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American Morning

The Big Question: Does the Media Have a Liberal Bias?

Aired December 05, 2001 - 09:39   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: In a new book, longtime CBS newsman, Bernard Goldberg gets personal, criticizing his former colleagues at the Tiffany (ph) network. Dan Rather, he writes, "is like a Mafia boss who wanted me whacked." As for his for ex-employers, he calls the CBS brass a bunch of hypocrites. The book is called "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News." And Bernard Goldberg join us now.

Welcome.

BERNARD GOLDBERG, AUTHOR: How are you doing?

ZAHN: I'm all right.

So you no doubt know this is creating an immense of controversy, and particularly at the place where you and I both used to work, and I guess my question to you, you were so critical of CBS News in this book. If you were so critical, why did you stay there so long?

GOLDBERG: Yes, I don't think I'm any more critical of CBS News, except I know more people there than anybody else. My point goes way beyond CBS News. My network is all the networks tilt left, I know that. My guess is many of the people in the media know that. They are not going to say it out loud, and most importantly, millions and millions of people who are watching us right now know that.

As for why I stayed, why shouldn't I stay. I didn't do anything wrong. I pointed out they had a liberal bias. There's no reason for me to leave.

ZAHN: Editorially. did it make you so uncomfortable that it wasn't a place where you felt like you belonged?

GOLDBERG: Well, I did feel uncomfortable, but you know what, this is an important subject to me. I think it ought to be important to the people I write about. Unfortunately, it isn't, and that's really the problem. That's really the problem. It's an important question to me, and I stayed because I wanted to change something. Now maybe I was naive, maybe you just can't change these people, but I tried, and that's why I stayed, and that's why I tried to influence things so that we wouldn't have this liberal bias.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You have harsh things to say about Dan Rather. In what way is a Mafia don or wanted you whacked? GOLDBERG: Now, when Paula said that, you laughed. It was a joke.

ZAHN: A joke? You don't think Dan could be happy about your saying that.

GOLDBERG: Well, that's not my concern right now. Do you think that I think that Dan Rather is part of a Crazy Joey Gallow and his family? Of course not. But there is a serious underlying point. And I think you know this very well. Anybody who thinks that the executives at CBS News are ABC News or NBC News really run things -- they do to some extent -- I mean, they do to some extent. Anchor people have tremendous power. And my point was, that if Dan gets angry about something, if Dan is angry about something, it's going to filter down. What's going to filter up in this case to the vice presidents and the presidents.

And I called him a Mafia boss because there is a fear of Dan Rather at CBS News. You may not want it say anything now on the air, but my guess is you know that's true. If you cross Dan, if you cross Dan Rather, or if he perceives that you crossed him, then you're dead.

CAFFERTY: What's an example, a glaring example of liberal media bias, quickly?

GOLDBERG: Well, let me tick off a couple of things real quick. The homeless story -- that was a huge story when Ronald Reagan was president. It was on the air a hundred times a day, and they portrayed the homeless as people who look just like you and me. Well, that's not true. The homeless are overwhelmingly drunks, drug addicts and schizophrenics, and then they inflated the numbers in an crazy way, because that's what the homeless lobby wanted.

The AIDS story -- there were 10 million stories on the air that said we are all going to get AIDS. Heterosexuals were just at risk just like everybody else. Well, that's not true. It never was true. I know it's politically incorrect to say it, but it isn't true, but the gays lobby wanted that story out. And all of you guys just went along and did it. I don't mean you guys, but you know...

ZAHN: So you're essentially saying that basically, because of an inherent bias that people buy into what these lobbyists were communicating.

GOLDBERG: Yes, I will tell you why I think there is an inherent bias. I don't think that these guys come in the morning -- in fact, I know they don't come in in the morning, roll up their sleeves, and say, we will slant the news and get those conservatives. They never do that, and people who believe that are just plain wrong. It doesn't happen that way.

But they are broadcasting for their pals, for their friends. Most of them live in Manhattan or in Georgetown, in Washington. They go to all of the right parties, the dinner parties, the cocktail parties. These are generally speaking liberal people. I think we would agree on that. They don't want to do a story about affirmative action that makes affirmative action look good. They're broadcasting for their friends.

CAFFERTY: Very quickly, I mean, you are talking about the city of New York having a building perhaps left-leaning social fabric. "The New York Post" is anything but a liberal publication. It's published here in New York, has been for 300 years. Fox News comes out of New York City. Those are very conservative news organizations, and there's a conservative bias that exists out there, too. I suppose, is it possible to achieve an ideal of objectivity? Probably isn't, is there?

GOLDBERG: No, there isn't, but I point out in the book that there are places where you can get a conservative slant. There are places. And you named a couple. But if we want it refer to it as the mainstream, the three big broadcast networks, I don't think we should spend too much time asking, is there a liberal bias? There is. We all know there is. The question might be, why is there a liberal bias, and why doesn't it stop?

ZAHN: Quick question before the break, is there any publication you could point to or any television product that you feel strikes that right balance, that's neither too liberal neither too conservative?

GOLDBERG: Well, I think for a long time, and I'm not just saying that because I'm here -- for a long time, not necessarily today, but I think for a long time, CNN was, and I think one of the reasons is because it was based in Atlanta. Atlanta is where like where regular people live, where kids go to public schools, where everybody isn't friends with investment bankers, and media leads and bigtime lawyers, and as a result, I think that effects the journalists also.

ZAHN: But you used the past tense, Bernie.

GOLDBERG: You're right.

ZAHN: guess we have to debate that on the other side, won't be Jack.

Well, it was the right answer, Bernie.

ZAHN: All right, don't go away, we're going to expand the discussion right after this break with media critic Howard Kurtz, who thinks a lot of your criticism, Bernie, is very personal. We'll let him take you on the next segment.

Good morning, Howie. See you in a minute or two.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAHN: We continue our discussion now of bias in the media. CNN's Jack Cafferty is joining us, along with media critic Howard Kurtz, host of CNN's "RELIABLE SOURCES." He joins us from Washington.

Bernie Goldberg standing by to respond to some of you what you said here yesterday, Howard. At one point in our conversation, you said you found a lot of Bernie's criticism extremely personal, given the fact that Bernie spent almost 30 years at the network, and Dan Rather was a very dear friend of his at one point, including Andrew Heyward. As you know, those people make it abundantly clear at a time when perhaps they could have cut short your career at CBS, they really wanted to you qualify for an additional pension fund, which meant keeping you on for 18 months.

Is that what you were talking about yesterday, Howard?

HOWARD KURTZ, CNN'S "RELIABLE SOURCES": Let me say first, Paula, that I agree bias is a problem in the news business. I think it's undermined the credibility of the media, and I think that a lot of journalists are in denial. Some of these points Bernie makes in his book.

I happen to think that bias is more built around social issues, like abortion, gay rights and religion.

But, Bernie, you know by putting that kind of inflammatory language in your book, likening Dan Rather not only to a Mafia don but saying that he has a touch of Richard Nixon's paranoia, that that was going to be the headline, that that was going to be the tease every time you were interviewed on TV, and I think that's going to inevitably distract attention from the substantive argument that you say you are trying to make.

GOLDBERG: Well, first of all, I didn't say that Rather was Nixon in the way you just said it. I quoted a former vice president of CBS News who said that. The former vice president of CBS NEWS said Dan Rather has become Richard Nixon. I put it in the book, but he said it. That's number one.

Number two, I don't necessarily agree with you that because I say that certain things that I thought were funny that has to dominate the conversation. You wrote a piece. You're the best guy out there as far as I'm concerned. And you wrote a piece, but you couldn't wait it jump on the Bernie said Dan's a Mafia kingpin and, which, you know, words that to that effect...

KURTZ: You're accusing me of quoting your own words. That's pretty....

GOLDBERG: Well, wait a second. But then you rightly quote the other side as saying Bernie is not a team player, but what you didn't do, Howard, with all due respect, is you didn't say to those guys, team player, you love guys who aren't team players, you make a career out of guys who aren't team players. If someone from a cigarette company who wasn't a team player went out and talked to some reporter and told them all the secrets that were going on inside, they wouldn't call him names, they wouldn't call him a traitor, they'd build a monument to him. They'd put him on "60 Minutes." You could you talk about business. You could talk about cigarettes. You can talk about oil. You can talk about tires. You can talk about anything if you are a reporter. But if you talk about the media, then you're a traitor. By the way, when was the last time you heard any liberal reporter call anybody a traitor, but they're calling me a traitor. You didn't point any of that out, Howard, because you fell for it.

KURTZ: I talked to a lot of people at CBS News, which is my job as a reporter, to get both sides, and a lot of people there, as you well know, that you trashed your former friends and colleagues in order to sell a book. Now maybe that's unfair. My only point is, you have some serious arguments to make about bias in the media here, and by casting the whole melodrama in such personal terms, that inevitably is going to be overshadowed.

GOLDBERG: Well, I think anything that you call personal in this sense, and I know that you mean, but I think anything that you call personal is directly related to journalism. If I wanted to be personal, if I wanted to embarrass people for the sake of embarrassing people, there were things I could have put in that book that everybody would be talking about, and they wouldn't be talking about the issue of liberal bias. I left those things out. And if I could say this in what will sound like a self-serving way, Howard, I left it out of decency, because there are some people at CBS News who have said some terrible things about various groups of Americans.

I'll tell you one thing tat I will say on the record, they routinely call people out there in America, out there in the audience, they routinely call those people white trash. They don't mean that they are white trash because they have done bad things. They just don't mean they don't have the money as the media elites, they didn't go to the right schools, and there not as sophisticated as the people in the media.

Look I can all the criticism, that's not a problem, but you know what, they're not just attacking me; they're not just attacking the people at CBS News who have come to my defense silently in the past few days, they're attacking the people out there in American who agree with me.

ZAHN: Well, let me just close the segment by reading something that Andrew Heyward said at CBS News. He said, "Mr. Goldberg asked for a meeting and told us he does not want to be portrayed as a liar, a disgruntled employee. Therefore, CBS News has no comment about the book or Mr. Goldberg." Well, I think we all know what that means.

GOLDBERG: I thought Andrew's use of the word therefore was brilliant. I mean, I give him all of the credit in the world. Brilliant.

ZAHN: We will have to leave it there. Thank you for dropping by.

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