Rating: 
Summary: Shoddy Reporting + Poor Writing = Unconvincing
Review: The premise of ex-CBS news producer, Bernard Goldberg's, "Bias," is that the news media is run by a bunch of liberals who are infecting allegedly dispassionate reporting with their leftist slant. It is a premise that he substantiates with great vigor in this book. However, almost any theory can be proven if argued with limited information: "God is dead"; "Faith is alive"; "Men are oppressed in the U.S."; "Women make $.75 on the dollar in comparison to men"; "African Americans attend college in smaller numbers than Caucasians"; "Quotas that favor Blacks are keeping whites out of universities." All of these arguments can be made, and proven in ways that seem to tell the indisputable truth - but only if half the facts are all that gets presented. And half the facts are exactly what Goldberg presents in "Bias."A newsroom insider for many years, who had done "a thousand stories for Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News," Goldberg says he finally began to notice in 1996 that network (and newspaper) coverage of current events was being unduly influenced by the predominantly Democratic and liberal members of the press - his peers. In response to another reporter's clearly prejudiced coverage of Steve Forbes' presidential campaign, "Bernie" wrote an op-ed for the (conservative) Wall Street Journal blasting the TV piece in particular, and the conspiracy of liberally slanted journalism in general. Yes, the Forbes item was clearly partisan and designed to ridicule the candidate. Goldberg was right about this. As a result of his WSJ editorial, Bernie was chastened by the CBS news staff led by anchor, Dan Rather. Bernie uses a large portion of his overall word count to disparage Dan Rather in this account. He calls him "The Dan," and likens him to fictional Mafia Don, Tony Soprano. While it is probably true that Dan Rather has an inordinate amount of power in the news business - as do all TV stars -- Bernie loses his ability to be objective in relation to Rather, and uses the book as a character hit piece. He refers repeatedly to "The Dan," as if this phrase were the cleverest joke he had ever heard, and like many other anecdotes and lame witticisms he inflicts upon the reader, it makes for tiresome reading. Getting demoted and eventually pushed out of CBS by "The Dan," left Bernie with some time on his hands to stew in his outraged juices and collect the kind of proof he believed would indict the news media. The Forbes piece was undoubtedly a fine starting place for making his argument, and Bernie builds on this cornerstone with several other subjects he believes were covered unfairly by the news. One of the issues that he takes up is the portrayal of homelessness in America. He writes that during the length of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the media aired endless stories about street people, in some kind of deluded liberal effort to blame the presence of beggars on the president. However, when Bill Clinton came into office, he claims, newspeople dropped the issue, as if all the vagrants had suddenly been housed by virtue of a Democrat appearing in the White House. Next, he goes on to illuminate his views on the coverage of touchy subjects such as childcare. Apparently studies show that children should be at home with their mothers, though the news media, he opines, full of working women and feminist husbands, will never tell the public about it for fear that their lifestyles would become suspect. In another chapter, he writes that the media created the myth of heterosexuals getting AIDS in great numbers. "Where were all these straight Americans with AIDS? I didn't know any," he remarks. Later Bernie admits that it is true that 40% of people with AIDS are heterosexuals, but that most of those were "shooting up." The disease is not, he declares, what the liberal, gay-loving, politically correct media liked to portray as, "The Killer Next Door." Undoubtedly, many of his points are well taken. Children probably do better with a parent at home to care for them. (The conservative Dr. Laura Schlessinger convincingly preaches this doctrine daily on her ABC radio talk show .) AIDS does infect more gay men than it does heterosexuals. Even homelessness did not end with the Clinton ascendancy. Are these examples enough reason to believe that the news media has been taken over by leftists? A quick perusal of Fox news, where the right-wing, pit-bull, Bill O'Reilly presides nightly, might dispel that belief. Listening to AM radio, and its plethora of Republican pontificators, led by Rush Limbaugh, would also cause one to question whether the media was in the hands of neo-Commies. As was stated before, Goldberg only presents half of the story in this poorly written, self-serving diatribe. The other half of the story might contain the information that most of the media he writes about is owned by conservative corporations that censor what news is presented. All one has to do is remember the last presidential election, where the news media used every opportunity to remind Americans how boring and taciturn Democratic candidate Al Gore was - rather than to explain his policies - to wonder just how liberal a slant there really is in mainstream news. By not examining both sides of any issue, Goldberg never makes a convincing, case for blanket liberal bias in the media. After reading this semi-literate book, it is surprising CBS news did not get rid of him years earlier for his flimsy grasp of storytelling -- if nothing else.
Rating: 
Summary: Bernie is much better live!
Review: I can't tell you how disappointed I am to be disappointed in this book. Goldberg's appearance on several talkshows in my area had interested me in it, because he came across as fair albeit unapologetic in his criticisms of liberal colleagues, with specific examples of news stories colored by their ideology. However, the book itself reads much more like an emotional vindictive against his former employer, CBS. It chronologizes events after Goldberg, still a CBS commentator, published an article in the Wall Street Journal critical of a "news" piece done on presidential candidate Steve Forbes. Predictably, such whistleblowing is not met with favor by the medium used to lauding whistleblowers of OTHER professions. Unfortunately, however, instead of the hoped-for further documentation of clear instances where evidence favoring a conservative view is squelched to make a news report more to the reporter's liking, Goldberg continues to relate his own (assuredly painful) experience. The chapter on liberal hate speech turns out to be examples of comments in an editorial context, not from a newsdesk where neutrality is called for.
What rescued the book from 2-stardom for me was Goldberg's argument that his former friends engage in coloring the news without vindictiveness, necessarily, but simply because everyone who surrounds them has the same views they do. Hence, they see the left as mainstream. It makes me feel a bit less paranoid to hear someone from "within" assure me that they're not just playing "how can we slant the news this time" backstage.
Rating: 
Summary: COURAGEOUS AND RIGHT-ON!
Review: Finally, someone from within that "News-a-tainment" monolith has the courage to tell it like it is... Gunga-Dan and company are a bunch of rich lefties, blinded by their own limited brain cells. Check out another great, light-hearted read... Keshner's "COCKPIT CONFESSIONS OF AN AIRLINE PILOT," my vote for book of the year. My complements to both Messrs. Goldberg and Keshner, Oliver North
Rating: 
Summary: Bias- a great reader
Review: bias is an increadibly entertaining and interesting book. there is so much that we don't know that the media is feeding us. mr. goldberg definitely wrote a bestseller if he wasn't the main character, hero, and a martyr of his book.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting read.....yet very flawed
Review: I just finished this book (On tape). I will tell you that I am not a fan of CBS news, not that I find them bad just not the news I grew up on. So I was not really familiar with Mr. Goldberg. I was eager to read this book because if the President thought it worthy enough for reading I should give it a try. (I would give it 2.5 stars but that is not an option) I agree there is Bias in the American media but not so much liberal or conservative, as just human. Even Mr. Goldberg reveals such Bias chapter after chapter in this book. His point was that the media in general and CBS specifically brings their liberal bias to the news they present. However if you look at the very item that begins his quest to stamp out this bias he writes his WSJ column and leaves out pertinent parts of the story about Mr. Engbergs Reality Check. He says that Mr Engberg's diatribe about Mr Forbes flat tax proposal was slanted and Mr. Enberg uses the liberal Brookings Institute to provide comments. He left out that also in the piece was opposition from Mr Gingrich and one other republican. Not really in the liberal court. This is only one example of how Mr. Goldberg skews the facts to suit his premise. That said I am glad I read the book and I would recommend it. I just warn you to approach the book with an open mind and be prepared to question some of his conclusions. Sometimes he displays a certain degree of inconsistency with his logic. For example he declares that he is a liberal when it comes to his values but I never once saw in the book a critique of his own work that he could point to that reveals this on-the-air bias. So I am ask to believe that it is possible for him to not bring his liberal values to a story but impossible for others to do the same. No there is Bias in how news is reported but and Mr. Goldberg admits this it not as much about politics or values as it has to do with ratings and economics and elitism. However that really would not sell books so you have use that red-meat tag LIBERAL. Sometimes the language is a tad vulgar (the F word was used a little too much) and he resorts to some petty name calling ('Dan's B**ch's). The book is long on emotion and a tad short on independent data. Whether the media is liberal in its bias is not something that overly concerns me though. I learned a long time ago that whether it is the news or the politician or the internet, as an individual I have the ultimate responsibility to look and the facts and seek out the facts and make my own decisions. Mr Goldberg raises some good issues...I just wished he had not been so Biased in some of his conclusions.
Rating: 
Summary: Dan Rather is like a Mafia Don???
Review: This is a very very astonishing book indeed. You really cannot ask for better proof that the major media (ABC, CBS, NBC) is liberally biased than what you find in this book. When a senior correspondent with 28 years of experience who is himself liberal, claims that his organization, and the others like it, are liberally biased you simply have to believe him. And certainly after 250 pages of relentless evidence you do. You are only left to imagine how different history would be today had it not been for media bias.
Almost as astonishing is the personal and intellectual attack on Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings. The author asserts very persuasively with much evidence that the three leading anchors are so ignorant and parochial in their understanding of government that they really don't know liberalism and conservatives well enough to understand what they are reporting. They are liberal not out of intellectual conviction but simply because everyone around them is, just as everyone in North Korea worships Kim Jung Il because everyone around them does. People who we think of as the most sophisticated and the most trusted among us are portrayed as simple fools. All this becomes sadly and abundantly clear as you listen to the anchors vehemently deny and then blatantly try to cover up their almost treasonous abuse of power. Dan Rather is directly and openly compared to a mafia Don in his thinking and tactics; only in this case the consequences are far more serious.
Some will argue that the liberal bias of the networks and virtually all of Hollywood is balanced by the conservative bias of talk radio and cable TV. This, it is pointed out, is not true because cable and talk radio point out that they are conservative when they are, while the major media presents liberalism as obvious truth. Also, much of the audience for cable and radio are conservatives already who are merely enjoying a sermon from their preacher, while the network TV audience and Hollywood audience is a general audience of undecided swing voters who have been deciding elections based in large part on their mistaken trust in the major media. One can only wonder at how different the world might be if Dan Rather had bothered to read the classic "Understanding the Difference Between Democrats and Republicans" when he was in school.
Rating:
Summary: Starts strong, ends weak
Review: I will say that I consider myself a middle of the road Democrat(if one can exist). The book started well, giving decent examples of "bias". One may argue it could be bad reporting on the part of these news organizations, one might call it bias. The second half of the book seemed to fall apart in terms of conservative preaching and some unsubstantiated attacks on the media. If Bernard Goldberg had just maintained an objective tone I would have been close to convinced, but by the end of the book his vitriolic diatribes were tiresome and I was glad to be done with the book.
Rating:
Summary: Iron-clad fact filled Best Seller!
Review: It is entertaining to see the rather weak and exclusively personal attacks on this book's author by Liberals in need of a spelling checker. You can't attack the content, because it is fact. Facts backed by real, unbiased polling, simply observation, real memos, and even real actual aired news footage! How can you argue with national broadcasts, many of which I remember watching! Even now, the Liberal media only focuses on endless war protests, as usual, helping the sworn enemies of the United States. They refuse to air the pro-war rallies that outnumber the protests 10 to 1. They are sickening, but at least everyone with half a brain is onto them by now. The book is actually very entertaining and laugh out loud funny, not because the author is trying to be humorous, but just because the extent to which the Liberals will go to sustain "The Big Lie" is just utterly astonishing.
Rating:
Summary: Goldberg systematically and irrefutably lays out his case
Review: On February 13, 1996, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial entitled "Networks Need a Reality Check" by Bernard Goldberg, a fixture at CBS News. The premise of the editorial was that 1) there was a liberal bias on the part of television news reporters that 2) got in the way of their reporting. This was not exactly an earthshaking revelation to most people --- Gallup Poll results have long indicated that three out of four Americans are aware of this --- but Goldberg's editorial set off shockwaves for two reasons. The first reason was that a network newsman was stating the obvious. The second (and perhaps more important) reason was that the author of the editorial is, himself, a liberal. The editorial resulted in Goldberg's ostracism from CBS and, ultimately, in the writing of BIAS: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News. The editorial that caused all the problems for Goldberg, as well as subsequent op-eds published on February 15, 1996 and May 24, 2001, are reprinted in BIAS. It would have been better, perhaps, if they had been reprinted in the front of the book rather than in an appendix at the end. They seem, at first blush, rather harmless, certainly when contrasted to the subsequent reaction they received in television newsrooms. And the reaction was not to the truth, or falsehood, of what Goldberg was saying; it was that he was making the observation at all. Goldberg's position and the ultimate premise behind BIAS is that network news has failed in its mission by presenting the liberal position on issues as the baseline, if you will, of reasonableness and that any variation from that position is controversial or a deviation from how things should be. Reasonable minds, in other words, do not differ. Goldberg's observation, both at the time he wrote his initial editorial and now, is that differing viewpoints should be presented without disparagingly labeling one and giving the other, more favored, viewpoint a pass. Again, Goldberg is a liberal, but he is secure enough in his worldview and fair enough in his journalistic outlook to welcome the presentation of differing views. The meat of BIAS is where Goldberg systematically illustrates how, when dealing with the major issues of our time such as homelessness, the Middle East, racism, AIDS and abortion, the networks have systematically favored one view to the exclusion of the other and have knowingly distorted the facts in order to do so. Goldberg also notes that the popularity of Fox News Channel in general --- and Bill O'Reilly in particular --- has occurred as a direct and proximate result of the major networks' failure to do the job they ostensibly set out to do. FNC's policy of seeking viewpoints from responsible spokespersons of groups such as Right to Life and CORE, in addition to the usual suspects such as NOW, Friends of the Earth and the NAACP, has been rewarded with enhanced viewership. It has also been derided as a conservative network, if only for its steadfast determination to present more than the liberal point of view. Again, this is not exactly a bulletin, especially to those who have attempted to watch network news objectively over the past 30 or so years. What is fascinating about BIAS, however, is that Goldberg did not permit his personal worldview to interfere with his role as a journalist. As is noted in BIAS, he ultimately became a pariah at the network he had dedicated his life to for pointing out that the emperor had no clothes. While BIAS does not contain any earthshaking revelations, it systematically and irrefutably lays out its case, point by point, for Goldberg's proposition concerning distortion of the news. For those who have been aware of this practice, BIAS will be a reaffirmation. For those who have been unaware of it, BIAS will be the salve that will cause the scales to fall from their eyes. Recommended. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Rating:
Summary: Evidence from the Inside
Review: Former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg has done the work of a brave and hardy soul: he has dared to announce that the emperor has no clothes at the risk of his own career and past connections. He documents the bias that permeates a media that puts cultural correctness over truthful analysis. He has been on the inside and what he documents is a bias that is utterly unprofessional. The professional journalist should provide facts wherever they may lead even if they offend the people they socialize with and admire. Fortunately, we live in a competitive and free market economy where alternate sources of analysis, taking advantage of new technology such as cable television and the internet, are undermining the monopoly power over information of the major television networks. Goldberg's exposure is an implicit endorsement of the value of a competitive economy that provides such alternatives.
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