Rating: 
Summary: Media Mafia Exposed
Review: It is of course no surprise that the Network News has a liberal slant. You know it, I know it. We've all known about it for years. But what most Americans are not aware of is the full extent of the problem. In Bias, Bernard Goldberg shows us over and over just how the Media does it. From subtle manipulations to outright dissemination of misinformation the Network Media adds a left handed touch to nearly every story they cover. Mr. Goldberg, of course, has his own bias but he works hard to approach his subject from a neutral angle. He succeeds marvelously. It is only in the first chapter where a slight touch of bitterness over his misfortunes shows through. After that the book becomes a hard edged analysis of media misrepresentation. His opinions are backed by facts and statistics which you will never see on the evening news. His sources include everyone from the C.D.C. to the Census Bureau and his conclusions are based firmly in reality. All in all, I found this book to be very enlightening. And remember, this is a book which the Media Giants really don't want you to read. What better endorsement can a book have?
Rating:
Summary: The truth is finally told...
Review: It all makes sense - Goldberg tells some fascinating stories of the behind the scenes goings-on in network news. Thank God for the Fox News Channel...
Rating: 
Summary: Big disappointment
Review: This book should have been called "Bernard Golberg complains about his ex-boss and how he got fired". I was expecting a book about how media *in general* creates bias and an atmosphere of fear in the interest of selling more media products. I got a book about the underhanded ways of Dan Rather at CBS. And a lot of bitching by a guy who got fired for going to the press with complaints about his company. The surprising thing to me is, how could Mr. Goldberg think he would NOT get fired after publishing a story dissing his company in a major newspaper!...
Rating: 
Summary: Confirms Television -land
Review: I would start reading this book 1/3 of the way through. It is a pretty good book once one gets past most of the anti-Dan Rather
intro section.
The book makes some good points, gives some examples and that is that. This book is a fast read, and it is worth this fast read because it makes one realize the thought processes behind the large network News organization. Readers will find themselves watching the network News with this book in mind.
The author is quite repetitious, and makes the same points throughout the book. The main fact of the book is that the News organizations of the large television networks became money making operations. In order to hang onto this income, the News
stories do not always portray the facts, but are shaded to appeal to the target audience. The same audience that the avertising sponsors are appealing to.
This book wasn't a real eyeopener after all this is the television industry. It will probably not open up a whole new
world of facts to the reader. It just delved and verified some unsavory facts about how the network News is prepared and served up for it intended audience.
This book is worth the read because of its unique insight offered by a network News insider.
Rating: 
Summary: It will get you thinking!
Review: Read BIAS by Bernard Goldberg, the veteran CBS insider
who exposes how the media distort the news . . . he contends
that conservatives might well be right; i.e., that our nightly news is slanted to the left. It definitely got me thinking, and that's one test of an excellent book . . . what I liked most about it was that Goldberg gave many examples . . . unfortunately, the author lost his job as a result of his courageous stand . . . so I guess you have to be careful about whom you mess with at CBS, particularly if his name is Dan Rather (a man who regards criticism of liberal bias as treason). There were many memorable passages; among them:
Jennifer Greenstein, who wrote the piece, tells about a reporter at Gannett's GREENVILLE NEWS in South Carolina who spent hours hunting for a black person to include in a story about . . . Hanukkah food! Religious minorities don't count with Gannett. So the reporter had to find someone who was both Jewish and a racial minority. Too bad Sammy Davis Jr. is dead. They love affirmative action, as long as their own kids get into Ivy League schools. They love handing out jobs based on racial preferences, as long as they get to keep theirs. It's a great deal: it's always somebody else who has to make the sacrifice--sometimes Asian-American kids, sometimes other white students who don't get into places like Harvard and Yale and Princeton--while the white liberal elites get to claim credit for being so decent, the saviors of black people in America. While, thanks to the TV news, I know all sorts of things about the aforementioned Joey Buttafuco, I did not know that between
1979 and 1988 the suicide rate for girls aged ten to fourteen
rose 27 percent. And for boys it went up a frightening
71 percent. . . . Thanks to TV news, I knew that John Wayne
Bobbitt had surgery to attach his detached you-know-what,
but I didn't know that a sociologist named Arlie Russell Hochschild discovered that "a study of nearly five thousand eighth-graders and their parents found that children who were home alone for eleven or more hours a week were three times more likely than other children to abuse alcohol, tobacco or marijuana." To which [Mary] Eberstadt adds: "There is also the related question of what those hour of uninterrupted access to the violence and pornography of the Internet are doing to adolescents nationwide."
Rating:
Summary: Shocking
Review: This book is absolutely shocking. Although we all knew that the morning news shows were blatantly biased circuses of never ending race baiting, some of us still thought that the evening news was neutral and unbiased. But you will find out that this is not the case. You will find out that the media has become the completely dominated (90%) voice of the Democratic Party. In my mind, this deceit, this betrayal of blind trust, this horror story straight out of George Orwell's 1948 masterpiece, "Nineteen Eighty-four" would be something better handled by a man named Gorbachev and a policy named Glasnost. Or better yet, as the author recommends, a remote control button labeled OFF, judiciously applied around 6:00 or 6:30 every evening.
Rating:
Summary: Content - A- / Writing style - C+
Review: The undenying facts that Goldberg exposes are powerful. You really do get the feeling that you are sitting with Bernie at a coffee shop and he is giving you all of the "inside scoop" of things going on at the "office". If anyone ever needed proof of a liberal bias in the media, it is the treatment Mr. Goldberg received from his colleagues after he started exposing the truth. While the content is quite good, his writing style is not such that it keeps you riveted to the book (like Ann Coulter does). He is sometimes repetitive and focuses a lot of time and energy on Dan Rather. About half-way through, I was wanting to say, "Enough with Dan already!" The guy is a flaming liberal, a jerk, and an egomaniac - NEXT? Last criticism is the chapter that deals with "latch-key kids". The point about bias could have been made in short order without what I perceived to be an editorial on the condition of the American family. If nothing else, I give Mr. Goldberg great credit for courage. I hope he makes millions of dollars off this book just to spite his former colleagues (purveyors of love and liberalism) who hate his guts!
Rating:
Summary: Goldberg Aims His Rifle and Hits His Targets in the Heart
Review: This book is a must read for anyone who has ever watch the major network news and notice the bias that has been there for quite some time now. Goldberg does not pull any of his punches. Moreover, Goldberg's observations are often times first hand or through a source that is also first hand (i.e. inside the news industry). I think the real weight of this account lies in the fact that Goldberg is not George Will, or Rush Limbaugh, or Bill Bennett. Rather Goldberg was a CBS news reporter who was and still is not a right wing political activist. Essentially Goldberg notice the problem and was brave enough to write about it. The guys has a tremendous amount of scruples to present a written account to the public about his own industry. But apparently he is not alone in his assessment. Goldberg is dead on target with many of his observations, and his case is pretty airtight and difficult to refute. He covers several different news media events that have occurred over the last 20 years and demonstrates how these events were either distorted for possible political gain (by the leftist liberals) or for ratings, or just skewed due to a bias against an individual, whether political or not. Some of these news media events covered in this book include the AIDS scare of the 80's, the Homeless 'crisis' of the late 80's, the shift in news coverage from Democratic Presidents to Republican Presidents and vice versa, etc. Goldberg also gives a brief account of his history in the news media industry and how his thinking shifted as he began to notice certain things that were taking place behind the scenes as well as the actual news stories that many Americans were seeing. He also discusses the response which occurred by his own colleagues to his controversial articles in the Wall Street Journal about the bias in the news media industry and how this affected relations between himself and those colleagues. His argumentation is sound, his information and facts are dead on, and yet as I read the book I could tell he still had a passion and love for the industry but his ideas about a need for reform within the industry come through quite strong and are, in fact, much needed. The sad thing about the whole news industry though is (even after this book has been read by tons of people and is much needed), it [the news media] will probably continue to slant its coverage of the news to the left and still think that what is being covered is "in the middle of the road." This may always be the case since, as Goldberg put it, "its [the news media] elites are hopelessly out of touch with everyday Americans." This is a great first hand assessment of the major network news media and their practices, and a much needed exposing of their slanted practices. Thank you much Mr. Goldberg!!!
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining yet Enlightening
Review: The writing is a bit over-the-top at times, but the content is important, relevant, and eye-opening. The author pulls no punches, especially against ("the Dan") Dan Rather. What's portrayed on the news is one billionth (even less) of what's actually going on in the world, and the news media very selectively (seductively?) choose what that one billionth bit will be...and then they repeat it a billion times, from their biased angle. True objectivity is impossible whenever humans are involved. We need an AI correspondent in every major city to cover the news. Thanks, Mr. Goldberg, for this brave new book.
Rating:
Summary: The messenger's everything here.
Review: The book, good as it is, could have been written by a number of people, coming as it does from an insider it's all the more difficult for the liberal media elite to dismiss. It's one thing if Ann Coulter, the Wall Street Journal or...is on your case, it's another thing if it's from someone who knows the inside operation.
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