It's the book President Bush was carrying as he walked toward the helicopter.  On the evening of  January 24th, 2002, Marvin Kalb said on PBS that Goldberg's critical statements about the big media in this book are "dangerous."  Had Goldberg had the guts or the wits, this was the key moment for a forceful intervention.  He let the moment pass, though.  He spoke defensively.   It's understandable.  Until recently, he had never voted for a Republican in his life. 

(In fact, if my information is correct, Goldberg was at CBS longer than Kalb!  This isn't a work by an outsider.  It's a piercing narrative by a longtime insider.)

    Marvin Kalb is a perfect example of why Bernard Goldberg wrote this book.  Kalb is the winner of  many awards, a thirty year journalist with CBS, a part time Harvard professor and a man who writes for some of the better known publications of our times.  A journalism veteran of many domestic and foreign wars, Kalb's addiction is to the precepts of liberalism.  Like most liberal journalists, he either doesn't know he is biased, or claims that what others see as a bias is a world view that adds to instead of subtracts from the value of his work   These two conditions are known as "denial" and "magical thinking" within the addiction treatment field. 

The photo of Kalb, below, came from and is a hotlink to a Harvard page about a manuscript he wrote.  You really should click on Kalb, then on "Foreword and Introduction."  You will read about some amazing things that happened in elevators with presidential bodyguards..  In there, you will come to the following text: How is this change in journalistic standards to be explained? How could the press have ignored Kennedy's escapades but blasted Bill Clinton for his? The answer is that journalism has changed dramatically in this forty-year period, just as the nation has changed. The business of the news has been radically recast. 

Kalb thought the press exposure of the Lewinsky affair was a shameful breach of journalistic ethics.  We'll set aside the fact that if not for the internet and talk radio, both of which have strong conservative segments, the story would never have gone public. Goldberg, himself, doesn't believe that last sentence.  He thinks that Nielson is the final arbiter of network judgement, and the primetime reason they went after Bubba and his Oral Office..  But, Kalb's holy brothers, contrary to Goldberg's belief, did their best to suppress every major Clinton scandal that came along.  (Was it Newsweek that sat on the Brodderik rape story for weeks until some reporter forced management to print it when he slipped the information to Drudge?)  Even the fact that the Lewinsky business led to proof Clinton had lied under oath doesn't seem to justify the coverage in Kalb's philosophy.   A judge fined Clinton for the perjury.  He lost his license to practice law because of that judgement.  None of that matters to Kalb.

If the perjury is just about sex, it is a perjury the founding fathers weren't talking about when they wrote the U.S. Constitution.  To Kalb's American media, it is proper to lie if they approve of the reason.  Stalin believed the same thing.  So does the New York Times. (See Wilson in this issue.)  Now, after decades of defense of liberal lies, culminating with an eight year defense of the most prodigious top executive liar to ever live in the White House, Kalb's American media is shocked at the lies told by the top executives at Enron?  Some criminals who rip off a bunch of American 401K accounts are more egregious than the administration that gave us Motel Whitehouse, the Terrorist Pardon Saturday Market, a thousand illegal FBI files, travelgate, transfer of MIRV technology to China, Ron Brown's Commerce Department DNC campaign donation business flights, and Enron, itself? 

You were under the impression that Enron began as a company on January 20, 2001?  Don't blame you.  This scandal was a week old before the press mentioned that Bush and Cheney weren't the only people to receive campaign funding from Enron.  Most of the Democrats investigating Enron got Enron money.  But, have you heard from Kalb's media if Clinton got any Enron money? (Or that he appointed as Comptroller General a partner in Enron's accounting firm?) Have you heard that Enron, the home of the evil Republican anti-environmentalists, supported the Kyoto Accords?  Do you know anybody named Al Gore who supported the Kyoto Accords, too?  Did Al Gore only take campaign donations from Buddhists?

   (The photo at right is from, and is a hot link to, a web page "letter" by Terence Smith.)   This evening's News Hour segment about Goldberg's book was ecclesiastical in nature.  Something from the Inquisition, where the judges and the prosecutor are in complete accord, and the trial's outcome is known before the first gavel.   The moderator, Senior News Hour producer, Terence Smith, showed his true colors quite soon..  Mr. Goldberg said, "We label conservatives conservatives.  Why don't we also label liberals liberals?"  Mr. Smith then said, "You label people.  You do it in your book." 

   It was perfect.  These are famous journalists, folks.  Kalb and Smith are mainstream media icons.  When a man said, "We should label both sides for our audience," they responded with, "Well, you label people in your book."

A total disconnect, it was, similar in some respects to reaction to the Riegner cable in October of 1942.  (The one that brought the news that a holocaust was underway in Europe.)  It was like the first news that somebody was flying commercial airliners into New York City buildings.  The concept is too shocking to accept.  People ask how could an entire profession be blind to its bias?  Ask in return, how could an entire nation follow Hitler?  Kalb, like those millions of Germans, is in denial. He is afraid of the truth.  Velvil's blood, the blood of the Polish Resistance, does not run in his veins. Nor does the intellect of Copernicus, a searcher for facts, infuse his skull..

   Terence Smith knows the rites of the Church of Our Concerned Media Liberal..  Public anger is to be shown only as a facet of concern, and then only in a degree lesser than the media prince present who has the most invitations to New York City penthouse cocktail parties held above the forties.  I don't think he likes Goldberg, anymore, but also believe he pities him for his coming banishment. 
     And Kalb, the Inquisitor? 

 Goldberg gave specific examples of press bias to the left.  Kalb said there is no bias because there couldn't be.  Goldberg reinforced his specific examples, adding the results of a survey of Beltway journalists.  (Something like 80% of them voted for Clinton.)  Kalb said that in all his years in journalism, nobody had ever asked him to slant a story.  Goldberg apparently didn't think of the answer in time.
     Kalb doesn't need prompting to do biased reporting any more than a salmon needs prompting to head upstream.
     He kept his job because he doesn't know that he is biased.
     Goldberg tried to explain that this is a condition generated by long associaton with liberals in bigtime media, but Kalb just waved the idea off.  Dismissed it.

      Another thing that Kalb said (mentioned at the top of this editorial) was that this was dangerous speech coming from Goldberg.
      Let me repeat that.
      An award-winning, world famous mainstream media journalist said it is dangerous to suggest the mainstream media is biased to the left. There was also, as I recall, a Kalb reference to "fire," perhaps as in "flames."
      One was reminded of a famous painting of the trial of Galileo.
      Dan Rather is the one with the cardinal's cape. You can see by his scowl that if given the chance he would vote for a cleansing, not just house arrest.
      It is dangerous for Bernard Goldberg to suggest the mainstream media is biased to the left.  Marvin Kalb said that.  In front of millions of people. 
      Dangerous to who?
      Here is a quote from a speech by Kalb.  It has to do with the holocaust.

To speak to the Nazis about the Holocaust, or anything other than their "unconditional surrender," was unacceptable to Roosevelt. As he told an aide, "We will have no truck with fascism in any way, in any shape."
  -- The Journalism of the Holocaust

      Marvin Kalb thinks FDR should have tried to negotiate with Hitler.  He thinks talking about a bias in American journalism is dangerous, but believes chatting with Nazis about their mass murders of Jews might have swayed them to moderate their behavior. 
       I know the question in your mind.  Does an uncle of Kalb's own the network?  I have no idea, but doubt it.  CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and PBS are all infested with people who are as naive as Kalb.  He says that you'll find both liberals and conservatives at these networks.  If that's true, I can tell you where they work.  The liberals work for the news departments and programming.  The conservatives clean the floors.  It's an epidemic of liberal journalism, and the resulting bias doesn't stop at the top.  It reaches all the way down to the local level.

    This morning, on the local ABC affiliate, I heard the award-winning TV journalist, Paul Linnman, express outrage at the fact that there aren't more women in congress.  Other than a quota system that awards bonus imaginary votes in the election contests to women, thus guaranteeing a win for women in all close races, I can't imagine what could be done about the problem.  That's the method universities use to stack the deck in favor of women and selected protected minorities when it comes to admission..  I don't think you could make it against the law for men to hold elective office. I don't think you can use government money to selectively finance the political careers of women.   There'd be a fuss about that.  It would have to be some gimmick, like the affirmative action device, above.

  .  Who knows what Linnman has in mind?  He's had the electric podium for at least twenty years, now.  And, God only knows how many groups around the PacNW he has spoken to in person for lo these many decades. It isn't like Oregon is unfertile ground for the airheaded concepts of political correctness.  Since things aren't proper, perhaps he should blame himself.  The other stations are manned by Marvin Kalbs, too.  Their politically correct message has dominated for decades. 

   They've got half the registered voters,  the schools, the movies and most of the media, and there still aren't enough women in congress?  .I've got it!  The McCain-Feingold anti-1st Amendment (and so unconstitutional) campaign finance reform act!  It shuts down most if not all paid advertising for candidates about a month before election day, doesn't it?.  That means the media will control all political speech during the time most people make up their mind who they're going to vote for.  Just what's needed to elect a politically correct ticket!   When the press can speak, but the candidate cannot respond, then the press will be able to select the politicians Marvin Kalb and Paul Linnman prefer.  O happy day!

       Read Goldberg's Bias.  Amazon has it.  It's actually rather mild.  It's sneaky, though.  He gets to you using facts.  No modern liberal journalist would think of doing something like that.  Kalb mentioned that the book is atop some bestseller lists.  He expressed and displayed astonishment that the American people would be interested in a book like this.  That's his denial, again.  It's part of the liberal disease.  In his heart, he knows what's best for every American, right down to which books about media bias we shouldn't read, how many women should be in congress, and whether we should be allowed to drive an SUV.

It's a pity that Bernard Goldberg has never even heard of my fable, Far Walker.  The story of a lemming who refused to go along with the crowd, it perfectly describes his future.  (LL)

(C) 2002 Oregon Magazine