quote:Originally posted by JQ: I'd like to hear an example of the those 'darned liberals' in the media altering the facts for their own agenda. You guys talk alot about polls that show that the majority of journalists are liberals. What does that show? Sure, it supports your claim, but you need a LOT more to prove some sort of 'vast left-wing bias.'
I'm reluctant to waste time typing a long response to this, because I feel I've already cited sources you could explore on your own, if you truly wanted PROOF of liberal bias.
But it seems to me that you're content to write off any documentation, no matter how much I list, as a "right-wing fabrication".
Again, I refer you to the RKMB "The Liberal Media" topic I linked a few posts above, that has extensive sources listed. And in Bernard Goldberg's Bias book, chapter 8 (titled "How About a Media that Reflects America?") describing how either an 80%-plus majority of journalists, whether (as it exists) overwhelmingly Democrat/liberal, or (he projects hypothetically) if it were 80%-plus conservative/Republican. Either a conservative or liberal extreme majoity INHERENTLY influences what stories are intuitively selected and covered as important and newsworthy, no matter WHICH side has that kind of an overwhelming majority.
As well as chapter 5 (discussing with specific example the distortion of "homelessness" by the liberal media, beginning in the 1980's).
And chapter 6 (focusing on the deliberate misrepresentation of who is at risk of AIDS, the media created the appearance of a heterosexual epidemic, that never actually existed, through a selective omission of the widely documented facts of who is at risk for AIDS. And Goldberg also discusses the gay activist/liberal-media holy war and harassment of anyone who dares to publish books or news that contradicts the politicaly correct misrepresentation that projects AIDS/HIV victims are increasingly heterosexual. People who publish the statistical truth that AIDS is truly a gay, I.V. drug use and prostitute disease, and the unfortunate sex partners of these people, are endlessly discredited, trashed and ignored by the liberal media.)
I've already posted so much evidence, I really can't justify manually typing 5 or 10 pages of text, just so you can flip it off as "conservative propaganda."
Goldberg makes clear the impartial research groups who gathered the documentation, through multiple studies of media coverage, from various perspectives, over a 30-plus year period.
One point I agree with you, Goldberg DOES take a lot of personal shots at Dan Rather (and other CBS news producers). Which I do think personalizes his comments a bit too much and detracts from the factual objectivity of the book. But the points he makes otherwise are very valid. Goldberg worked for CBS for 28 years, beginning in 1972. For much of that time he was a TV correspondent for CBS, appearing on the CBS nightly news broadcast, 48 Hours, 60 Minutes and other news specials. Goldberg describes how he appealed to producers and Rather for years behind-the-scenes at CBS, and in early 1996, he finally wrote an opinion editorial in the Wall Street Journal because of a specific story on CBS News, which he deconstructed in his editorial. And for this, Goldberg was instantly taken off the air, and his career virtually ended. He says he was allowed to keep his job for a few years, but it was clear that if he encouraged anyone to praise his editorial, and despite the televised comments on various TV news interview programs by Dan Rather, and various CBS News reporters and producers attacking Goldberg as being partisan and lacking integrity, he would have been fired if he further defended his media criticism or his own integrity. His partisanship was nonexistent and never questioned for his entire career, until he criticized the objectivity and blatant liberal partisanship of ALL the networks, not just CBS, in his February 1996 Wall Street Journal editorial. (He declares himself a liberal, and lays out his liberal credentials in chapter 4).
He is not advocating or endorsing conservative views, he is just critical of the exclusion of balance given to the conservative perspective. And he objects to liberal agenda-pushing (which he says has largely replaced any attempt at objective non-partisan reporting) on a variety of liberal cause issues, such as minority image/stereotypes (even when blacks and other minorities commit crimes, while at the same time the media gleefully parades footage of white, wealthy criminals), gay rights, AIDS (hiding the fact that AIDS was and remains primarily a gay/I.V.-drug/prostitute disease in the U.S.), and the homeless (making the homeless look a lot less scary than they truly are, and of course, blaming their largely self-imposed homelessness on the Republicans, and wilfully exaggerating the numbers... up until Clinton took office).
And simultaneously ignoring or showing contempt for, or outright ridiculing, conservative views on issues like abortion, Christianity, conservative legislation and ideas like the Republican 1994 "Contract with America" and 1996 presidential candidate Forbes' tax-restructuring plan.
Goldberg's introduction and opening two chapters of Bias, it's clear to me, are the cathartic release of years of Goldberg's biting his tongue to save his job, and finally having a place to say all the things he couldn't say from 1996-2002, while he was struggling to salvage his career at CBS.
It's all in the book.
~
Regarding Whomod's earlier point that a bunch of reporters roasted Goldberg on a misquote Goldberg made in an article, I think that's (in a consistently liberal tactic) an attempt bypass the larger thesis to find one error and discredit him.
If Goldberg were an incompetent hack of a reporter who couldn't get his facts straight, he never would have remained on network news for his entire career. Any journalist or investigator can look at ANY reporter's entire career of work and find a few mistakes. Anyone. It's also possible to mock and sneer to give the IMPRESSION of factual error, without actually proving error.
I know from my own brief period as a reporter in the early 1990's that no matter how valiantly you try to cover all sides, you will always miss the exact facet of some aspect of the story. I see that grilling of Goldberg as an attempt to dismiss his larger point unfoundedly, by obessing on a small factual error. Especially frustrating for me was covering a story from every angle I could, having it edited for space by someone else, and then getting blasted in letters to the editor for not covering an angle I did cover, but were omitted.
Goldberg's larger point of liberal dominance, and liberal bias, and defiant slanting of the news by an overwhelmingly liberal media, that as Goldberg says (concluding his point from pages 129-133, quoting statistics about reporters' beliefs, political perspective and lifestyle, as statistically contrasted to the average American) :
quote:page 133:
"It's not just that so many journalists are so different from mainstream America. It's that some are downright hostile to what many Americans hold sacred."
