goldberg’s bias
Goldberg’s Bias - It took me about three hours to read through Goldberg’s Book on Media Bias. Dan Rather single-handedly brought the phrase “anti-government hate groups” into common usage, by using that phrase to refer to regional militias while covering the Oklahoma City bombing. And in case you didn’t know, these regional militias are neither about “hate” or “overthrowing government”. Dan Rather could be forgiven for being ignorant, but I couldn’t respect him after seeing the vigor and raw hatred with which he attacked a population he obviously knew nothing about. Goldberg’s book spends way too much time offering proof to support the conclusion that Rather is a viscerally biased reactionary. It’s almost as if he is trying to convince a jury. Goldberg also spends a great deal of time stumping for some of his own pet ideas that he feels did not get enough attention in mainstream media. It’s an enlightening read, but the book fails to discuss what would have been the most interesting topic: suppose that Goldberg’s bosses at CBS had reacted differently (even just paying lip-service to get him to shut up) after he published his initial criticism in WSJ in 1996; would things be different today? I suspect that Goldberg would still be a complicit partner in the propagation of bias, “tryin’ to change the system from within”, if he had been handled differently.