Rating: 
Summary: Corporate Propaganda
Review: The Media doesn't have a liberal or a conservative slant as much as a pro-corporate slant. The isssues which are not socially conservative (pro- choice, secularism, gay rights, "politcal correctness") are often given as examples of liberal bias, but when it comes to financial issues and foriegn relations, the American press is very conservative, favoring big-business. Nowadays the mainstream American press trys to tell liberals what they believe and convince conservatives what politcal stances they should take. Surveying international news, especially financial publications in English, leads one to see that American news exploits both sides and B Goldberg continues this by being entirely self-serving in writing this book. Read the Financial Times of London instead- That should satisfy those of any political persuasion
Rating:
Summary: Poor Widdle Bernie
Review: This is a book penned by a bitter man. He did not have the career at CBS he thought he should, so he comes up with this. If he was sitting in Dan Rather's seat, do you think this book would have been written? I think the book is a pretty good indicator of exactly WHY Bernie had a mediocre career.
Rating:
Summary: 'Bias' suffers by self-contradiction
Review: It isn't really necessary to read reviews or counter-arguments to find the fundamental flaw in Bernard Goldberg's "Bias" - he points it out himself in Chapter 10.
Speaking of media leaders, he says "They're just businessmen doing what businessmen do. It's in their nature to make the bottom line the top priority. The color they care most about is green. What could be more American than that?" (Paperback edition, page 158).
Throughout the tenth chapter, 'Where Thieves and Pimps Run Free,' Goldberg makes this claim, that media coverage is solely profit-driven, and he is indeed borne out by many more reputable authors. This effectively disproves both of his central theses - that American news media are skewed by a prevailing liberal bias, and that this bias is out of synch with the American public.
If, as seems to be the case, profit is the driving force behind all network decisions, liberal bias can hardly have much effect, can it? When the question asked of a story is "will it sell?," there can be no doubt that it will be run whether it supports the GOP or the DNC. It is clear that this shows that news agencies are not liberal but apolitically avaricious.
Even assuming - and this is far from clear - that network news does tend to lean leftwards, there is only one way that this situation could have arisen - it must be a selling point. A self-respecting "cruel and shallow money trench" (153, quoting and agreeing with Hunter S. Thompson) would show the left in glowing terms only if "the networks' research departments did studies discovering that ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox could make more money." If liberal harangues are what the public is willing to watch and to pay for, is it bias to provide them?
With his own words in Chapter 10, Goldberg has provided a nearly unanswerable rebuttal to his own claims, showing that "there isn't enough ideology in the average network to fill a thimble." Either the liberal bias doesn't exist, or it held, not by the media, but by the American people.
Rating: 
Summary: newsoul is a CAPSLOCK using fool. The Liberal Media Exists!
Review: Hey newsoul, you referred to Snoop Dogg's Doggy Style as 'The Fianl Death Nail' of hip-hop. Well, it's ten years after Doggy Style and I just got some wonderful albums by Brother Ali and EL-P, wonderful hip hop, so you were wrong about that. Also, you seemed of been brain washed by the liberal media. So go listen to some more Prince and eat some tofu with your boyfriend and pretend that war is bad.
Rating:
Summary: THERE IS NO LIBERAL MEDIA REPEAT AFTER ME
Review: WOW, I AM AN INSECURE WHITE PERSON(OR A "MODEL MINORITY) WHO ACTUALLY BELIEVES THAT ALL THESE LIBERALS CONTROL THE MEDIA WHEN MOST OF THESE CORPARTIONS ARE RUN BY WHITE CONSERVATIVES THEMSELVES. GIVE ME A BREAK NOW GO WATCH "FAUX NEWS" AND SOME MORE OF THE LACK OF BRAINS YOU ALREADY HAVE.
Rating:
Summary: FANTASTIC!!!
Review: This is a personal account from an insider writing about what he saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears. No references are necessary since it wasn't written about history that took place 100 years ago - this is an EYEWITNESS account! The man is a Liberal, who believes in Liberal ideals, but is strong enough to come clean with the distortion we see by the major networks. I finally found out why black people are kept off of shows like, "Friends," the truth about what was being reported concerning AIDS, and how people like Dan Rather are advocates for causes instead of reporters. It's about time someone told me why I was being lied to all of these years!
Rating:
Summary: read reviews or a synopsis, don't waste money on the book
Review: Many of the reviews on amazon.com are less than useful because they clearly come either from liberals who wish to defame the book or conservatives who hold it up as a godsend. Goldberg himself attempts to be objective and focus his attention on the duty of the media to present a fair and balanced view of whatever social issues they are reporting on. He is more conservative than liberal himself, and he admits as much early on in the book. I gave this book one star because it reinforces the idea that network news should be objective. But beyond this, the book provides little that will interest the average reader. Somehow this book came out to 220 pages, but he made his point in the first 10. I got tired reading the book, since it was poorly written and dragged on. Hence the title of this review -- you can gain as much from reading an objective review or synopsis of the book as from reading the entire thing. Goldberg provides enough analysis of biased news stories to pique your interest, but not enough to convince you of his thesis (if you come in undecided, that is). Although many reviewers have said footnotes are not needed since this is a sort of memoir, anyone interested in thinking critically about bias in the media will need more facts and references. A major fault in this book is that in attempting to prove a liberal bias in the media, Goldberg comes off as quite conservative. Thus, he loses the objectivity that would persuade more readers of his point. Goldberg essentially tells us that homelessness is not a big deal, that AIDS isn't such a big problem, and that feminists run the media. He loses all credibility in the final chapter on the media's portrayal of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Up until that point, I believed him to be an objective analyst and agreed with him on most of his points about unbalanced news. Veiling the chapter as an critique of the media's lack of reporting on what engenders terrorism, Goldberg essentially blasts Arabs and Muslims as bloodthirsty, inhuman Jew-killers. I was shocked. He could have avoided this by not venturing into an editorial on the inhumanity of suicide bombers and their neighbors or by balancing it with a few critiques that many have offered of Israel. This chapter would fit better in a statement from a pro-Israel, anti-Palestine group. Also, the books comes off as seriously incomplete, as it does not analyze -- or even comment on -- the way the media portrays U.S. foreign policy or the role of corporate sponsors in the content of newscasts. The most disappointing thing about this book is that it is essentially a bitter stab at revenge against Dan Rather and the rest of CBS news. What happened to Goldberg was wrong -- no one should be shut out of a network for reporting on bias in the news itself. But Goldberg didn't have to spend the *whole* book lashing out at Rather and media executives. It's not fair to the reader. Those who enjoy hearing about behind-the-scenes quarrels will enjoy this. For those of you more interested in the point the author is making, you probably won't. To close, I should reiterate that this book is useful in that it emphasizes the need for balanced news. However, you can get a lot more for $13.95 than this book offers.
Rating: 
Summary: Lack of Definition
Review: I was handed this book by a friend as I don't think the media is liberal, nor conservative, I think the media is trying to make money (high ratings equal more product sales equals more money). But he promised this would convince me. Did it? There was one underlying problem I had with this book, and that is it starts on an undefined foundation. No where in the book does Mr. Goldberg actually define in any strict terms what "liberal" (or "conservative" for that matter) actually means. He gives many instances from conversations, meetings, stories, anecdotes, from his many years of reporting and many acquaintences. All the while calling it a liberal slant. While hinting around the edges what liberal issues may be to him, and may be reported on, or what percentage of Democrats may be supported or reported on versus Republicans and such. But never actually giving a clear definition of "liberal". Nor what amount of media reporting on this loose definition one would have to make to be a so called liberal. Many years ago Ayn Rand (a favorite of many conservatives) in an article titled "'Extremism, or The Art of Smearing" rejected the terms liberal and conservative as, "rubber terms...to be stretched to mean all things to all men." In recent years the self called "conservatives" have done a very good job of not defining "liberal" but using the term to conjure up terms like, "weak, fallable, government waste and corruption", etc. with only negative connotations. Perhaps Mr. Goldberg's biggest failing here is that because of his lack of definitions, he seems to fall back on this very same ploy, and thus falls into this exact same trap. This is not to state this book convinced me of what some others argue, that the media is actually conservative (however one wants to define that term). No. But what it certainly did not do is convince me of something other than what I already believed: That the media is in business first of all, above all else, to make money. After all, isn't that what Mr. Goldberg, a long time member of the media, is doing by selling this book?
Rating:
Summary: "So true it's hardly worth discussing anymore..."
Review:
Bernard Goldberg has written a good, truthful book from the standpoint of an insider--a well-known insider to all of us, with nearly 30 years in front of the camera--telling us, as he says himself, that the TV network news has a "liberal bias [that] is so blatantly true that it's hardly worth discussing anymore."
So, why is he discussing it? Well, for one thing he wrote a 'whistle-blower' Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal back in 1996 admitting to that well-known bias, that cost him his job at CBS News and that incurred the undying hatred of Dan Rather, of whose own bias, Goldberg says, Rather is not even aware. The obvious bias of the media elite, and the reason behind it, is a subject that I have wondered about in my own book, "Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance." Why are the vast majority of the elite media icons so liberal? Is it because it is the political disease of all urbanites, or because of their liberal professors in the journalism schools? Goldberg has perhaps hit the nail on the head. He thinks it is because everyone with whom they associate think alike, and they are not even aware of their bias, but think that they are simply "middle of the road," because they simply do not meet any other view in their circle of friends and acquaintances, and because they see everyone who is conservative as "right-wing nuts," a term that includes everyone who does not agree with their leftist world-view. Goldberg gives an example of such provincialism--he quotes New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, who in 1972 couldn't figure how Richard Nixon had won the presidency. "I can't believe it!" she said. "I don't know a single person who voted for him!" Nixon carried forty-nine of the fifty states to McGovern's one. Goldberg's point, and I think it is accurate, is that--as New Yorker's tend to think of themselves as the center of the universe, and everyplace else as 'flyover country,' and as John Podhoretz has said, they "can easily go through life never meeting anybody who has a thought different from their own," so it is with The Mighty Journalism Elite. There is no plot, no conscious conspiracy, they simply think alike. As several polls have shown, 98-percent of them consistently vote for the most liberal candidate in every election. They are even more liberal than their constituency. His point is well taken. All this from a man who, as Goldberg says of himself, "I have never voted for a Republican candidate for president in my entire life!" As for Goldberg's book, BIAS, if it has a flaw it is probably that it is, perhaps understandably, too polemical. He paints an ugly picture of Rather, not only as a biased liberal, but also as an intolerant, mean-spirited, arrogant bully whom even the network executives fear. His treatment of Connie Chung (because she got more air-time than Rather during the Oklahoma City bombing incident, during which time he was on vacation) was indefensible if accurately portrayed, and caused her to be fired--all due to his jealous egotism. So, much of this book--particularly the first part--comes off as primarily a personal defense and an apparent attempt to justify what many of his co-workers characterize as disloyalty. But, as the book develops, and he expands on his thesis--that the elite media is biased toward the liberal view, on the social and cultural issues as well as politically, the case he builds is pretty much inarguable. But then, it has been so obvious that, as Bernie Goldberg says, "it's hardly worth discussing anymore." Joseph (Joe) Pierre
author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books
Rating:
Summary: A Liberal Perspective
Review: So, I admit it, I'm a liberal reviewing a book intended for conservatives so I am biased. I checked out Eric Alterman's "What Liberal Media?" and saw this book on the shelf next to it and decided that I should be 'fair' and read them both. Of course, I read Alterman's book first (and thought it was excellent) and when I finished I moved on to "Bias". The first thing I noticed was how much shorter the book was and how much larger the print was. As I started to read, I began to realize how little facts there were in the book. He makes a decent case for some of the stuff he discusses (mostly the stuff dealing with race), but the lion's share of his argument of a liberal bias comes from one TV station (CBS) and mainly their prime-time news shows (special emphasis on Dan Rather). The only time in the book Goldberg really looks outside of CBS and takes a broader look, the only facts he uses are stats about the voting habits of the media. Implying that, since most journalists identify themselves as liberals, they will skew the news towards their views. Another chapter in the book really points out the flaw in this argument. He devotes chapter to male bashing and how the media is always targeting men. Now, isn't most of the media made up of males? or at least, aren't a majority of them males? Then why isn't there a male bias? Shouldn't the news be more skewed towards the male point of view based on his previous argument that it is slanted towards the liberal view just because they are liberals? He also treats the media's portrayal of the AIDS virus as if the media was trying to scare heterosexuals into fearing the disease to rationalize spending money on research, etc. and blames this on liberal bias. Isn't this how the media works with any story? Don't they try to overhype everything that can be scary to it's audience to create ratings? This isn't liberal bias, it's an attempt to grab ratings. So... if you're a conservative and want to read this book, go ahead, I'm sure you'll enjoy it, but please read Alterman's "What Liberal Media?" afterwards. You might not like what you hear, but that's only because you don't want to believe it.
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