Rating: 
Summary: The media is biased? WOW!!! That's real news!!!
Review: Despite more than 30 years in the media, this book indicates Bernard Goldberg has little idea about the function, purpose or real meaning of the media. Goldberg doesn't seem to understand that "news" is not an airplane landing safely, "news" is when an airplane crashes. In America, the government is supposed to operate honestly, efficiently and with equality for all; news is searching for and finding examples when government falls short of these ideals. The prime function of the news media is not to flatter those in power, it is "to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable." It means the media has a general "bias" against the status quo, the Establishment and conservatives because such institutions usually oppose social changes which would improve our society. Progress in America is a constant debate between the impulse to revolutionary change and a desire to preserve an unchanged past. This free and open debate is what makes America great. There are no final truths in America, merely a continuing debate on the nature of the balance in our society. If you want to be a cheerleader, go write stories about sports. Bias? Of course there's news bias. News is reported by fallible reporters, guided by even more fallible editors (I've been both); in Arizona, The Arizona Republic (named for the Republican party) has never made a secret of its desire to make this a one-party Republican state. The Tucson Citizen was even more blatant; it's right-wing enough that a Citizen editor once told me the Wall Street Journal is "a communist-front newspaper." Goldberg fails to understand that all media is biased. Objectivity to him is bias to me, and vice versa. Every reader, listener and viewer must always be skeptical; sadly, he questions only the liberal media without understanding conservatives are equally biased. His attack serves his purpose; no one rushes out to buy a book which claims Rush Limbaugh, the Washington Times, Fox News or the Journal are conservative. Goldberg is as guilty of bias as those he attacks. In other words, he's a pretentious twit (which is what critics of the Citizen used to be called). The blunt truth is the media offers what the public wants. Both the Citizen and the Republic in Arizona have amazing low circulation coverage, because people don't like their conservative bias. Would a "liberal" paper do better? It's been tried in Arizona, and every attempt has failed. The Republic, recently bought by Gannett, is trying a more "middle of the road" approach to boost circulation -- and conservatives are predictably denouncing the new "bias" of what liberals used to call a John Birch Society mouthpiece. Goldberg would have done far better to illustrate the bias on all sides of the news, a bias which exists because we are all human. He should have told readers ". . . . . here's why you should think for yourself, instead of being spoon-fed opinions by the media." But then, such an "objective" view wouldn't sell many books. Of course not. The media remains popular by staying on the attack, whether the targets of its attacks are liberal or conservative. A century ago you could sell papers by attacking the Devil; today, the equivalent is attacking God. Despite that, I don't see any sign of either God or the Devil becoming unpopular or extinct. Goldberg writes to make bundles of money, just like the comfortable complacent targets of his book. His attack is well-deserved, timely and accurate. If the media is to survive, prosper and be trusted (should I say doubted?), it should be subject to the same vitriolic attacks as the institutions it attacks. The promise of a free media in a free society is that criticism strengthens our business, religious and social life; likewise, the more blistering attacks on the media, the better it will do its job. The media deserves to be treated with precisely the same critical scrutiny as it gives everything else in society. Let's say, "comfort the afflicted media, afflict the comfortable media." The idea of media objectivity is as pretentious and false as conservative or liberal objectivity. However, for a bitter attack on some of the most comfortable media, this is a good book to buy and read.
Rating: 
Summary: Axe Grinding
Review: This book is a ridiculous example of someone being embraced by the conservative right merely for confirming their beliefs, whether they are true or not. In this book, Goldberg takes great pains to attack anyone who wronged him at CBS. His "research" into media bias is based on his own opinion, no research, or unsubtantiated research. For a real treatment of the interaction between politics and media check out 'What Liberal Media' by Eric Alterman. At least he attempts to research the subject and approach it in a fact based way.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Read, Won't Make the Case for All
Review: Bernard Goldberg's years as a journalist shine through in this work, half-memoir and half-expose. Goldberg's prose makes it an easy read, and his discussion of many of the bad habits of the media makes for very interesting reading. However, Goldberg's collection of anecdotes doesn't add up to a conclusive thesis. I'll concede my own bias up front: I do think that the mainstream media tilts to the left in the manner described by Goldberg. However, my own personal beliefs don't add up to a proven case, and while Goldberg's book provides some good food for thought, it's not going to convince anyone who isn't already leaning in that direction. Then again, given that a majority of Americans already believe that, it's hardly surprising the book has done so well. To his credit, Goldberg doesn't use his book to call for an attack on the media. Instead, he simply asks the mainstream media to at least admit the possibility of bias and take a long hard look at itself. However, if Goldberg's account is accurate, it's unlikely that will happen any time soon. In the interim, _Bias_ provides an interesting insight into the media from a man who spent close to thirty years as a reporter. For readers looking to gain some insight into the mainstream media, _Bias_ is a good reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Goldberg gets it right on the money!
Review: Twenty years ago I was a media insider. Oh, I didn't occupy nearly as lofty a territory as Bernard Goldberg or Dan Rather; I was an editor and news reader for an all-news radio station in a major metropolitan area (KDEN in Denver, to be precise.) I had hardly begun working there when friends and family began to ask what would become a recurring question: "Why is there such a liberal bias in the media?"
Like the more exalted media elites, I denied, at first, that there was any such bias. But eventually I came to realize that the newsroom was full of people who did not represent the American mainstream. Not one of us, for example, was a Republican or a conservative. None of us could stand Ronald Reagan, who, as I have since been told, was one of the most popular presidents in recent history. We all supported gun control and unlimited access to abortion. And, with one exception I will mention later, we were antagonistic to religion--ranging from the pretty reporter who was a flaming atheist, to the majority of us who were merely distainful of religion as being a crutch for the weak-minded. In a nation where the majority of the population supported Ronald Reagan, felt uneasy about unlimited abortion, and attended church, we were by any definition left-of-center -- BUT WE COULDN'T SEE IT!
I started to notice a slant in the way the news was written. We got perhaps 90% of our copy straight from the wire services in New York and Washington. Much was done with seemingly innocuous word choices: a liberal politician had a tax "plan"; a conservative had a tax "scheme". People who opposed abortion were never "pro-life", they were "anti-abortion forces" or, better yet, "those who oppose a woman's right to abortion." Yet, the other side were always "pro-choice", never "pro-abortion forces" and certainly not "those who oppose a baby's right to live." Only the "correct" side was allowed to use its self-chosen identifier.
At church--yes, I went to church. I was the only member of the newsroom who did--I started running into the same P-C nonsense. I was attending a church that was well to the left-of-center and so I didn't feel it was controversial to say I supported Gary Hart as a presidential candidate. To my surprise, I was told by several people that I had just made a racist, bigoted statement that was highly inappropriate at church, because by implication I was not supporting Jesse Jackson! It was this same congregation that I offended sometime later by calling it--get this--"liberal." This group of nominal Christians, who no longer believed in the authority of the Bible or the unique divinity of Christ, who said that there was no need for salvation or sanctification, and who were desperately hoping some gay person would join the church so they could demonstrate how "open and affirming" they were -- they started looking around nervously, hoping there was some "liberal" in the next pew that I was talking about, because everyone "knew" that this was no liberal church, no sir, this was an old-fashioned midwestern-style conservative congregation.
AND THEY HONESTLY BELIEVED IT!!
And that, says Bernard Goldberg, is the problem with network news today. There is no left-wing conspiracy to slant the news; there is just an inbred group of left-wing liberals who don't even know they're liberal, who report the news as they see it. Unfortunately, they are completely out of touch with reality, and everybody in America knows it--except the media elites.
Twenty years later, I finally understand. This is the answer to why there is such a liberal bias in the media. Thank you, Bernard Goldberg.
Rating:
Summary: Right on, Bernie!
Review: As a retired journalist with 34 years in the business, I can tell you what Bernie Goldberg says about the networks is true, to a great extent, in most newsrooms across the country. His style is a little too cute for my taste, but his perceptions are right on. When it comes to social issues, the American media is, for the most party, unconsciously liberal and operates on assumptions that most Americans don't share.
That said, we have the best media in the world. It just needs a healthy dose of self-examination.
Rating:
Summary: Should be "Things that make me whine"
Review: At first, I liked the book. His points were interesting and just. Once I got to the last half of the book, I was so tired of his perspective change into whining. The chapter that was to include the largest missed story of all time had promise. The great missed story was mothers going to the workplace is the reason children are how they are today. If that is not biased, I do not know what is. He has a hard time backing his claims. He never shows any proof. Weak.
Rating: 
Summary: How powerful is Rather?
Review: Goldberg's idea that conservatives are labeled as conservatives more often than liberals are labeled as liberals has been studied and proven wrong. Laurence Tribe was a specific example from his book. The facts are that Tribe has appeared on the CBS Evening News just 9 times since 1993, almost always with a liberal label. Also who cares if Dan Rather is a Democrat? He is a news reader, and one who behaves in a more proffesional manner than MSNBC's Brian Williams. If Goldberg really cares so much about Bias then he should be angry about the press core treatment of Al Gore that cost Gore the election. You can hear the true story behind Love Story, Love Canal, inventing the internet, Willie Horton, and the fancy hotel among other things at Bob Sommerby's dailyhowler website. I saw Goldgberg acting friendly with Sean Hannity who reliably told those lies. Looks like the press's favorite new target is John Kerry. Sometimes in his book Goldberg sights examples of bias like preffering to do story's about white people. Thats bias but I wouldn't call it liberal bias.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, entertaining, fails to show "Liberal BIAS"
Review: People Have praised GOLDBERG'S courage in writing this book. Most of it is not about BIAS in the news, but rather a personal assult on his former-employer Dan Rather. The book tries to show something that is not true, but people like to believe, the media is bias. The author is a demagouge for conservative ideolouges, and has nothing better to do with his time than write. I saw no proof whatsoever taht the media was Bias, and the author sounding more like a child whinning, than a reportert. It was however will written, so I would give it a 1.5. Alas, not an option.
Rating:
Summary: "Mea culpa. . . "
Review: Towards the end of his days with CBS, Bernard Goldberg -- who is liberal -- began having problems with the fact that his network, like the other major networks, favored liberal viewpoints over others. An editorial against Steve Forbes' suggested flat-tax, passing itself off as objective news, prompted him to object. And so his days with CBS were numbered. But Goldberg had the last word, and wrote this book, which is so glaringly accurate that many began writing Goldberg off as a conservative, and far-left author Eric Alterman wrote a diatribe against it. Goldberg is right. Deal with it.
Rating:
Summary: THIS BOOK IS TERRIBLE
Review: The title of this book should've been titled "WHY I HATE DAN RATHER AND EVERYONE ELSE IN THE PRESS". I couldn't wait to read this book but DO NOT waste your money. This is a book about a man who has personal problems with specific news correspondents and he's just venting in a book. He boohoos about how Dan Rather gets great treatment and such. All the personal attacks made it hard for me to believe that he is credible and intelligent. Instead, he sounded utterly hateful and childish. I got the feeling that he doesn't truly care about the biased media but the purpose of his book is to vent.
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