doghouse for his 1996 Wall Street Journal piece, says that if these correspondents were to take a lie detector test as to whether they slanted the news leftward, they would deny it and pass with flying colors.
Many of them dont consider that theyre leaning in any political direction. They really think they are simply mainstream. There is no other side of the argument except what you hear from a few right-wing nut cases. In their world, mainstream conservatism doesnt exist.
As one Washington news correspondent once said to me, "There is no left wing. Theres just normal goodness, as opposed to the extremists.
Apparently, not everyone with the establishment media is in complete denial.
Andrew Heyward, now top man at CBS News, told Goldberg after the 1996 op-ed piece that of course, the networks tilt left, but that if Goldberg ever quoted him as saying that, he would deny it.
Such moments of candor do occur. But they are rare. One other such moment came when Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., in 1985 was urging conservatives around the country to buy CBS stock so they could be "Dan Rathers boss, and give the other side a chance to get a fair hearing on a major network.
An indignant supervisor at CBS at the time commented privately that "our politics was none of Helms business.
"Our politics? We veer left, but if you quote me, Ill deny it? That seems to make hash of Dan Rathers statement, quoted by Goldberg, that most network reporters dont know whether theyre Republican or Democrat, and they "vote every which way.
Rather was especially upset with Goldberg for telling his story in the Wall Street Journal because that papers editorial page takes a consistently conservative stand.
But Rather had written op-ed material for the New York Times, which he insisted was "middle of the road. The Times, notes Goldberg, is consistently liberal. Nothing wrong with that, but Rathers remark again recalls the prevailing wisdom in Washington media circles that "there is no left wing.
Survey after survey has concluded that journalists are indeed very different from the people they cover. Goldberg cites Peter Brown, an editor of the Orlando Sentinel who asks, "How many members of the Los Angeles Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch belong to the American Legion or the Kiwanis or go to prayer breakfasts?
Ironically, the farther up the ladder you go to meet executives at the networks outside the news divisions, the more unlikely it is that you will find far-left-wing ideologues. Thats why Goldberg commented on the Sean Hannity radio talk show Monday that he couldnt understand "why the money guys allow the news guys to squander an asset.
That is a big problem, whether the news editors at "the big three realize it or not. Each year, they are losing more and more viewers from their nightly news programs. Many are getting their news from talk radio and cable TV, including Fox News Channel, which has picked up a considerable audience just because it tries to balance out the conservative and liberal points of view.
Goldberg is coming under vicious attack for his apostasy. But if "Bias starts a meaningful conversation on a problem that the news mavens refuse to explore, he will have performed a greater service to the public than in all his years as a CBS News insider.
Wes Vernon was a correspondent for a news department within the CBS Radio News Division for 25 years. It was NOT part of CBS News
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
WASHINGTON "The little nut from the Christian group. Thats how a staff editor at CBS News' Washington bureau described presidential candidate Gary Bauer in April 1999.
It was an inside conference call, but it was going out to CBS News bureaus all over the country. It was a planning session for weekend news coverage.
True, it wasnt said on the air for public consumption. But the bureau chiefs participating in the discussion met it with dead silence. No one protested.
What that tells you is that this reflects an attitude prevalent in much of the major media. A shrug of the shoulders and "Doesnt everybody think so?
It is OK to slur fundamentalist Christians. But anyone making a similar disparaging comment about any of the "politically correct minority groups would have been dismissed.
That is Bernard Goldbergs point, laid out in 223 pages of his new book, "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Regnery).
This is not Rush Limbaugh complaining for the 100th time of "bias in the liberal media.
This comes from the pen of a man who was a correspondent for CBS News, having worked inside the company for 28 years. Nor is the author part of the so-called "vast right-wing conspiracy imagined by Hillary Clinton. Since Bernie Goldberg first broke his silence and went public with an op-ed piece on media bias in the Wall Street Journal in February 1996, he had never voted for a single Republican.
There is an elitist culture at the major networks, he alleges, and that goes for the so-called "prestige press, as well. The electronic media steal much of their material from the New York Times and the Washington Post, the ultimate icons of the "Eastern establishment press.
Another former CBS News employee said to this writer that "anyone working at CBS News who is not a leftist knows how it must have felt to be a black kid in a white school in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, back in 1938.
The almost universal slant at the major networks is not the result of a left-wing conspiracy, the former CBS newsman says. The people who work there come from similar backgrounds. Many of them attended some of the best Ivy League schools. And theres contempt for "white trash out there. As one who grew up in a lower-middle-class family in the South Bronx, Goldberg resents it.
There is an inherent hostility to Heartland America at the "big three networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. They dont pretend to have much affinity for folks living in Omaha or Kansas City.
That was reflected at a Washington media party several years ago where this reporter witnessed loud guffaws from the group at the mere mention of having once lived and worked in Salt Lake City.
They Even Fool Themselves
Goldberg, who spent his last years at CBS in the doghouse for his 1996 Wall Street Journal piece, says that if these correspondents were to take a lie detector test as to whether they slanted the news leftward, they would deny it and pass with flying colors.
Many of them dont consider that theyre leaning in any political direction. They really think they are simply mainstream. There is no other side of the argument except what you hear from a few right-wing nut cases. In their world, mainstream conservatism doesnt exist.
As one Washington news correspondent once said to me, "There is no left wing. Theres just normal goodness, as opposed to the extremists.
Apparently, not everyone with the establishment media is in complete denial.
Andrew Heyward, now top man at CBS News, told Goldberg after the 1996 op-ed piece that of course, the networks tilt left, but that if Goldberg ever quoted him as saying that, he would deny it.
Such moments of candor do occur. But they are rare. One other such moment came when Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., in 1985 was urging conservatives around the country to buy CBS stock so they could be "Dan Rathers boss, and give the other side a chance to get a fair hearing on a major network.
An indignant supervisor at CBS at the time commented privately that "our politics was none of Helms business.
"Our politics? We veer left, but if you quote me, Ill deny it? That seems to make hash of Dan Rathers statement, quoted by Goldberg, that most network reporters dont know whether theyre Republican or Democrat, and they "vote every which way.
Rather was especially upset with Goldberg for telling his story in the Wall Street Journal because that papers editorial page takes a consistently conservative stand.
But Rather had written op-ed material for the New York Times, which he insisted was "middle of the road. The Times, notes Goldberg, is consistently liberal. Nothing wrong with that, but Rathers remark again recalls the prevailing wisdom in Washington media circles that "there is no left wing.
Survey after survey has concluded that journalists are indeed very different from the people they cover. Goldberg cites Peter Brown, an editor of the Orlando Sentinel who asks, "How many members of the Los Angeles Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch belong to the American Legion or the Kiwanis or go to prayer breakfasts?
Ironically, the farther up the ladder you go to meet executives at the networks outside the news divisions, the more unlikely it is that you will find far-left-wing ideologues. Thats why Goldberg commented on the Sean Hannity radio talk show Monday that he couldnt understand "why the money guys allow the news guys to squander an asset.
That is a big problem, whether the news editors at "the big three realize it or not. Each year, they are losing more and more viewers from their nightly news programs. Many are getting their news from talk radio and cable TV, including Fox News Channel, which has picked up a considerable audience just because it tries to balance out the conservative and liberal points of view.
Goldberg is coming under vicious attack for his apostasy. But if "Bias starts a meaningful conversation on a problem that the news mavens refuse to explore, he will have performed a greater service to the public than in all his years as a CBS News insider.
Wes Vernon was a correspondent for a news department within the CBS Radio News Division for 25 years. It was NOT part of CBS News
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