Media Bias and Arrogance – A Tale of Two Scandals
Bernard Goldberg says the disparity in the mainstream media’s treatment of two recent Washington dustups clearly demonstrates his point about media "Bias" (discussed in his first book) and "Arrogance" (outlined in his current best seller). And Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., accuses his party of "goose-stepping" toward electoral disaster.
Goldberg’s comments came in an exclusive interview with NewsMax at the National Press Club’s annual Book Fair in Washington.
When the Democrats thought they had finally snared the Bush administration in an uproar over a leak to columnist Robert Novak about the identity of a mere policy analyst at the CIA, the networks trumpeted the story every hour on the hour for several days.
Even with all of that ballyhoo, the story has petered out, as the administration has launched an investigation.
Contrast that with the media treatment of a leaked memo written by a Democrat staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee dealing with the far more serious allegation that Democrats on the committee have crafted a master plan to use intelligence information available to the supposedly "nonpartisan" panel to undercut the commander in chief during a time of war. All this while American men and women are putting their lives on the line.
That story was prominently covered by NewsMax.com, the Washington Times, Fox News, radio talk show host Sean Hannity (who broke the story) and a few other conservative outlets, but was barely touched by the big networks or major metropolitan dailies.
"Since most journalists – nobody would argue with this – are liberal, they see things through a liberal prism,” the former CBS correspondent told NewsMax’s Wes Vernon.
"If Bob Novak, a conservative, did anything controversial, they’re going to go after him, and they’re going to make an issue of it," he said.
"If a Democratic senator from West Virginia [Jay Rockefeller, who reportedly authorized the staff memo] was involved in something, they see it in a totally different context."
The media elite "live in an elite bubble," according to Goldberg, "and inside this bubble, just about everybody agrees with everybody else on just about everything."
What is needed is "more people in there with different points of view" so that the very question raised by NewsMax would be addressed by them. "There’s nobody to ask the question that you just asked me," the author added.
Later that same evening, just a few blocks away, Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., chided his fellow Democrats for marching in a "goose step" on issues ranging from filibustering judges to national security to the Rockefeller-authorized memo.
At a book party celebrating his best seller "A National Party No More," the senator noted that Democrat leaders have all but written off the South. If party chairman Terry McAuliffe or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were to travel down South and try to sell the people there on the national party’s leadership positions, the results "would be a disaster," he opined.
You cannot ignore a third of the country "and call yourself a national party," he told the crowded hotel ballroom just one block from the White House.
Miller was introduced by former Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., who praised the senator’s support of President Bush’s tax cuts.
Comparing them to the tax cuts of Democrat President Kennedy in the ’60s, Kemp – the 1996 GOP vice presidential candidate – intoned, "I’m a Republican, but I revere John F. Kennedy."
Miller said the current Democrat presidential hopefuls are less like Kennedy and more like George McGovern and Walter Mondale, each of whom carried just one state in 1972 and 1984, respectively.
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