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Goldberg Predicts Collapse of Liberal Media
NewMax.com ^ | Friday, April 11, 2003 | Phil Brennan

Posted on 04/11/2003 3:05:21 PM PDT by Remedy

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Veteran CBS correspondent and best-selling author Bernard Goldberg predicts that the liberal media establishment will collapse much like the Berlin Wall.

Speaking at special NewsMax NewsMaker Forum on Thursday, Goldberg said that millions of Americans are voting with their feet and getting their news from alternative media including Fox News Channel, talk radio and Web sites such as NewsMax.com.

Goldberg explained that liberal media bias, despite an almost total blackout in Big Media about his book "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News," had created a tremendous market for it and helped make it a No. 1 New York Times best seller. (You can get an autographed copy of "Bias" from NewsMax – just click here.

Goldberg’s prediction of the coming collapse of the leftist media establishment came on the heels of news that FNC’s morning show "Fox & Friends," a cable program, actually beat CBS’s morning show, a broadcast TV program available to far more viewers.

If Larry King Interviewed Hitler …

The journalist shared the humorous side of liberal media bias.

"If Hitler were a guest on the Larry King show, Larry would ask, ‘Did you get hit by jet lag coming in?’" Goldberg joked.

"Bernard Goldberg is a man of courage and vision," explained Christopher Ruddy, editor-in-chief of NewsMax, who hosted Goldberg with several hundred NewsMax readers in attendance.

Goldberg said that his boss at CBS, Dan Rather, told him he was "dead" for revealing Rather’s and CBS News’ leftward bias.

'Traitor'

Noting that other liberal media colleagues called him a "traitor" after his groundbreaking book was published, Goldberg observed: "These are guys who don’t call real traitors a traitor. Have you ever heard a liberal news media elite call anybody a traitor? They didn’t even call that kid from Marin County, California, who was fighting with the Taliban a traitor. But they called me a traitor."

The gutsy journalist explained that contrary to the opinion of some conservative critics, the media’s liberal bias is not the result of a conspiracy.

'Provincial' Elitists

"What happens," he said, "is arguably worse. The media elite fancy themselves sophisticated, worldly people, but they are very provincial.

"They live in a bubble. The bubble is basically Manhattan and Georgetown and Washington. They go to cocktail parties and dinner parties with their smart sophisticated liberal friends in these places.

"After a while they can spot a conservative 10,000 miles a way, through brick. But they honestly think their views aren’t liberal but simply reasonable. They think they’re moderate. They think they’re mainstream. They mostly think they’re civilized whether it’s about gay rights, abortion or feminism or any of the big important social issues of our time.

"They think their views are civilized and reasonable and moderate and mainstream because ‘all my friends think that way about it.’ Then they stack their newsrooms with other like-minded people, and a kind of invisible consensus forms so that they’re either hostile to any views they don’t share or they don’t even know these views exist. So that no matter how you feel – take gay rights, for example … I acknowledge that gay marriage is a controversial subject, but we’ve had thousands of years of religious thought on this subject – to not think it’s controversial is crazy.

"Well, they don’t think these things are controversial, and that’s liberal bias. It isn’t blatant. It isn’t about going easy on Democrats and tough on Republicans. These guys would run over their liberal grandmother if they thought it would do them some good. It’s about how they see the whole world. And they see the world living in this bubble."

Goldberg cited comically horrific examples of the view from the leftist media bubble:

The late film critic Pauline Kael’s reaction to Richard Nixon’s landslide victory over George McGovern: "I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him."

"What kind of bubble did she live in?" an astounded Goldberg wondered.

Just a few weeks ago, when America was deeply divided on the wisdom of invading Iraq and millions of Americans were taking one side or another, Mary McGrory of the Washington Post wrote, "Of all the people I know, nobody is for the war in Iraq."

How, Goldberg asked, "could you be a columnist for the Washington Post and not know anybody – her word – who’s for a war in Iraq."

If It’s Not on CBS, Did It Not Happen?

Goldberg said that he’d been on talk radio shows all across the U.S. and interviewed by media outlets all over the world, but the three major U.S. media outlets that would not have him on were ABC, NBC and CBS.

He noted that NBC did offer to put him on one show – on the condition that he appear with, of all people, the disreputable and far-left Michael Moore, with the moderate Goldberg supposedly representing the far right.

Other nuggets from his talk:

The left’s newest claim, that there is conservative bias because of the preponderance of talk radio shows with right-wing views, ignores the fact that talk radio is opinion, whereas network newscasts and newspaper articles are not supposed to be opinion. The success of talk radio is the public’s reaction to the overwhelming leftist bias of the mainstream media dispensed as news.

The rejection of the media establishment is a rejection of what liberalism has become in America. This, he said, is why people have consistently rejected liberal talk radio.

When Andy Rooney made the amazing admission on the Larry King show that Dan Rather is "transparently liberal," only one newspaper in the U.S. reported it: the Washington Times.

Goldberg said that though he had long been a liberal, he has moved has found himself moving more to the right. He asked the audience if they knew anyone who was a conservative but became a liberal. "It doesn’t happen that way," he noted.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bernardgoldberg; ccrm; liberalmedia; mediabias; theleft
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To: bert
"Is that light? Do I see light at the end of the tunnel?"

Ummmm, no.

...it's only a candle.

61 posted on 04/13/2003 5:00:50 AM PDT by Landru
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To: maxwellp
Re your post No. 6. Consider this - before FreeRepublic, NewsMax, FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, Savage, JWR, et al, who did we have? No one.

First in this list is Rush. IMO he is the forerunner to those in the media who are exposing the left wing media for what it is. Rush has been a beacon burning brightly for many years.

62 posted on 04/13/2003 5:15:35 AM PDT by Misterioso
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To: Landru; bert
...it's only a candle.

Such a characterization couldn't be more wrong, misguided, and foolish.

Many years ago it was one candle - pick Buckley or Reagan or Rush for that single light that started it all, it doesn't matter. A candle exists to dispel darkness; it eventually melts to nothing as it burns. Some candles remain islands of light their whole lives; others are blessed to see their flame catch new wicks and move beyond their stand. They set a greater fire blazing because the tinder spread around them (by another hand) is ready to ignite.

That one first candle - whoever he was - has seen his little light turned into a massive wall of flame, because the time and the circumstances were ripe for burning. Those whose sole desire was to quench the flame got lazy in their cold watch for sparks as years went by without a hint of heat or light, and they discounted the significance and potential of a candle. This seemingly sudden outbreak of fire all around has caused panic in the dark enclaves of the Leftist Media, the once-entrenched Liberals in Washington, the elitists at Socialist Colleges, and the fortress builders in the National Education Association/National Endowment for the Arts/National Public Radio.

Just as wind can carry an ember over great distances, leaving intact the intervening ground, so too has the light and heat of the Conservative Movement reached across areas of the country and into segments of society that are far from the origin of the first spark. Those areas that have not yet caught fire are now surrounded by flames that at first skipped over them. The remaining dark spots will be set alight: it is just a matter of time, not probability.

Only a Cultist could see a world on fire and believe that calling the inferno a candle will quench it.

63 posted on 04/13/2003 6:17:09 AM PDT by .30Carbine (Honored to be part of the great awakening of America by donating monthly.)
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To: .30Carbine
.....The remaining dark spots will be set alight.....

Enlightenment..... The wall fell, the USSR was sundered, old Europe is faced with vitalitality that shuns socialism, American socialists on the defense, ABC in financial pain, CNN tarred with failure to report horrendous political crimes, The AOL liberal conglomerate dynasty viewed as having little econimic value, Ramallah coffee shop patrons disgusted at their own gullibility........

Darth Pelosi should be quivering in despair under her darkened rock.

64 posted on 04/13/2003 7:52:10 AM PDT by bert (Don't Panic !)
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To: redlipstick
The liberal media has taken two more hits recently. The embedding was a bullet to the heart, and today's CNN NYT article was a shot to the gut. They are taking themselves down...

I've always felt that the "embedding" was a great way to give the libs in the media a firsthand look at what the military is all about -- and give them a chance to tell the American people what was really happening on the ground and (I won't hold my breath) possibly jettison some liberal baggage about the military and American values.
65 posted on 04/14/2003 8:13:20 AM PDT by Bush2000
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To: woofie
Perky Katie Couric....

Calling her a "journalist" is like calling the Three Stooges "scholars" ...
66 posted on 04/14/2003 8:14:45 AM PDT by Bush2000
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To: Remedy
Veteran CBS correspondent and best-selling author Bernard Goldberg predicts that the liberal media establishment will collapse much like the Berlin Wall.

I've got my sledgehammer. Now where's that CNN building?

67 posted on 04/14/2003 8:15:50 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: freedumb2003
What's funny is that the Anti-war protesters are almost all old 60's hippies who never grew up trying to reclaim their "glory." Iraq is not vietnam, we are truly right and they can't stand it.

Martin Sheen, please keep a roll of duct tape available on your belt at all times.
68 posted on 04/14/2003 8:16:21 AM PDT by Bush2000
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To: Mark17
While I hope this will happen, I will not bet the farm on it. There are a ton of left wingers out there who will support them. Of course, I hope I am wrong.

The liberal media may be around, but it will be ignored by most people.

And the presstitutes will be enraged by this.

69 posted on 04/14/2003 8:16:41 AM PDT by Poohbah (Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!)
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To: Remedy
CNN capitulated to the Clinton administration, as well, in order to get exclusive access -- even going so far as to hire a bunch of Clinton flacks. Many, many people continue to call it the "Clinton News Network" for that reason. The ironic thing is that the media libs can't seem to figure out why they're being increasingly abandoned by America. "Pride comes before disaster, and arrogance
before a fall."
70 posted on 04/14/2003 8:20:42 AM PDT by Bush2000
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To: Tamar1973; narby; rwfromkansas; netmilsmom
"Reminds me of the old joke: if you are under 30 and you are a conservative, you have no heart; if you are over 30 and you are liberal, you have no brain."

Can someone point out to me where/when Churchhill said this. It is my opinion that Rose Friedman said it. Rose is an economist and the wife of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman.

71 posted on 04/14/2003 8:30:00 AM PDT by blam
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To: Remedy
So long as the majority of journalists and editors are liberals, left wing bias will continue to show up in stories.

Liberal media institutions might lose big chunks of their audience and influence, but I don't see them moving rightward to remedy this. Most of them refuse to believe that their bias has anything to do with declining readership/viewership. Also, most of them honestly believe they are in the political center. (This belief is reinforced by cries from the extreme left that claim the media is too conservative. Never mind that it is only in comparison to Stalinist organizations like ANSWER that the media could ever me considered conservative.)

The bottom line is that it will take a grass roots change of the culture of journalists to topple the liberal media. That could happen, but it will take a long, long time.
72 posted on 04/14/2003 8:34:34 AM PDT by Media Insurgent
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To: Bush2000
Perky Katie Couric....

Calling her a "journalist" is like calling the Three Stooges "scholars" ...

Compared to Couric, the Three Stooges were scholars! Just one example: Moe was years ahead of the journalists of the mid-to-late 1930s in seeing Hitler for the crackpot tyrant that he was. Also, Moe left us with a quote that seems aimed directly at the likes of Perky Katie:

"Every time you think, you weaken the nation!"

73 posted on 04/14/2003 8:42:38 AM PDT by Charles Martel
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To: blam
I first saw the liberal/conservative aphorism on one of the inside cover pages to Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative.
74 posted on 04/14/2003 8:46:20 AM PDT by js1138
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To: goodnesswins
the FALL of the LIBERAL PRESS

: )

75 posted on 04/14/2003 8:55:31 AM PDT by nicmarlo
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To: js1138
"I first saw the liberal/conservative aphorism on one of the inside cover pages to Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative."

Did he credit Winston Churchhill?

76 posted on 04/14/2003 8:57:16 AM PDT by blam
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To: blam
That was thirty-some years ago. I haven't seen a copy of that book in years.
77 posted on 04/14/2003 9:02:59 AM PDT by js1138
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To: js1138
"That was thirty-some years ago. I haven't seen a copy of that book in years."

I know what you mean. Those were the AUH2O days. Remember those bumper stickers?

78 posted on 04/14/2003 9:06:10 AM PDT by blam
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To: O.C. - Old Cracker; netmilsmom; Kurdistani
I don't think most of you understood my point. I am under 40 years old myself. That is why I found the comment so funny. I know plenty of young conservatives, I am one of them.
79 posted on 04/14/2003 9:20:03 AM PDT by Tamar1973 ("He who is compassionate to the cruel, ends up being cruel to the compassionate." Jewish sage)
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To: O.C. - Old Cracker
Lighten up.
First it is not a joke.

It is a quote from Winston Churchill and the subject was Socialism.

80 posted on 04/14/2003 9:31:20 AM PDT by Publius6961 (p>)
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