[spycatcher]

Bernard Goldberg

Deb Weiss wrote this about him:

"...He's the veteran CBS reporter whose genial op-ed on press bias raised such a firestorm when it appeared in The Wall Street Journal, back in February of 1996.

Mr. Goldberg made the nearly-fatal mistake of attempting to think outside the media box. This is considered awfully bad form by professional journalists (just ask Michael Kelly), and Mr. Goldberg was forced to spend a season in Purgatory for his sins.

What, exactly, were those sins?

Deviationism, clearly: also wrongthink, revisionism, and false consciousness. Not to mention offering aid and comfort to the enemy.

In short, he was damned as a running dog of Republicanism and right-wing blight.

In a sharp, though affectionate, assessment of CBS 'reality-checker' Erik Engberg ("hold on!"), Mr. Goldberg wrote, bluntly, that the reason network newscasts were losing their audience was that "our viewers simply don't trust us. And for good reason. The old argument that the networks and other 'media elites' have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it's hardly worth discussing anymore. No, we don't sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we're going to slant the news. We don't have to. It comes naturally to most reporters."

The wrath of his CBS colleagues was swift, and utterly predictable. "It's such a wacky charge...I don't know what Bernie was driving at. It just sounds bizarre," Bob Schieffer (for whom the only Good Republican is Senator John McCain) declared crisply.

"The test is not the names people call you or accusations by political activists inside or outside your own organization," huffed Democratic fundraiser Dan Rather. "The test is what goes up on the screen and what comes out of the speaker... I am not going to be cowed by anybody's special political agenda, inside, outside, upside, downside."

Well, hell, Dan. If you say so.

Especially that part about what goes up on the screen and what comes out of the speaker.

In the end, amidst a network-sanctioned smear campaign against Mr. Goldberg (championed, with malicious gusto, by Mr. Rather himself), CBS President Andrew Heyward took the apostate newsman off the air for two months and canceled his regular feature, "Bernard Goldberg's America."

Good to know that even CBS can draw the line, when it has to."

[Andrew Wiggin]

CBS President Andrew Heyward took the apostate newsman off the air for two months and canceled his regular feature, "Bernard Goldberg's America."

GASP!! Do you mean that he was ... blacklisted?

[Howlin]

"The test is what goes up on the screen and what comes out of the speaker...

Yeah, it is, Dan.

Man, life is getting *gooder and gooder*, day by day.

[katze]

#71 Thanks for the article. Wish I could remember the segment (or whatever) he did awhile back. I was quite taken with him, for the first time believing there are some good journalists, other than the obvious ones. Maybe it will rub off on a couple others now that we have a good president.

[Freee-dame]

The wrath of his CBS colleagues was swift, and utterly predictable. "It's such a wacky charge...I don't know what Bernie was driving at. It just sounds bizarre," Bob Schieffer (for whom the only Good Republican is Senator John McCain) declared crisply.

I heard Bob Schieffer interviewed on the radio recently. They were discussing the Johnson tapes, on which Johnson reveals that he KNEW he was sending America's men to die in a war he was not willing to prosecute to victory. Schieffer said "Every time I hear the Johnson tapes I feel more sympathy for him. Every time I hear the Nixon tapes I" (opposite feeling). Then Schieffer said, "I don't mean that in a partisan way." In what way did you mean it, Bob?