GOLDBERG'S ALLIES: Romenesko reports that Bernard Goldberg of "Bias" fame has some friends in the media. Speaking on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Goldberg said:

"Many people at the networks -- and I know this for a fact -- at CBS, NBC, and ABC -- agree with what I've said. I know this for an absolute fact. I've been told this by people at all three networks. But none of them either are stupid enough or courageous enough, or however you want to look at it, to come forward and say anything."

But Romenesko provides links to two stories that, once again, try to refute "Bias." One is by Danny Schechter of the lefty Mediachannel.org. Schechter starts right in:

Bias is a hot-button word. In veteran TV reporter Bernard Goldberg's hands, it is a cudgel, a weapon to strike out at the people at CBS News who rejected him after a lifetime of service, and more broadly, to advance an ideological agenda dressed up in the appealing clothing of media criticism.

I'm sure we all aspire to the lofty, non-partisan, unbiased media criticism offered by the Danny Schechters of the world. If it weren't for him, how would we find out that Goldberg's book is "published by Regnery, a long-time home for right-wing polemicists and propagandizers"? 

To (Goldberg), distortion is, it seems, any perspective not certified by the conservative policy pushers at the Heritage Foundation.

And to Schechter, any position to the right of Noam Chomsky is distortion. (Here's a revealing bio of Schechter. I'll leave it to the reader to decide what to think of a media critic who once wrote that America was like Hitler and Mr. Magoo all rolled into one, or who believes that a government-funded conservative think tank has taken over PBS.) Here's more from Schechter:

My book Mediaocracy ... on the 2000 election found the media quite hostile to liberal values and tilted toward Bush. (This conclusion was drawn by the nonpartisan analysts at MediaTenor in Germany.

Well, Danny Boy, I clicked all over MediaTenor's site (here it is) and for the life of me, I could not find much proof of this "tilt." Here's a quote from MediaTenor's analysis of the crucial final month of the campaign:

Gore had an advantage when policy issues were covered. Bush could profit from positive statements about his personality... Media Tenor Internet Analysis shows that both Bush and Gore were still heavily criticized in a very negative language.

Gore, in my view, was ultimately damaged by his association with Clinton, the first president to be impeached since the end of the Civil War. This is the reason that I believe the media was generally unenthusiastic in its coverage of Gore. But my personal problem with media bias is not the ups and downs of the political scene. It centers on coverage of certain social issues, which are invariably reported from a left-of-center perspective. Schechter doesn't even touch that. Instead, he launches into a debate about what is "liberal" and what is "conservative" that reveals his true colors. For him, today's "liberals" have been co-opted by "corporate agendas:"

The problem with "Bias" is that Goldberg doesn't seem to recognize that today's opposition movements don't even talk about liberalism or identify with its traditions. They organize against what they call "neo-liberalism," the appropriation of liberal rhetoric by conservative institutions like the World Bank or WTO to impose corporate agendas on developing countries. There is little that is liberal in neo-liberalism. Goldberg and the journalists he attacks are ALL conservative by global standards.

As I noted the other day, Harry Stein has the perfect response to this argument:

Anti-WTO types certainly aren't given much of a forum, nor are hard left critics of American foreign policy. Ralph Nader was excluded from the presidential debates with nary a whimper of protest. The difference between his beef and conservatives' is that, as even he would almost certainly acknowledge, the radical (or, if you prefer, radically populist) thinking he represents has only a tiny following. Conservatives are more or less half the population.

Finally, Schechter arrogantly tries to pass off his far-left views as somehow representing the only serious intellectual position:

It is the job of serious media scholars and analysts to debunk this pseudo-critique and replace it with a real one. Someone should explain to Goldberg about the more insidious problem of media consolidation and the pro-corporate bias that flows from it. He would probably dismiss me as a liberal if I try. And yet as a former network producer, I do agree with him on one point: "People don't trust us. And for good reason."

I have no problem with Schechter being a leftist; I just wish he wouldn't insult the rest of us by pretending that his position is that of a reasonable, objective observer.