Commentary

On Media Bias, Network Stars
Are Rather Clueless

By Bernard Goldberg. Mr. Goldberg was a correspondent for CBS News from 1972 until 2000.

Dan Rather has been on television more than usual lately, popping up all over the place promoting his book about American success stories and along the way wearily denying that he's the left-wing devil some conservatives think he is.

It's the same old story as far as Dan is concerned. The right thinks he's an unapologetic liberal who slants the news leftward -- not because he is, but because his critics are so hopelessly biased themselves that they wouldn't know straight news when they saw it. As another evening star, Peter Jennings, told Larry King recently, bias often is in the eye of the beholder. And since Tom Brokaw also has publicly denied a liberal bias, it's official. There is none. It's all a figment of the reactionary imagination. Case closed.

Except, as just about everyone who lives between Manhattan and Malibu knows, there is a leftward tilt on the big-three evening newscasts. A poll last year by Brill's Content showed that 74% of Republicans spotted a liberal bias. No bulletin there. But 47% of Democrats agreed, believing that "most journalists are more liberal than they are."

So how can three otherwise intelligent, worldly men be so delusional when it comes to their own business? One possibility, of course, is that they're not delusional at all. They know they're slanting the news and they're simply doing what a lot of people do when caught red-handed. They're denying it.

But that's not it, as far as I can figure. I'd bet that if you hooked Dan and Tom and Peter up to a lie detector and asked them if there's a liberal bias on their newscasts, they'd all say "no" and they'd all pass the test.

That leaves one other possibility. Messrs. Rather, Brokaw and Jennings don't even know what liberal bias is. I concede this is hard to believe, but I'm convinced it's why we keep getting these ridiculous denials, such as Mr. Rather's response to Geraldo Rivera the other night. Geraldo said, "What I can't figure out is why you rub the right so wrong." Dan thought it was because some people "subscribe to the idea either you report the news the way we want you to report it, or we're gonna tag . . . [a] negative sign on you."

The problem is that Mr. Rather and the other evening stars think that liberal bias means just one thing: going hard on Republicans and easy on Democrats. But real media bias comes not so much from what party they attack. Liberal bias is the result of how they see the world.

Consider this: In 1996 after I wrote about liberal bias on this very page, Dan was furious and during a phone conversation he indicated that picking The Wall Street Journal to air my views was especially appalling given the conservative views of the paper's editorial page. "What do you consider the New York Times?" I asked him, since he had written op-eds for that paper. "Middle-of-the-road," he said.

I couldn't believe he was serious. The Times is a newspaper that has taken the liberal side of every important social issue of our time, which is fine with me. But if you see the New York Times editorial page as middle of the road, one thing is clear: You don't have a clue.

And it is this inability to see liberal views as liberal that is at the heart of the entire problem. This is why Phyllis Schlafly is the conservative woman who heads that conservative organization but Patricia Ireland is merely the head of NOW. No liberal labels necessary. Robert Bork is the conservative judge. Laurence Tribe is the noted Harvard law professor. Rush Limbaugh is the conservative talk show host. Rosie O'Donnell is simply Rosie O'Donnell, no matter how many liberal opinions she shares with her audience.

And that's why the media stars can so easily talk about "right wing" Republicans and "right wing" Christians and "right wing" Miami Cubans and "right wing" radio talk-show hosts. But the only time they utter the words "left wing" is when they're talking about an airplane.

Conservatives must be identified because the audience needs to know these are people with axes to grind. But liberals don't need to be identified because their views on all the big social issues -- from abortion and gun control to the death penalty and affirmative action -- aren't liberal views at all. They're simply reasonable views, shared by all the reasonable people the media elites mingle with at all their reasonable dinner parties in Manhattan and Georgetown.

Reporters pride themselves on their skepticism. Yet many uncritically pass along the views of liberal activists in a way they would never do with conservatives. The homeless lobby tells the media there are five million homeless and 10 minutes later it's on the evening news. Why is it that the media elites aren't nearly as cozy with the anti-affirmative action or pro-life lobbies?

The media elites can float through their personal lives and rarely run into someone with an opposing view. This is very unhealthy and sometimes downright ridiculous, as when Pauline Kael, for years the brilliant film critic at The New Yorker, was completely baffled about how Richard Nixon could have beaten George McGovern in 1972: "Nobody I know voted for Nixon." Never mind that Nixon carried 49 states. She wasn't kidding.

If there is one group that is uniquely unqualified to comment on liberal bias it's the big-time media stars. So Dan and Tom and Peter: Stop telling us that we're the problem, and start thinking about what liberal bias really means.