Posted on 12/10/2001 2:02:20 PM PST by John Jorsett
WASHINGTON – A second former CBS News correspondent is cheering on Bernard Goldberg’s candor in his blockbuster book, "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News.”
Reid Collins, a veteran of CBS News and CNN, says there is peer pressure inside the major TV networks that makes it difficult for anyone with known conservative views to advance inside the company.
"It’s a corporate culture that we’re talking about,” Collins explained in an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com Friday.
"A young guy comes out of the woods into New York. And he discovers, as I think many of our primary people in the news business discover very early, that ‘if I’m going to get along, if I’m going to get invited to the East and West Side [New York] cocktail parties, and if I’m going to swim in this particular sea, I’ve got to wear these particular fins. Whether I came to the city with them or not is beside the point. I’d better darn well wear them, and I’d better swim with the crowd, or it’s upstream from here on in.’”
To Collins, those network experiences showed him that "it’s as if one walked into the Taliban headquarters and pretty soon discovered that everybody thought just about the same.
"I was surprised when I came to New York and discovered that almost everybody there, at least who was successful, was of the same mind.”
Collins fears that peer pressure means the establishment media is not about to change its liberal culture.
Other media watchers agree that after the uproar has died down, the major liberal media will remain as biased as ever.
"I would be surprised if [the book] produced a real national conversation among journalists,” Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz told NewsMax.com, "simply because too many journalists reflexively dismiss this sort of criticism.”
For the time being, however, the book is having the effect of stirring up healthy debate, observes Reed Irvine, President of Accuracy In Media which monitors TV, radio and the press for giving short shrift to conservative views.
"The more CBS complains, the better it is. I like to see them react with such ferocity,” Irvine told NewsMax.com, "It just shows he [Goldberg] hit a sore spot and they know it.”
Goldberg’s onetime colleague Collins, widely remembered for his coverage of space shuttle flights on CBS Radio, says Goldberg’s first op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal wherein he denounced media bias at CBS News and elsewhere "was such a revolutionary concept that anybody would get out of step with the platoon that I think it did Bernie in.”
In his book, Goldberg returns to the original focus of his 1996 Journal piece: A "hatchet job” (as described by Collins) by CBS News correspondent Eric Engberg on then-presidential candidate Steve Forbes’s flat-tax idea.
Imagine what would happen, Goldberg writes, if a CBS News correspondent offered a story calling Hillary Clinton’s health care plan "wacky,” the label a supposedly straight news story pinned on the Forbes tax proposal. Would it see the light of day on the air, going out to millions of viewers? Fat chance!
"The thought [of panning Hillary-care] would never occur,” Collins told NewsMax, "and the piece would never get past the editor, even if he decided to do one.”
Anyone with conservative views at CBS was "a rarity,” according to the longtime CBS and CNN anchor. "A person with conservative views or even middle-of-the-road views, starting out some years ago at CBS would be a standout person.”
The Engberg piece was a story "that everyone had to admit was biased,” Rich Noyes Director of Media Analysis at the conservative-oriented Media Research Center told NewsMax, "And yet CBS wouldn’t admit that it was biased, and they wouldn’t admit there was a problem. And they instead decided they were going to sacrifice [Goldberg].”
Given that, Noyes doesn’t "know that there is much optimism that a book that basically lays that out in much greater detail and brings it right to readers [will inspire media introspection]. I think they’re too entrenched to do that.”
Collins recalls that when Ronald Reagan was running for president in 1980, a couple of CBS producers told him "if he’s elected, I’m going to Canada.”
"All right,” replied Collins, "I think he will be elected. If you go, I will pay your bus fare.” After the election, he sought them out, and asked, "Do you still want to leave? Where can we get your ticket?” Of course, "nobody left. They’re still there.”
Shades of actor Alec Baldwin who last year made a similar threat in the event George W. Bush became president. Baldwin remains in the good old USA, last known address in Long Island’s ritzy-glitzy Hamptons, with all the swells.
On the TV panel program "Reliable Sources,” Collins got into a discussion with Newsweek’s Howard Fineman over why so many news directors fawned over Bill Clinton. Fineman said it was a generational "affinity.” Collins thought the better word was "bias,” the title of Goldberg’s book.
"Goldberg is right,” Collins opines.
"A very colorful book that makes some good points,” is Post critic Kurtz’s overall take, adding he thinks, "It can contribute to the ongoing debate about bias in the media.”
Kurtz does believe, however that Goldberg’s substantive arguments "may be overshadowed to some degree by his personal attacks on the likes of Dan Rather and CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "But it would be a shame if the finger-pointing on both sides obscured what remains a serious issue [i.e. media bias).” It is the Washington Post writer’s view that Goldberg has offered up "provocative arguments that journalists ought to debate.”
Noyes (of the Media Research Center) sees "a fracturing of the media” as the most likely solution to the problem. The major network news programs have lost viewers by the millions in recent years. With Fox News Channel giving the conservative side an even break, added to talk radio, "you’re not going to have any network like CBS in the olden days when they held thirty of forty percent of the audience share for news. It’s going to be ten to fifteen percent as the best anybody could hope for.”
"CBS made Rush Limbaugh,” says Reid Collins, "They gave talk radio so much to talk about,” and the American people are voting with their remote controls.
Meanwhile, as the work week wound down, Goldberg was scheduled for back-to-back interviews. It is reasonable to speculate that he’s sleeping better at night now that he’s getting this story off his chest and out to the public.
That feeling, shared by this writer simply in covering the whole controversy, also applies to Collins. He agrees it is something of a catharsis.
"I get a little kick out of occasionally writing or saying something that is more akin to what I think is the truth, at least as one sees it,” Collins says.
I am sHoCkEd!!!
When I was assigned to NY, it was another world.
The one thing that surprized me more than anything was the number of anti-Semitic Jews at network. Then there is the famous "Tacos and Watermellon" story......."
I wonder if the 3 majors are going to fall all over them selves to offer fair and balanced reporting as is Fox. The rebuilding of CNN is a joke. Zahn was a welcome departure from FOX. You could tell in her face the fair and balanced was killing her.
CNN's Headine news has so much crap on the screen, I need to take two advils just to flip by it.
They better get Bin Laden soon or we will all fall asleep.
What they really need is Free Republic interactive TV. It is no fun to just watch and listen.
That's fine. In fact, it's preferable, because they less they're willing to even consider the issue, the faster they'll lose viewers and readers. The days when the networks and a few select newspapers and magazines controlled all news dissemination with an iron fist are over. Thanks to the web, you can avoid the "mainstream" media entirely if you so desire, and still be far more informed than a hardcore news junkie would have been 10 or 20 years ago.
The national news media has two choices: Adapt or die.
It's news because it comes from an insider. When conservatives complain about bias, it's easy to just dismiss them, but when one of your own lets the cat out of the bag, it's tougher to just wave it off as a bunch of soreheads.
I choose Die.
Very interesting read.
Utterly preposterous. Mistaking self-deprecating humour for bigotry is one level of insolence. If you are simply trying to knock Jews it is altogether another kettle.
I take it you didn't work in editing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.