Book Review: Liberal bias in the media is old news

Ed. tells me that quoting oneself is poor form. [It's narcissistic. Ed.] Nevertheless, I want to lead off with the penultimate sentence of my earlier post today. Liberal bias is pervasive in the meeja, the civil service, and the schools of not just Canada, but the USA, the UK, and indeed just about every country of the Western world. This is not fake news. Nor is it new news. It's something Bernard Goldberg discovered in February of 1996 when he wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal entitled "Networks Need a Reality Check".

In the piece, Mr Goldberg accused his employers at CBS, and in particular the editors of CBS Evening News, reporter Eric Engberg and then-anchor Dan Rather of a profound liberal bias. He wrote: "The old argument that the networks and other 'media elites' have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it's hardly worth discussing any more. No, we don't sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we're going to slant the news. We don't have to. It comes naturally to most reporters."

The reaction to this CLM [Career-Limiting Move. Ed.] was swift, vicious and totally predictable. Mr Goldberg failed to follow "Walt's Rules for Survival in a PC World", as set forth in "Government publishes censorship checklist - comply or else!", WWW 11/6/19, yet he seems to have been taken by surprise to find himself defamed and in danger of being defenestrated. He tells all in Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Regnery Publishing 2002), which Walt recommends.

To quote from the dust jacket synopsis [Getting lazy? Ed.]:
If you've suspected your nightly news is slanted to the left, it's far worse than you think.... Bernard Goldberg reveals a corporate news culture in which the close-mindedness is breathtaking, journalistic integrity has been pawned to liberal opinion, and "entertainment" trumps hard news every time.... As the author reveals, "liberal bias" doesn't mean simply being hard on Republicans and easy on Democrats. Real media bias is the result of how those in the media see the world -- and their bias directly affects how we all see the world.

You can skip over the first two chapters, which are a rehash of Mr Goldberg's feud with Dan Rather, now also in the realm of old news. Start reading in earnest at Chapter 3, "The Emperor is Naked". The examples are dated, but the truths are as fresh as this morning, for, since the election of Still-President Trump, the bias has broadened and deepened exponentially. If you doubt me, just watch The View. [Oh please! Not that! Ed.]

Let me quote just this one passage, from Chapter 13, "The Ship Be Sinking":
Right after my op-ed came out, Mike Wallace was asked..."What is your reaction to CBS News reporter Bernard Goldberg's charges of liberal bias in the media?"
     Mike replied, "When people suggest there is a bias in the media and we have all this power and then of course the bias is always supposed to be liberal and not conservative, well then, under those circumstances how many Democratic presidents and how many Republican presidents have there been beginning with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan twice, George Bush. It's just in my estimation, it's almost a joke."
     I think Mike Wallace is great, but in this case the joke's on him.

Just because Americans, starting in 1980, elected Republicans president four times...and Democrats only two times...doesn't prove, as Mike seems to think, that there's no liberal bias. A more likely explanation is that TV news viewers simply aren't influenced by the bias they're being fed from network anchors and reporters whom they lost trust in a long time ago.
     Besides, the problem of bias is not that the big network news divisions are reliably pro-Democratic...or even predictably anti-Republican. It's about how they frame the big issues of the day -- feminism, abortion, race, affirmative action, even taxes. On these issues they are reliably and predictably left of center.

Mr. Bloomberg wrote those words in 2002. Fast forward to 2016 and witness how Donald J. Trump won the election against the concerted opposition of Hollywood, the lamestream media, and all right-thinking (read: left-thinking) people on both coasts. Only Middle America supported The Donald, and he's president today, and will be president tomorrow, and so on until January of 2025. (Lifetime pct .986.) Mr Goldberg, who is now where he belongs (with Fox!) must be tired of saying "I told you so!"

Springsteen doesn't see anyone who could beat Trump in 2020

Not long ago, slovenly media star Michael Moore opined that the Democrats didn't have anyone [excluding himself? Ed.] capable of defeating Donald Trump in the presidential election due in just under two years. Now a real A-list celeb echos that sentiment. Bruce Springsteen hisself gave an interview to the Sunday Times a few days ago to promote his upcoming Netflix special Springsteen On Broadway. Naturally he was asked to give his learned opinion on American politics, and replied that he doesn't see anyone out there at the moment -- man, woman or "other" -- who's got a shot at taking down the President.

In "Bruce Springsteen on how Donald Trump won over his blue-collar fans", the Times says, "Donald Trump's most dangerous opponent may not be a politician, but a blue-collar rocker called Bruce Springsteen who shares millions of the same supporters as the Republican president, and also understands what makes grassroots America tick. So Trump should be pleasantly surprised to learn that Springsteen, a long-standing Democrat who campaigned for Barack Obama, believes the Donald is heading for a second term in the White House. The president has a flair for winning over working-class voters that the Democrats can't rival, the singer admits. In short, Trump was born to run, and may be unstoppable."

The Boss told the paper, "I don't see anyone out there at the moment -- the man who can beat Trump, or the woman who can beat Trump." In other words, the Democratic Party simply has no "obvious effective presidential candidate" who will be able to take on the president, because they don't "speak the same language" he does. The language he was referring to, he explained, is the language of Middle America.

According to the singer-cum-pundit, Mr Trump spoke directly to the concerns of Americans in flyover country about employment and economic stagnation. The Donald addressed issues that were neglected by both Democrats and Republicans over the last few decades, including the shutting down of steel mills in the 70s and 80s, which Mr Springsteen described as a "severe blow to working people."

Mr Springsteen went on to say that the massive changes occurring at an "incredibly rapid pace", particularly as a result of technological developments, left many Americans seeing their means of income and ways of life in upheaval. What Mr Trump had to say resonated with many traditionally Democrat voters, particularly in the Rust Belt, and (the opinions of the lamestream media pundits notwithstanding) his election was inevitable.

"Add to that," the singer-songwriter added [haha. Ed.], "someone comes in and plays on your racial anxieties, and blames an enormous amount of this on the 'other' from the southern side of the border, and you're going to have an audience for those views." Walt notes that Mr Springsteen didn't say Mr Trump was wrong, only that what he had to say found a receptive audience, just like The Boss's alleged music. Walt predicts that, like Mr Springsteen's concerts, President Trump's act is good for another tour in 2020. Lifetime pct .989.

Heart-warming: a boy and his cow

Amidst all the drama of Charlottesville, Guam, "social justice", BLM and what have you, it's good to be reminded that there is another side to America and Americans that the lamestream media doesn't often show us. Here's a photo published in the Des Moines Register yesterday, showing Mitchell Miner (15, from Williamsburg IA) and Audri, his heifer, resting after a showing at the Iowa state fair.

"She likes to lay down quite a bit," Miner told the Register on Monday. "I don't really understand the bond with my animal either. She just enjoys my company."

I'm not posting this photo to get a cheap laugh or be snide about Middle America. I just like it.