Tackling Bias. - book review

Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, by Bernard Goldberg (Regnery, 232 pp., $27.95)

Award-winning CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg became an instant outcast at his network when, on February 13, 1996, he published an article in the Wall Street Journal accusing a colleague of one-sided reporting. In his Journal piece, Goldberg said the work of CBS's Eric Engberg exemplified the "liberal bias" of network news.

On a "reality check" segment of the CBS Evening News, Engberg had ridiculed the flat-tax proposal of presidential candidate Steve Forbes. Goldberg assailed Engberg for quoting only opponents of the flat tax, among them an unnamed economist who suggested the plan should be tested in Albania. Engberg's report concluded with a David Letterman-type parody, in which Engberg declared that "Forbes's Number One Wackiest Flat-Tax Promise" was his contention that it would give parents "more time to spend with their children and each other."

I never saw Engberg's commentary; assuming that Goldberg describes it accurately, its economic ignorance is even more blatant than its bias. Engberg said the flat tax was "called supply-side economics under President Reagan," a misleading shorthand that should have set off alarm bells at CBS. It didn't. Goldberg believes that this is because CBS producers-and anchorman Dan Rather-are so reflexively liberal (and anti-flat tax) that it never occurred to them that the piece might be unfair.

After Goldberg's column appeared, network luminaries, including CBS News president Andrew Heyward, complained that Goldberg was disloyal because he had expressed his opinions outside of CBS. Goldberg, who had worked for CBS since 1972, was kept on the payroll but disappeared from public view. He was so rarely seen on television that one admirer sent him a picture of a milk carton and asked him to paste his picture on it. (He was eventually put back on 48 Hours.)

Goldberg professes to be surprised that his colleagues (except the untouchable Andy Rooney, who wrote him a letter of support) regarded him as a "traitor" for writing the column. But whistleblowers are frequently treated as pariahs by those on whom they blow the whistle. For most Americans, loyalty to the team is a defining virtue; Goldberg knows this, and seems a bit uncomfortable with his apostasy. In his new book, Goldberg has a chapter on the "News Mafia," in which he compares himself to a mob member who cooperates with the authorities. (He casts anchorman Rather-"The Dan"-as the counterpart to TV's Tony Soprano.) When it comes to the "biggest sin" of telling others about the family business, writes Goldberg, "there is no difference-no difference, whatsoever!-between the wise guys who operate in the dark shadows of the underworld and the news guys who supposedly operate in the bright sunlight." Actually, there is an important difference: The Mafia kills members who talk. The bad guys at CBS, by Goldberg's account, kept him off the air and allowed him to stick around on full salary until he became eligible for his CBS pension on May 31, 2000, and took a job with HBO.

As a reporter who worked for the Washington Post nearly as long (26 years) as Goldberg did for CBS, I started reading his book with great anticipation: The deficiencies of network news need to be exposed, and this book offered an excellent opportunity to do it. Until the valiant and often brilliant performance of the networks in dealing with September 11 and its aftermath, television news was often slothful, slanted, and trivial; regrettably, Goldberg's book doesn't do justice to the problem, and must be marked down as an opportunity missed.

Goldberg seems to share my distaste for tabloid television; I say "seems" because he equates the sagas of Tonya Harding, Lorena Bobbitt, and Joey Buttafuoco with that of Elian Gonzalez, of whom he writes: "I know so much about Elian Gonzalez that for weeks before it finally happened, I was rooting for the U.S. government to send him back to Fidel Castro's Communist dictatorship, just so I wouldn't have to listen to his cousin Marisleysis anymore." This offhand comment- suggesting as it does a certain insouciance about what was, after all, a foreign-policy story of considerable significance-points to the unevenness that is the book's major flaw. Goldberg begins the book with a transparent joke about how his liberal friends are planning to celebrate its publication; a page later, he dismisses it as a "cheap attempt to be funny." This fitful beginning sets the tone for a book that is too often sarcastic when it ought to be serious.

Bias does, however, have its moments. Goldberg's best story is an account of what happened in 1993 when he suggested that CBS do a segment-on one of its magazine shows-examining the network's own bias. Heyward, then the show's executive producer, reluctantly agreed, but said Goldberg could only interview Rather if he agreed not to ask him any "tough questions." Goldberg then dropped the idea of doing a segment on CBS's bias.