The Ultimate Insider

Bias:  A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News
by Bernard Goldberg
New York, Regency, 2002, 232 pages

Bias was released in the United States amid considerable controversy and fan-fare.  After years of railing against what US conservatives saw as the media's liberal bias, one of America's liberal media élite finally confirmed most of their charges.

Reading Goldberg's book it is easy to see why it has made such an impact.  Goldberg is not a Rush Limbaugh.  All too often, even the best critiques of the media on the question of bias have been easily dismissed by the media simply by pointing to the background or ideology of the author.  Another common tactic has been simply to say that it is in the eye of the beholder.

Bias makes this task far more difficult because Bernard Goldberg is one of them.  Not only that, but as the winner of seven Emmy Awards and a journalist with almost 30 years' experience as a reporter and producer for CBS News, Goldbderg is the ultimate insider.

He is at pains to point out that his book is not an attack on liberal values, many of which Goldberg personally espouses;  rather, it is an attack on liberal bias which he sees as endemic within the news media.

Goldberg takes aim at what he sees as the corruption of straight news reporting on television by an arrogant, insular media élite which shares similar liberal values, with little time or inclination for introspection and certainly no time for criticism.  It is a portrait of a medium that proclaims its love of diversity (whether it is on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation), but not diversity of opinion.  There are times when Australian readers might imagine that they are reading about parts of our media.

As an insider, his revelations are not as easy for America's media élite to dismiss;  although the American media did make a reasonable attempt at it.

Goldberg is simple and fairly old-fashioned in his belief that journalism should be about balance and presenting all the facts, not just the ones that you think will help your argument, or those which you think the public is too unsophisticated to digest or about which it may become confused.

Bias became a book after Goldberg wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in 1996, methodically dissecting a piece on a so-called CBS News Reality Check on Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes' flat tax proposal.  Frustrated by years of having his misgivings ignored by colleagues, he went public.  It was a devastating critique, both for CBS and for Goldberg personally.

An intriguing and disturbing part of the book is Goldberg's account of how his colleagues reacted to his voicing his concerns over bias publicly.  His treatment by his colleagues, many of whom had known him for almost 30 years, is fascinating given his supposed transgression -- speaking out.  It would appear that the media love whistle-blowers, except when the whistle being blown is on their own profession.

Goldberg's treatment for blowing the whistle at CBS is all the more fascinating when one realizes that it was CBS which introduced the concept of the corporate "whistleblower".

Given that the media are often the most vocal defenders of free speech, the attempts by his networks and colleagues to muzzle him reeks of grotesque hypocrisy.

Bias maybe written for an American audience, but many of Goldberg's criticisms and observations are eerily prescient concerning the Australian media.  When he writes that "big-time TV journalism' has become ‘a showcase for smart-ass reporters with attitudes, reporters who don't even pretend to hide their disdain for certain people and certain ideas that they and their sophisticated friends don't particularly like" (page 15), Goldberg could quite easily be writing about sections of the media in Australia.

Bias is an enjoyable and engaging book, often extremely amusing.  His personal portraits of senior American journalists will amuse anyone familiar with their names.  But it is also a searing indictment of the profession of journalism at times, which leaves one profoundly depressed.

Still, the fact that we have Goldberg's book should be seen as a source of hope.  We can only hope that an insider of similar credentials at the ABC has a similar outbreak of conscience and pens an Australian equivalent.

If you're interested in the media, Bias is one book that it is worthy of your attention.