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American Morning
Interview of Jonah Goldberg, Howard Kurtz
Aired April 05, 2002 - 09:50 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: And we are back now with our guests Howard Kurtz of the "Washington Post," media critic, host of CNN's "Reliable Sources" and Jonah Goldberg with the "National Review." We are going to take one more of your phone calls now.
George is on the line from New Mexico. Jonah, I am going to let him take -- let you take his call. Go ahead, George. Good morning.
GEORGE, CALLER: Good morning. I have a comment regarding the bias part. It seems like the media seems to focus on one or two issues at a time, and pounds away at it, and pounds away at it, until it's deemed important by the public, and it's almost as if the reporters or writers, if they were in charge, they think that the government, or whatever should do it their way, and they really seem to be influencing policy because they pound away at it with the public so often.
ZAHN: George, you raise an interesting point. Jonah, is there or is there not a pack mentality?
JONAH GOLDBERG, "NATIONAL REVIEW": I think it is obvious that there is a pack mentality, primarily because there is so much competition out there, and I am not sure it is a conspiracy of any kind, it is more the fact that a lot of networks want to beat -- beat the other networks at the big stories, the same thing with newspapers, and so you do get this sort of critical mass covering one issue, beating it to death, and then, inevitably, there is the sort of counter spin which says it was too big a deal and there was too much hype, which is what we just saw with Enron.
ZAHN: All right, Howard, I'll let you attack this next e-mail. It comes from Heather from Ohio, and she writes, "I wish the media was more objective with its news reporting. It is interesting to find out what other people are thinking about different subjects, but as far as the reporting goes, just the facts please. In my opinion, FOX News Network is much more guilty of opinion based news reporting than CNN, despite their claims of being 'fair and balanced.'"
Want to take a stab at that one, Howard?
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST, "RELIABLE SOURCES": There's a lot more opinion mongering going on today throughout cable TV. The success of Fox has prompted, I shouldn't say it has caused, but you know, CNN has hired James Carville and Paul Begala and Bill Bennett, and MSNBC is bringing back Phil Donahue. So there is a lot of opinion there. I think it is true that people in their reporting, in the straight stories, they do want the facts, but on a subject like Israel and the Palestinians, where there is such passionate feelings on both sides, Middle East reporters tell me that they can't please anyone. Everybody sees them as either being pro-Israeli or too sympathetic to the Palestinians. In other words, sometimes readers and viewers do bring their own very strong opinions to their view of whether we're being objective or biased.
ZAHN: Sometimes, Howard. Jonah, isn't that what everybody does every day? They bring their own prism of understanding to a story, and that dictates how they are going to react to your coverage.
GOLDBERG: It dictates how they react to their coverage, but that doesn't mean that the media is never biased, and I do think the media is sometimes actually biased, and I do think that there's also a -- there's another phenomenon going on here, which is there so much information these days, you see it reflected in the newspapers, where they are actually doing more news -- quote unquote -- "news analysis" on the front pages of the papers just because people get so bombarded that creates an incentive for people to put their opinion, and frame the issues for them.
ZAHN: All right. We are going to leave it there this morning. Look forward to having you all back almost every Friday to do this. Jonah Goldberg, love to see you again. Howard Kurtz, look for you on TV tomorrow night, 6:30. Who do you have on?
KURTZ: We've got Jack Kelly of "USA Today," who has had a couple of close calls in the Middle East, "Newsweek's" Lally Weymouth who interviewed Prime Minister Sharon last week, and "National Review" editor Rich Lowry.
ZAHN: All right. You will get my attention with that panel of guests. Thank you, gentlemen. Have a good weekend.
KURTZ: Thanks.
GOLDBERG: Thank you.
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