Rating: 
Summary: About time!
Review: This book was a long time coming. Eric Alterman is a class act and to any open-minded, but critical reader it will be obvious that this book is well-researched, well-documented, and well-reasoned. I've been dumbfounded the last decade or so as this liberal bias stuff has gone from Rush Limbaugh and expanded throughout all of media. The whole idea is really ludicrous as others have suggested. The so-called liberal media is calling the liberal media out for being to liberal. This is just silly and illogical. But if you don't trust well reasoned arguements or scientific studies, just think about it: Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Paul Harvey, John Stossel, everybody on FOX, every talk show radio station on a.m. radio... These are not balanced. These are not even perspectives with conservative slants to them. They are firmly and completely extreme, right-wing, dogma slinging, conservatives. Where in the hell is the liberal version of any of these on radio or TV? Where? There is NO liberal that regularly appears in the mainstream media as a liberal spouting liberal dogma. Maybe Ted Kopel is liberal, but I sure as hell wouldn't know it from his show. He could be conservative for all I know. Yes, yes, we've got the liberal-slanted New York Times to counter the right-wing slanted Wall Street Journal. But there is no liberal version of the blatently conservative Washington Times or the New York Post. And don't even begin to tell me the Washington Post represents this. But it is only a matter of time before right-wingers dominate the news print as they do the television and the radio. Oh yah, and to the reviewer that claims that the media is 95% democrat. Why the hell did George Bush get so much money in campaign contributions form "broadcasters" then--way more than Al Gore was able to raise. I guess being firmly within George Bush's camp makes you a liberal if you are as right wing as Limbaugh. If you are a conservative and want to trash this book, I invite you to go to the library and get it, read it, and try to refute it. You will fail!
Rating:
Summary: READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU REVIEW IT!
Review: Great book for anyone willing to look at the issue honestly. While there is some truth to the claim of some that liberal is in the eye of the beholder and depends mostly on where you place yourself on the political spectrum, still, if you are far to the right and find someone to your left does not necessarily mean they are liberal. For example, a moderate is not necessarily conservative just because they are to my right. One of the many fine points of this book is that our political spectrum is skewed so far to the right that it isn't all that difficult to find yourself to the left side of it. Anyone who could say things like, "Who is the author, and these readers, who are trying to communicate to the rest of us that the news media, being 95% self-admitted staunch democrats, are not as a whole biased toward the left?" or "Amazon.com's editorial review states 'But it's likely to be a tonic for anyone who has suspected that in a media environment overflowing with conservatives...' Overflowing with conservatives? As if that claim is not hotly disputed." could not possibly have read this book or they would know that there is an explanation for each of these positions within its pages. The first is easily debunked as a flawed study that only speaks to who voted for Clinton the first time (there were a lot of conservatives who voted for Clinton... and the number was somewhere closer to 85%) and includes representatives of media outlets from places like Podunk, Iowa (hardly bastions of the media establishment). For the second, one only need turn to Talk Radio or Fox News or any of the pundit shows, not to mention the vast majority of editorial staffs in the nation's newspapers to see the far right slant of those who unabashedly show their conservative stripes. Doesn't matter that they ADMIT their bias. Fact is, they are part of the estbishment media.
Rating:
Summary: A bad myth bites the dust way too late
Review: For years, I have been yearning for a left wing perspective on the major networks or in the major newspapers, and until Paul Krugman recently and a few syndicated columnists like D. J. Dionne and Gene Lyons (from my home state of Arkansas) and Molly Ivins, everyone seems to be either a conservative, super conservative, vaguely moderate, or just flat out vague. Alterman in this really great gook sets out to debunk the "liberal bias in the media" myth. The most disturbing part of the book to me might be the chapter where he discusses the columns of David Broder, generally considered to be the Dean of American Journalists. Famous for his lack of bias, Alterman shows that on issue after issue, Broder takes a decided lean to the right. My only hope is that after all the ink that has been spilt lately about how absurd the "left wing media" myth is, it will begin to die away.
Rating:
Summary: The Road Less Traveled
Review: Toward the end of What Liberal Media? I realized that this was a very personal book for Eric Alterman. It was not just an attempt to skewer an already absurd notion. It was a defense of his life as a journalist. He wrote about David Brock of Blinded by the Right fame. He reminised about a time, almost twenty years ago, when both he and Brock first appeared on the Washington scene. Brock was ushered into a world of well paid conservative punditcy, while he labored in anonymity. If only he had been able to sell out to those interests, he would have also led the good life at the behest of conservative benefactors. And in the final chapter Alterman rues what has come of his profession. He lookes at squadered opportunites to be of service. News is replaced by fluff. Last week we got more
coverage of Michael Jackson's arrest than we did of Bush's state visit to Britain (why show all those protestors). The media makes us believe things that are not true--there is no epidemic of child abductions, no epidemic of school shootings. We have an epidemic of paying attention to these things. The media is blamed for all manner of problems in our society. The rest of the book tells us how it got that way. In the beginning, he dispenses with Bernie Goldberg in a few pages by showing that the major hypotheses of Bias, all empirically testable, (sorry Bernie) simply are not true. See the work of Stanford professor Geoffrey Nunberg for the particulars. If that does not help, well there is little hope for you. He then goes on to the serious business of addressing the so called liberal media (SCLM). First, he querries how major media conglomerates would let a bunch of leftist, anticorporatists dominate. It is simply not logical for corporations to allow this. In four chapters he lays out a list of the major players in all media and government, the punditocracy. There are TV, print, radio, internet and think tank punditocrats. In each he shows a predominance of the usual suspects, ie they ain't liberal. SCLM outlets hire conservative pundits to balance their panels and their editorial staffs; but it will be a cold day in the underworld before liberals have access to The National Review. Read the names and make your own decision. I think Alterman is very convincing. But where he is the most convincing is in his analysis of how Bill Clinton, Al Gore and George W. Bush were treated by the SCLM. Clinton was attacked for anything, even ridiculous things like being complicit in the death of Vince Foster. The Clintons made a $30,000 investment in the Madison Guarantee and Trust. They lost their money. A rational person would see this as a bad investment by a relatively naieve young couple in 1979. They were victims of a scam. The media would not leave it alone. A costly investigation later, the Clintons were completely absolved. Conversely, the media just is not interested in pursuing inquiries into obvious insider trading by George W Bush when he sold $850,000 in Harken stock in 1991 while he sat on the company's audit committee. Officers were instructed not to sell their stock if they had any knowledge of a decline in stock value. He was not prosecuted even though internal SEC memos state he committed insider fraud. But the head of the SEC was a Bush senior croney, and Dubya walked. The media ain't interested; congress ain't interested. Why? If the media were so liberal would it not it skewer this God-fearing conservative if it had the chance? They skewered a liberal perv any chnace they got. Also they are not interested in Bush's abuse of Eminent Domain to purchase 233 acres of land for the Ball Park at Arlington. Only 17 acres were needed for the park, the rest was developed by Bush and his cronies for their own gain. Where is the outrage? Also where were the tough questions about Bush in the 2000 election? They were certainly there for Al Gore. All the lies the media said that Gore supposedly told were proved by Alterman not to be lies. He got the ball roling on Love Canal; he was a model for Love Story; he accompanied James Lee Watt on 17 disaster relief missions while misspeaking about one. Yet Alterman quotes pundit after pundit who calls Gore a liar, and most are not what we would call far right conservatives. Also, Gore went to Viet Nam. Bush would not release his military record. An aside, Paul Begala said that there were over 41,000 references to the draft dodging story on Clinton. There were only 13 or so references to Bush's more serious malfeasance. Still no interest. And in the 2000 election Gore is called a poor loser. A story is spread that Nixon did not try to contest the 1960 election. That is not true; Nixon did try. The goal seemed to make Gore look like a poor loser. Participants include Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Leslie Stahl and other news celebirties. At Fox, Bush's cousin John Ellis, called the election for Dubya. Ellis quit his job at the Boston Globe because he admitted that he could not be objective. Did not bother Fox. And no one seemed interested that Katherine Harris, Dubya's state campaign director, and Jeb Bush, his Bro, did not recuse themselves from the post election process. Nor were the roles of Anton Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Sandra Day O'Connor, who all had conflicts of interest in hearing the case, questioned seriously by the media. Although Alterman does not mention it, the damming evidence that Greg Palast gathered in his wonderful study of the 2000 election was NEVER MENTIONED IN THE SCLM! Bottom line: if this is a liberal media then it is really a sorry a**** liberal media (SALM).
Rating:
Summary: Fight Over Media will take years
Review: My eyes nearly blew out of their sockets when I read the following line from the Amazon.com review of this book: "What Liberal Media? is a book very much of 2003 and will likely lose some relevance as political powers and media arrangements evolve." The media arrangements are continuing to evolve in one direction: consolidation and increased corporatization. You need only look at the impending effects of the June 2nd rule changes to media ownership, which would allow one company to own the newspaper, 3 TV stations, up to 8 radio stations, and the cable company in *one* town. An estimated 10,000 media workers lost their jobs after the 1996 Telecommunications Act allowed consolidation of Radio and remotely programed, computerized juke-boxes (with no local news) took over the airwaves. Look for an increase in this sort of trash in the years to come. This book, like Noam Chomsky's _Manufacturing Consent_, is important reality check that is NOT likely to lose relevance any time soon. If you do want an alternative, check out mediareform.net
Rating:
Summary: Great read
Review: Blows through another sinister myth (ok, sure, lie) of the right-wing.
Rating:
Summary: Voice in the wilderness
Review: If you had a strange discordant feeling that something was wrong about what you hear on Cable (CNN, MSNBC, FOX etc) then you must read this book. Alterman lays it down and builds a beautiful thesis but then I wonder for what and for whom? The deception of the GOP and K-Street in America has not yet screwed enough people for them to wake up and start screaming at the press. Nope. They are all well settled in their routines, slogging it out day after day after day in their jobs. The one thing that puzzled me about this book was Alterman's take on the BBC. He claims that the BBC is biased. I was a little confused. In this he falls into the "balanced" trap perhaps? In my view, the press as the fourth estate in a democracy serves one purpose only, to inform the public and it cannot inform if it does not have enough skepticism and cynicism about our leaders. So, it follows that in order to do this job, the journalists have to be in a protected state, much like our justices in robes. Therefore a tax payer subsidized media, makes sense, no? The less they worry about Nielsen ratings and circulation the deeper they can probe, right? My thanks to Alterman but my advice to him is, catch a flight to New Zealand dude, this country is not about society, its about creating an atmosphere where anyone can have the benefit of anyone else's gluteus maximus in the name of free enterprise. There is a debate in this country for heaven's sake about clean air. Clean air! There is actually a party in town that states clearly for anyone's benefit that clean air is an impediment on free enterprise. In this country you expect a free press?
Rating:
Summary: I'd better read this book,
Review: Since I haven't read all of the customer reviews, I can't say if I'm the first to admit that I haven't read the book. I was looking over reviews to see if I might want to buy it, and reading the reviews, I think I'd better read it. It's as plain as the nose on your face that the vast majority of those giving the book one star haven't read it since all they do is deny its thesis. These are the "tough-minded conservatives," who like to think of themselves as independent thinkers but who actually just parrot what they keep hearing . . . in the media! Apparently it never occurs to these free spirits that if the media were really run by flaming liberals (like Disney, GE, and Time-Warner), they (the media) wouldn't keep accusing themselves of liberal bias. Anyway, the five stars are to provide a little balance for the right-wing bias of the book's "readers." I will read it and I hope it's as good as the negative reviews suggest.
Rating: 
Summary: The title alone is the biggest joke I've ever heard
Review: I'm not even going to try and put into words how big of a joke this book is. If you go into reading this as a liberal, you'll feel good about it. If you read this book with two drops of commen sense, you'll laugh out loud most of the way through it.
Rating: 
Summary: Covers Its Territory Well
Review: What Liberal Media? tackles one of the biggest myths of our time. It tells the truth about bias (and BIAS, Goldberg's rather weird book) and the news, and shows quite clearly that the media should properly be termed, as per the Eric Alterman, SCLM, the so-called liberal media. This book covers much of the same territory as recent liberal authors have trod over, although this particular one covered it a little earlier and focuses more exclusively on the media and its overgrowth of conservative punditocracy and the mainstream media they have cowed into submission. Eric Alterman presents his arguments forcefully and smoothly. This is a strong book needed to battle a very absurd myth.
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