THE REAL PROBLEM WITH NETWORK NEWS

I just finished one of the more interesting books I’ve read lately: former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg’s best-selling expose of the news media, entitled "Bias." The book is subtitled "How the Media Distort the News." The focus of the book, however, is much narrower. It should be titled, "How the Big Three television networks and in particular CBS, and even more in particular my old friend who is now my enemy Dan Rather, distort the news."

Let me say up front that I myself have never had much use for Dan Rather, but I never even get to the question of liberal bias. I don’t watch Dan Rather because he’s a pompous jackass. Remember that brief period when he was signing off his newscast by looking earnestly into the camera and saying "courage?" I do, and I’ve never taken him seriously since.

The book opens with an incident from CBS’ coverage of the 1996 election, when Steve Forbes was pushing his flat tax proposal. CBS reporter Eric Engberg did an opinion piece thoroughly trashing the idea, even going so far as to do a David Letterman style "Top Ten" list: "The Ten Wackiest Things About Steve Forbes’ Flat Tax."

Goldberg was incensed. After his protests to the network brass fell on deaf ears, he wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal lambasting the "media elites" for slanting the news. Needless to say, the high pooh-bahs at CBS were not pleased, and Goldberg’s wounded recounting of their mistreatment of him forms the backbone of the book. In case you hadn’t guessed, Goldberg feels himself particularly ill-used by Dan Rather.

Goldberg makes a number of valid points, like how the networks worked hard to make AIDS look like it was breaking out into the heterosexual community, because, the reasoning went, no one would care about it if it was a disease of gays and drug users. He also levels some savage and well-deserved criticism of the way TV news strained in the 80’s to find homeless people who were attractive, non-drug-using and non-insane, because that way, there would be more sympathy for the problem.

. After awhile, however, Goldberg returns to Rather-bashing so often and so virulently that he begins to undercut his own credibility. When Goldberg compares Rather to a Mafioso, even referring to him as "The Dan," "who kisses you on the cheek right before he puts a bullet through your eyeball…" well, it’s a bit much. This goes beyond media criticism into celebrity expose.

Goldberg, ironically, also makes the same mistake he accuses the "media elites" of making: tunnel vision. Goldberg gets so focused on his own medium, television, and his ex-network, CBS, that he sees them as the entire media world. I mean, think about it. If the media was as monolithically liberal as he says, would his editorial have been published in the Wall Street Journal? In fact, if all of the media were liberal, would there even be a Wall Street Journal? For every New York Times, there’s a Wall Street Journal. For every CBS, there’s a Fox News.

So has all this competition made the news better? On the contrary. It’s made news worse by sharpening the networks’ ravenous hunger for stories that increase viewership and, therefore, profits. The real problem with network news isn’t liberalism. It’s capitalism.

Now, put down your torches and pitchforks. I like capitalism. I’m a capitalist myself. But in the early days of TV news, it was pretty well assumed that it was going to be a money loser. TV news was regarded as the medium’s attempt at rendering a public service by idealists, and as the medium’s attempt to ingratiate itself with regulatory authorities by cynics.

Either way, no one expected profits from news. But when the news departments started falling under the control the entertainment divisions, they were expected to deliver the ad dollar. When the bottom line started taking precedence over the public service function of the news…well, as the Dixie Chicks say, "there’s your trouble."

Goldberg reveals more of this problem than he realizes, and in doing so, undercuts his own argument. After recounting the 1999 NAACP charge that black and minority characters were underrepresented in prime time sitcoms and dramas, Goldberg goes on to note that blacks and minorities also don’t get much play on the news, either. An anonymous NBC producer tells him "there’s no profit in people of color." So I’m confused…the networks are both liberal and racist?

Let’s examine another anecdote, from the chapter entitled "The Most Important Story You Never Saw on TV." The story in question involves the reported negative effects of working mothers leaving their children in day-care or home alone. TV news, Goldberg charges, would rather focus on the John Wayne Bobbits or Gary Condits than do a story that might ruffle the feathers of feminists. But do the networks refrain from covering this story because of liberal bias or because working moms buy a lot of stuff?

Bashing liberals certainly sells books. But Goldberg, in Jesus’ immortal words, "strains at a gnat, but swallows a camel." Like TV news itself, Goldberg’s book plays to the desires and prejudices of its target audience, but finally misses the real story.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.