Bernard Goldberg worked for CBS News from 1972 to 2000. He wrote Bias because he perceived injustice in media news that he came across every day, but his book fails to prove undoubtedly that a liberal bias exists in media news. He provides too few concrete examples of liberal bias, and instead of offering theoretical insight into the motives behind bias (e.g., why media owners would allow journalists to slant their news, alienating half of the consumers), Goldberg resorts to berating former colleague Dan Rather. Of course, Goldberg denies that the book is an attempt to get even. He also neglects to acknowledge the common perception of a pro-capitalist media (i.e., that the news does not slant to the left in terms of economics).

Goldberg introduces the 1996 CBS news feature on Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes, and explains how reporter Eric Engberg slanted the story against Forbes' flat tax proposal, the "centerpiece of the campaign." Goldberg's observations include interviews with three economic experts (all of whom opposed the flat tax), the use of the word "wacky" to describe the tax plan, and a sarcastic closing comment suggesting that the plan should be tested first in Albania.

Goldberg wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal pointing out the disgraceful reporting in the Forbes story, which spurred a plethora of reaction. He devotes the first quarter of the book to said reaction, while the reader wonders if Goldberg realized that at the time of the story, Forbes was running in the primary against Bob Dole and others. The "liberal" bias of the story may have unjustly hurt the Forbes campaign, but Dole probably did not mind.

After a rough start dedicated to a single weak example of liberal bias in the media and insulting CBS News anchor Rather whenever possible, Goldberg gets down to business and presents some good points. He discusses the media's labeling of conservative pundits and organizations (he uses the Christian Coalition as an example) as "conservative" without doing the same for liberal pundits and organizations. Goldberg compares the wave of stories on homelessness during the Reagan years with the few during the Clinton administration in a chapter cleverly titled "How Bill Clinton Cured Homelessness."

Goldberg's remaining examples primarily concern liberal bias on social issues, and he shows cases of the media's over-sensitivity toward gays, blacks, and women. Of these issues, he spends the most energy on the AIDS scare in the 1980s and the media's failure to connect the growth of working mothers to the possible negative effects on children. Goldberg maintains that the media pushed the AIDS story away from gay men and toward middle class heterosexual suburbia as a scare tactic. These two examples exhibit startling degrees of manipulation, deception, and failure to report the whole truth.

Goldberg's criticism of the media's treatment of women and blacks fails to address that the media, if they slanted the news in the opposite direction, would face an infinite amount of complaints from feminists, blacks, and other Americans who would rather not see the negative portrayal of two groups that had been denied so many rights in this country for so long. Liberal bias, or just playing it safe?

If Goldberg spent fewer pages devoted to his self-indulgent account of his coming forward as whistle-blower and subsequent feud with Dan Rather and written about the inconsistent motives for bias in relation to profits, then the book would have warranted a full recommendation.

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Postscript: 9/23/04

The current CBS News controversy over the segment on President Bush's military records certainly bolsters Goldberg's argument against Rather and perhaps makes the book more significant. However, I stand by the above critique of Goldberg's book (until someone proves that I am lying).