Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News

Rating:
Summary: Goldberg's Tilted Story
Review: In Bernard Goldberg's expose', Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, Goldberg is "connecting the dots...to terrorism;" he explains "how Bill Clinton cured homelessness;" and tells us "where thieves and pimps run free," all because he "thought our job was to tell the truth." In Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, Goldberg, exposes the endless intellectual depravity within his own industry. He uncovers fair points about how the news media is biased, revealing how the news media is politically left-winged. Goldberg uses his story that network news has converted from journalism to entertainment, thus reporting what they want us to believe, instead of reporting both sides of the story, and that journalism's elites are hopelessly out of touch with everyday Americans, to unleash a broader accusation of liberal bias towards the news media.
Goldberg may be on board with his conclusion and story, but the evidence he provides is not very persuasive. As a matter of fact, most of the evidence offered is anecdotal and he neglects to provide enough solid proof to reveal how the news media is politically left-winged. In effort to support his thesis, Goldberg, makes a fair point about the selection of news that reporters choose to cover are vastly liberal. But, the evidence he presents for this point is anecdotal. For example, Goldberg observes that the news media has been covering stories about 'dead beat dads,' however, stories about mistakenly "targeting men" of being 'dead beat dads' have been ignored in the news. Goldberg provides the cases, of John Johnson, Walter Vollmer, and Tony Jackson of being mistakenly accused of being a dead beat dad, as proof to his observation that the news media is liberally biased in their story selection. These anecdotal evidences are not very persuasive because the reasoning to Goldberg's point presumes that any exclusion of a story is a case of bias.
In addition, to support his thesis, Goldberg also makes another fair point that journalists tend to describe themselves as liberals. But, the evidence he presents for this point is not enough solid proof, to reveal how the news media is politically liberal. For example, Goldberg cites a national survey by the L.A. Times, he quotes research feature in Brill's Content magazine, and looks at voting records of journalists, and holds these statistical evidence as support that journalist tend to describe themselves as liberals. These statistical evidence can not be held as solid proof, to support Goldberg's thesis, since it only proves that liberal biases are assumed to exist, not that they do exist.
The anecdotal evidence offered by Goldberg hurts his book since he shuns social science methods like, content analysis, field research, and scientific sampling tactics. Using social science methods could have made Goldberg's argument that the news media is liberally bias, more persuasive by allowing him to look at the reporting practices themselves. For example, Goldberg could have took a random cross section of reported news stories and analyze them by seeing if there are trends showing stories being politically orientated towards a certain direction. Goldberg could also survey reporters, but choose a good cross section of reporters to survey, such as reporters from different eras and networks. But Goldberg's chose anecdotal evidence and examples, which are selection bias and selected on the dependant variable, allowing him to support his thesis, since he selects his proof to his argument.

I had to write this for a class


Rating:
Summary: High Entertainment Value
Review: The book was good in pointing out some stupidity and childish behaviour in the media. Sometimes it made me laugh. However, the book wasn't very convincing in arguing that all media is liberal. There are also news reports that slant the other way, but they were not mentioned. The media didn't stop Georoge Bush from being elected. The book is very amusing to read though. Good to see another point of view. While the book isn't the best book on media, bias, and propaganda, it is a good book to make you interested in the subject. The author also uses profanity, which is awesome. The book was great at convincing me that Dan Rather is a disgusting man. Thumbs up.

The theory of gravity is only a theory and should be considered with an open mind.