What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News

Rating:
Summary: A FAILED ANTIDOTE TO B. GOLDBERG'S BIAS BOOK
Review: This book claims that conservatives have created the idea of left wing bias. The author insists that the continual repetition of same has lead a gullible public to erroneously believe that it might actually exist. Of course this revelation has lead to a lot of hand-wringing on the left because they cannot afford to have an informed public. The left has not been the same since Bernard Goldberg, a journalist of the democrat persuasion, published "Bias". Goldberg's book was devastating because left wing journalists were so thoroughly exposed by one of their own. Goldberg's book has also lead to a slew of damage control publications like "What Liberal Media?". To the dismay of liberals, the news watching public is finally recognizing that left wing bias in news reporting is a fact. Consider the following back-handed slurs from two of our most "unbiased" journalists. Dan Rather made this snide comment about George Bush: "No matter what you think of him - he's our president..." Snicker, snicker. Anyone with a working brain cell knows exactly what Rather was up to. Cannuck lefty Peter Jennings offered this sour commentary on the last election: "Well, looks like the (infantile) voters had a temper tantrum..." Jennings was obviously incensed that many democrats were ousted from office. His leftist slant was revealed in his condescending, elitist remarks. Ironically, books like "What Liberal Bias" are immediately rendered impotent because the editorializing is captured on tape and is therefore impossible to manipulate, deny, or defend. I see absolutely nothing here to countermand the facts published in "Bias" or in Ann Coulter's bombastic but exhaustively documented "Slander". Perhaps that old corollary "and the truth shall set you free" is the best course after all.

Rating:
Summary: A Well-Documented Refutation of a Conservative Big Lie
Review: This book is a MUST READ. It is a complete and very well documented refutation of one of the Big Lies the Conservatives repeat endlessly, namely that of the "Liberal Media." Granted, there exist a few liberal magazines, such as Mother Jones, The Nation, The Proressive, and Z, and a handful of liberal websites, such as truthout.org and democrats.com. But against these, there are six TV networks and four radio networks, none of which dare to be left of center, and hundreds of newspapers, only a very small percentage of which ever stray left of center.

Alterman explains and documents the forces which prevent any significant degree of progressivism from appearing in the overwhelming majority of newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasts. He finds only two liberal radio talk show hosts, both on one small station in California late at night and thru the wee hours of the morning. I remember three liberal talk show hosts in New York City, Fred Gale, Alex Bennett, and the gretest talk show host of all, Malachy McCourt, all of whom were forced off the air by a steady barrage of conservative complaints and threats to boycott advertisers. (Read more in Malachy's book "Singing My Him Song.")

Many conservative reviewers fault Alterman for using anecdotal evidence; they (perhaps intentionally) miss the point. Yes, he provides a leaven of anecdotal evidence, which he uses to illustrate points he has made and to make for easier reading; nothing but facts and analysis thereof can be terminally boring, and Alterman does not bore, nor should he!

I have just one small carp: the footnotes are all in a separate section at the end of the book, instead of at the bottom of each page where they belong. This imposes on the reader the infernal nuisance of keeping two places and continually flipping back and forth.

This book should be required reading, not only for all prospective journalists but for all citizens who need to know what is going on in the world so that they can vote intelligently.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent references, outstanding resource
Review: What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News
by Eric Alterman could be seen as the liberal answer to Slander by Anne Coulter and Bias by Bernard Goldberg.
Eric Alterman makes a very strong case that it is not the supposedly predominantly liberal reporters who influence what news we see on TV, hear on the radio and read in the papers, but it is the far more conservative and influential owners and editors who make those decisions.
Furthermore, the entire myth of the Liberal media is one invented and promulgated by the right to suit their own ends, by their own admission. Read and find out for yourself!
Slander and Bias were received with much praise by the right wing establishment because these books stated what the right wanted said.
The problem is Bias and Slander are very poor quality books. I am a physician and as such I judge non-fiction writing by its ability to back up the facts that it presents. Slander and Bias are virtually un-referenced and therefore, as far as any one can tell, the attacks and innuendo thrown about by Goldberg and Coulter may as well be pure invention. In fact, fully 1/3 of Goldberg's book is dedicated to griping about his former relationship with Dan Rather. This gives one the distinct feeling That Goldberg saw an opportunity to cash in on a right wing trend in America through his position as a supposed Liberal media insider. I see little value in his book based on it's own obvious BIAS.
Coulter's position is obvious, with her having made recent statement's such as calling the Columbia shuttle disaster an expensive plane crash and bashing the 'Liberal media' for being distracted for one minute from the nations War mania to cover it. The woman clearly has issues. This combined with the fact that Slander is so thinly referenced as to be transparent make it a weak counterpart to the excellently researched and referenced What Liberal Media?

Rating:
Summary: Help me out here.
Review: Am I the only one who sees NOTHING of substance in this book? I'm a moderate voter and try to read both sides of every issue, but in presenting this case, Mr. Alterman leaves much to be desired. Other than his strong opinions and flashy rhetoric, there is not much depth here. His arguments are empty, and in the end, this book does nothing to counter the arguments of Bernie Goldberg and Ann Coulter. As much as I loathe some of their opinions, these two do a much better job in presenting their case to the world. Mr. Alterman does make a few good points, but overall he falls badly short on facts...lacking any telling quotes from the 'right wing conspiracy' he seems to believe in. In truth, there is no conspiracy, and with the notable exception of talk radio, most of the mainstream media leans firmly to the left. Before accepting Mr Alterman's arguments at face value, I highly recommend you pick up a few books on the other side of this issue to get the full picture. If you insist on picking this up, find a used copy on ebay or in a bargain bin next year...Better yet, save your cash and check it out at the library...not worth the price of admission. 2 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Give it a Chance
Review: Alterman believes that the the press tends to be moderate to liberal on social issues like gun control and abortion. However, they are moderate to conservative on things like tax cuts and trade. The chapter on the 2000 election really hurts the conservative argument that they are the victims. Alterman demonstrates that the press these days cares more about a good story than the issues. It covers the hostility of the press toward Al Gore, and how the press would report to the public that Al Gore lied when he really didn't. It shows how they ignored Bush's lies presumably because it would hurt their story line of Gore the liar and Bush the loveable dope. In his book Alterman discredits one of Bias author Goldbergs most flaunted arguments. Research on the subject has proven Goldberg wrong. So, I hope people who have read Bias go on to read What Liberal Media or they will believe something that is not true. It is not an easy read though. Alterman has a big vocabulary so you might want to keep a dictionary nearby.

Rating:
Summary: Fact Checking Stops On Page One
Review: It says:

"Dwight David Eisenhower received one of the biggest ovations of his life when, at the 1952 Republican convention, he derided the 'sensation-seeking columnists and commentators' who sought to undermine the Republican Party's efforts to improve the nation."

As K.E. Grubbs Jr. pointed out for The American Spectator, this event occurred at the 1964 GOP convention, when Barry Goldwater was the nominee. There was a world of difference between 1952 and 1964.

Not only that, but Alterman doesn't know that Eisenhower's complaint was justified. In May 1964 Walter Cronkike attempted to get Eisenhower to denounce Goldwater. Eisenhower refused. It's a reliable sign of bias when a TV news anchorman lobbies a retired president in order to change the outcome of a political campaign that he is covering.

Alterman would have benefited by doing his homework. One can only hope that he isn't representative of the news media as a whole. The publisher needs to get a fact-checker for the next edition.

Elsewhere in the book Alterman provides arguments refuting his own thesis.

This book is only good for connoisseurs of unintentional humor.

Rating:
Summary: Exactly Correct
Review: Judging from the reviews here and the vast difference between the people that enjoyed the book and the people that hated the book you can tell that the author hit a nerve. Although some reviews here argue that the book is just more of the same old Liberal Media; if you read the book you will find a very well-written and thought out documentation of the state of the current "media" and that they have moved past center and into the land of the conservative right. The book is very good with just a bit of nastiness thrown at the far right conservatives that have attacked he author in the past (and after this book has come out thouse attacked have increased). To be honest I was concerned the book would be a bit dull given that I had seen a few interviews the author gave and he did not come across on TV as a very engaging person. Well his writing style is the polar opposite of his "on air" personality. He is quick witted and sharp.

I just did not find anything objectionable about the book. What I did find is enough ammunition to argue any case of liberal bias in the media with anyone. How, after reading the book, you would not come to the same understanding as the author I do not know. You would have to be so set in your current mindset that no amount of proof and well-constructed argument would change your mind. Then again people still swear Elvis is alive. Overall the book was great and a must read if you are interested in the media or liberal politics. It is all the proof you need that the "Liberal Media" is a long incorrect statement that gives the far right another name calling opportunity.

Rating:
Summary: Facts Vs. "Slander"
Review: What happens when ignorant right-wing ideologues such as Ann Coulter, Bernard Goldberg, and Rush Limbaugh (and their corporate media collaborators) are confronted with facts? They simply choose, like their hero Reagan, to ignore facts. However, anyone really interested in the truth about the right-wing media must read this book. A simple channel-surf of news shows demonstrates an all but univocal reactionary-right perspective. Progressive editorials in newspapers such as the NY Times and LA Times are invariably "countered" by opposing viewpoints. For those of us who have wondered where the myth of media liberal bias comes from in the face of contradictory evidence, Eric Alterman's important and rigorously researched book provides some real answers. As I have yet to meet a conservative for whom the documented truth is more important than "gut feeling," slavish parrotry of right-wing TV hatemongers or blind prejudice, I don't see any point in recommending this book to someone whose mind is already hopelessly closed. Chances are that person doesn't read much anyway, and if he or she does, it's likely some vitriolic, fact-challenged tome that's been plugged on Fox "News." However, Alterman's book is ideal reading not only for progressives but also for that segment of the public (if it still exists) seeking information, not slander, documentation, not propaganda, and the knowledge, wisdom, and courage to keep our press free in an age where most news media have become mere mouthpieces for ultra-conservative political and corporate interests.

Rating:
Summary: Defining Liberalism Down
Review: The crucial elements missing from Alterman's book are definitive differentiations between "liberal" and "conservative." The closest he comes is a seeming claim that liberal ideology has best been encapsulated in the theories of John Rawls. But the bedrock of Alterman's thesis is revealed in his brief attempt to point out that since Liberalism's tenets are virtually impossible to definitively etch in stone (pg 19), it follows that a true "liberal media bias" cannot therefore exist.

Not that the arguments Alterman raises themselves don't provide an adequate glimpse of his own interpretation of Liberalism. He does, for instance, grant that journalists on whole see themselves as perveyors of social change (pg 21)--the "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" adage--something of an admission that news reporters can hardly be expected to act as objective automatons, and that those non-objective inclinations tend toward the politically "progressive." As it is, Alterman's own journalistic contributions most frequently appear in such periodicals as "The Nation," "Mother Jones" and "Rolling Stone" -- publications by any empirical standard hardly exemplary of conservative viewpoints.

His examples themselves are most revealing. To describe, for instance, the "New York Times'" Thomas Friedman as a journalist whose views "cannot be pigeonholed as 'liberal' or 'conservative'" (pg 120) based on one or two seemingly contrary ideological stances is either blatant intellectual dishonesty or a prime example of the criteria you believe disqualifies someone as liberal. If one can't conclude from an examination of the extant body of Friedman's works that he clearly belongs in a "liberal" category, then one's referential compass is skewed. Similarly, to describe self-avowed Socialist Christopher Hitchens as anything but liberal (pg 45) simply because he holds a pro-life stance and has been critical of certain Democratic politicians provides the same barometric information. The outrageous implication that it's Cokie Roberts' right-leaning opinions that are responsible for her never meeting "a liberal to whom she could not condescend" had me laughing out loud, and I was only eleven pages into the book. Even Michael Kinsley, in Alterman's view, is "not-so-liberal" (pg 30). I almost expected Alterman to link Phil Donohue to the John Birch Society.

What can only be concluded from such assertions is that in Alterman's opinion, anyone to the ideological right of Noam Chomsky holds the political views of a Nazi. Working from that paradigm, any "liberal media bias" will be negligible; if your working definition of "liberal" begins that far to the left, you're not likely to find any liberal bias--you've taken the Liberalism out of any discernable bias, and defined Conservatism so broadly that it's the only bias at play. Thus, in Alterman's mind hardly any liberals actually exist!

Prominently displayed throughout is typical liberal sophistry, a parsing of common-sensical realities to the point of obfuscation. For example, his assertion (in refuting the Media Studies Center poll that revealed 89% of Washington journalists voted for Bill Clinton in 1992) that "Democrat" does not necessarily equal "liberal" may be technically true, but does anyone really believe that those 89% of journalists with their "socially 'liberal' views" voted for Clinton because they considered him conservative? Instead, we get a weak rationalization explaining that it wasn't Clinton's politics that garnered those votes, but merely the result of him being of the Baby Boom generation.

Throughout the book, "facts" are supposedly substantiated by "what any intelligent person" believes. This tactic neatly adheres to the typical Liberal definition of "fact": "something that may not be proven through documentation or scientific examination, but if you possess enough brain power to understand the implication of it NEEDING to be true for the Greater Good, then it IS true." In short, such assertions prove very revealing about the liberal stance: if you're intelligent, you'll adopt liberal leanings.

Considering the book's subtitle is "The Truth About BIAS and the News," one would expect a treatment of that subject within the pronounced confines. However, in a predictably liberal fashion, Alterman can't help but resort to the inevitable topic of conservative domination of talk radio--despite the fact that it's a premise which attempts to establish an argument based on a false dichotomy: talk radio hosts Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, et al are EDITORIAL COMMENTATORS, not journalists; their profession isn't tantamount to that of Jennings, Rather and Brokaw. Despite their medium, the talk radio heavies are essentially the informational counterparts to the likes of Ivins, Kinsley, Dowd, and Quindlen. Any existing news bias cannot arise from the "Punditocracy," because there bias is the name of the game.

And when it comes down to the obligatory derision of Rush Limbaugh, Alterman relies mainly on unsubstantiated regurgitations. This is nothing if not downright hypocritical, as during his opening critique of "Bias," he ridicules Goldberg for not citing specific references to bolster his claims. Yet in decrying Limbaugh for comments attributed to the radio host (pg 103), NOT ONCE does Alterman provide the type of evidentiary references he asks of Goldberg. When Alterman was confronted about this by Bill O'Reilly, Alterman behaved the way he claims Goldberg did in likewise circumstances, countering only with, "It happened." No proof required. This is a prime example of the flaws hindering Alterman's book: Many of his claims are never actually referenced with evidentiary sources, but are ultimately merely recycled assertions made by like-minded others. This hardly qualifies as "the truth."

Ultimately, despite his attempts at "factual" refutation and examination, Alterman's book merely serves to reinforce the main thesis put forth in Goldberg's "Bias": That liberals don't see their convictions as "liberal" but as patently sensible and reasonable; to see things otherwise requires that you be ignorant, bigoted, greedy, and cruel--in short, the stereotypical conservative. The book's subtitle purports that the book will reveal "The Truth About BIAS and the News." The only truth "What Liberal Media?" helps define is that when it comes to media bias, the aphorism that "only a liberal could fail to see the existence of a liberal bias" makes the most sense.

Rating:
Summary: Wait for the second edition
Review: "What Liberal Media?" by Eric Alterman might be a satisfying book to "liberals" who already accept his thesis that the media is "conservative." These readers must be ready to accept anecdotes and name-calling rather than analysis. This is particularly unfortunate in that Alterman, a columnist for The Nation and a graduate student at Stanford University working on his Ph.D. in history, undoubtedly has much of the basic information and probably the skills to make a serious attempt at answering his title question.

After on page 8 leveling a serious criticism of Bernard Goldberg's book Bias with "he presents no testable evidence," Alterman frees himself from the same obligation by stating on page 12, "But to divide the media into their conservative, liberal, or centrist aspects misses a larger point and can do more to obscure than illuminate." Ignoring or unaware that this is not an analytically useful continuum (just think of the new Smoot-Hartley team of Gephardt and Buchanan), Alterman, however, does not hesitate to pigeonhole others in these various categories. He provides a rather debatable definition of what is a contemporary "liberal" but never even attempts a definition of other political categories used in his book: a "conservative," a "neo-liberal," a "right-winger," a "right-wing populist," "an anti-intellectual populist" an "anti-Washington populist" or a "neoconservative." There is one passing reference to a libertarian.

He states his undocumented belief that contemporary definitions of liberalism are derived "by common accord from the work of the political theorist John Rawls" with his key concept of the veil of ignorance. Undoubtedly, among an unspecified number of people, this accord may well exist, although a large number of people who considered themselves to be liberals might be surprised to learn they are not. To the criteria in the respected but controversial "A Theory of Justice" by Rawls, he adds Peter Singer's work on the morals of globalization regarding citizens' responsibilities to those living beyond our borders and remarks by Jeffery Scheuer maintaining that the liberal argument "demands complexity" and "simplicity is the inherent characteristic of conservative politics." Evidentially, Alterman (and perhaps Scheuer) has never listened in to traditional conservatives or libertarians argue over where to draw the lines for the proper role of Government in domestic and international affairs. Perhaps from his "liberal" perspective, these distinctions are not relevant.

There are a number of interesting personal assertions in What Liberal Media?. Alterman seems to oppose NAFTA by pronouncing that now free trade really means free investment. Economists might find "free investment" to be an oxymoron and might think that poor countries would generally benefit from more investment. From this book, it seems that there are only three liberal publications in the United States: "The Nation", "The New Yorker" and "The Los Angeles Times Book Review". After maintaining that Clinton was not a liberal, he repeatedly rebukes David Broder for not having been nicer to him when he was under conservative attack. He simply states that Robert Samuelson is a conservative economic columnist, but during his extended discussion about the actually conservative media feeding the stock market exuberance, he never credits the very numerous columns by Samuelson taking the opposite point of view. He blames the media for not writing about dishonest remarks by Bush during the 2000 election campaign but does not comment on whether or not Gore and his, in my opinion not very capable, campaign staff were aware of and tried to expose Bush's fudging.

To his credit, he points out to readers who may not have noticed that George Will, who never saw a disarmament proposal that he liked but vigorously condemned those who did, raved about David Brooks' screed against Anita Hill. Will never issued an apology or correction after Brooks disavowed the book. Also, Alterman makes the very defensible point that the United States does not have the breadth of leftist thought that exists in Europe but does nothing with this observation.

If we are lucky, Alterman will do a second edition that draws upon the massive amounts of information he has collected and puts it in a testable framework. The present edition is basically for like-minded believers who might over coffee or at a water cooler express their appreciation for characterizations such as Scaife was a mean drunk, free floating liberal hater Christoher Hitchens, apoplectic Kelly, swami David Brooks, leggy blond pundit Laura Ingraham, the pathologically dishonest Stephen Glass, etc.