(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
Washington Post TV reviewer Tom Shales, best known for
his fawning reviews of CBS News shows and, especially, of anything
involving Dan Rather, has penned a vicious screed against Bernard
Goldberg in which Shales described the former CBS News
correspondent at a “full-time addlepated windbag.”
In his weekly column for Electronic Media, a Crain trade
publication, Shales complained about how Goldberg has hauled “out
the old canard about the media being ‘liberal' and the news being
slanted leftward,” calling it “the first refuge of a no-talent
hack.”
In fact, there's evidence Goldberg's professional colleagues
had high regard for his work since he earned six Emmy Awards for
his stories on CBS's 48 Hours.
An excerpt from the Shales piece in the January 7 Electronic
Media, which does not use a week-ahead dating and so was delivered
to subscribers just yesterday.
Disgruntled has-beens everywhere have a new hero and role model: Bernard Goldberg, the one-time CBS News correspondent and full-time addlepated windbag who is trying to make a second career out of trashing his former employer. Goldberg has picked this moment in time to haul out the old canard about the media being “liberal” and the news being slanted leftward.
It's the first refuge of a no-talent hack, that argument, and
about as old as the printing press; in fact, wasn't poor old
Gutenberg denounced in some circles as a heretic and a radical?
Mr. Goldberg would have been leading the charge, especially if
he'd earlier attempted to work in Mr. Gutenberg's shop and had
made a spectacular botch of it.Obviously hoping to follow in the footsteps of Rush Limbaugh and
Bill O'Reilly, two intellectual giants by comparison, Goldberg has
fashioned his rantings into a book succinctly titled “Bias,”
which, appropriately enough, won the dubious honor of a
commendatory editorial from The Wall Street Journal. And we all
know how unbiased those Journal editorials are. Gosh it is soooo
hard to figure out where they're coming from.Goldberg's laughably inept hate campaign began in the Journal in
1996 when it published his tirade, “Networks Need a Reality
Check.” Goldberg's specialty is conjuring vast, sweeping
generalizations that fit in with his own very obvious bias and are
based on the tiniest of specifics rather than well-researched
evidence. In his poorly written (and poorly edited) WSJ piece,
Goldberg lambasted network news divisions for flagrant leftiness
on the basis of one single piece that Eric Engberg had done for
“CBS Evening News.”…Goldberg was not only a flop as a network correspondent, he's a
lousy writer besides.Quoting Engberg as having referred to one aspect of the Forbes
plan as being its “wackiest,” Goldberg then asked in rhetorical
high dudgeon, “Can you imagine, in your wildest dreams, a network
news reporter calling Hillary Clinton's health care plan 'wacky?'
Can you imagine any editor allowing it?” Well, frankly, yes. But
Hillary Clinton and Steve Forbes were not on an equal plane. She
was first lady of the land and he was a national non-entity trying
desperately to draw attention to his failing bid for a
presidential nomination.Does Goldberg think that the press was particularly loving and
deferential to Hillary Clinton? Has there been in modern times a
first lady who suffered worse press and worse relations with the
press than poor Hill? His arguments were drivel….In his book, Goldberg bases his allegations of liberal slant not
only on what he perceived as bias in pieces that aired, but also
by jotting down small talk that he heard bandied about in the
workplace — or that we must take on faith that he heard bandied
about — and using these alleged remarks of individuals to paint
the whole profession with his broad, broad brush.Goldberg was, let's face it, not a bright shining star in the
firmament of CBS News. He usually looked disheveled and
bleary-eyed on the air, and appearance does count in a visual
medium. I remember a piece he did in the aftermath of a
hurricane that could have ended eloquently on a shot of some
household item sitting amid the horrible wasteland of debris.
Instead the piece ended with Goldberg's sallow face and his own
lame attempts at poignancy.If things didn't go his way at CBS News, it may have been less a
communist conspiracy against him than the fact that the place is
to some degree a meritocracy….
To read the Shales tirade in full, go to: www.emonline.com/shales
Remember Shales' attitude the next time you see one of his
syndicated reviews in your local newspaper.
