Customer Reviews

Coloring the News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Both Bernard Goldberg and William McGowan have written books about the obvious bias in newsrooms today. Goldberg's book, Bias, was written with specific reference to his many years at CBS news. McGowan has written a more generalized and philosophical book about how publishers, managers and editors made conscious decisions to "diversify" their newsrooms in an effort to present a more complete and balanced view of the world in which we live.

McGowan believes that effort became corrupted early on. Instead of presenting a useful, broadened view of our complex lives, the news today has become much more narrowed. Political correctness reigns, with journalists who are now advocates rather than reporters. Different points of view, once cherished, are now discouraged or attacked outright within the newsrooms themselves. Not that alternate views are never published or aired. But to do so requires the journalist to undergo heavy criticism, intimidation, and in some cases, complete ostracism. For journalists who might report different views, McGowan writes that many have found those stories not worth the effort. Something of that sort seems to have happened to Goldberg.

In the end, today's news has nothing to do with intellectual curiosity tracking through a wide range of opinions; that is, real diversity. It is only about promoting preferred groups and skin color.

Back in the days of the Soviet era, the West made snide remarks about news coverage in the Soviet Union, how only news that made Communism look good was printed, and anything that would make it look bad ignored; how facts were ingeniously twisted to make a sorry situation look like a Communist triumph, how only the bad things about capitalism were printed. The West patted itself on the back for its investigative journalism, its freedom to pursue and print the truth, unhindered by authoritarian forces.

Yet today in the USA, we now have the same type of situation as the Communist regime. Here, there is no government doing such extreme filtering of the news, though; the news media are doing it themselves. These unelected bastions of power control the public agenda and use their unchallenged power to force their ideological crusades onto unsuspecting news consumers. Now they are the ones deserving of the snide remarks.

I have long been agitated by the liberal bias of the mainstream news. I enjoy reading left-wing magazines like Mother Jones, In These Times, The Nation, etc., to get an understanding of the views of the left. These are not irritating because they wear their bias on their sleeve. What is irritating is how the mainstream media, who try to parade themselves as being neutral, are anything but. It's easy to pick up in things like little phrases they use. One example I'll never forget was a comment in passing by Dan Rather on CBS News, something about "a woman's constitutional right to an abortion." Whoa! And where in the constitution is that? And how about coverage on the evolution issue. Remember the Kansas debacle? All they did was to remove the required testing of macroevolution (one species turning into another), without removing the required teaching of microevolution (adaptational change within species). Yet to hear the media scream about it, you'd think they'd decided to teach the book of Genesis in schools and ditch evolutionary theory.

Yes, I am familiar with plenty of bias in the news media, but this book gave me far more examples, most of which I had not read about, and dug at a deeper level. It was incredible to see how far journalists are going to preserve their cherished ideologies. It's every bit as dishonest as the Soviet propaganda machine was. If anything does not fit with the Politically Correct Script, it is either ignored or twisted so far as to give a picture opposite of the facts.

Like other reviewers here stated, this book was quite upsetting to read. Yet that didn't make me not want to read it; it was too good. Most of the book is example after example of how prominent social issues have been reported in a fashion that originates from a narrow view of the way the world should be, as well as examples of the cruel treatment given to those journalists who dared to report something outside of the Script.

Until I got to the last two chapters of this book, I would have rated it a 4 (see About Me for details on my grading system), but the last two chapters upped it to a 5. Up until then, the stories were fascinating, but were only reports of the sorry state of American journalism. The last two chapters offered some analysis, and it was so striking that it was like twisting the dagger after the stabbing. In these last two chapters, I found myself writing comments in the margins, McGowan's analysis was so good. He showed how the media's rejection of anything outside of their ideological goals in order to help their agenda is instead hurting it. They have shied away from some types of reports to avoid conservative backlash, but they're getting it anyway because it has become too obvious that they are not reporting, but rather crusading.

And that's something else striking in these final two chapters: how some journalists have actually admitted that they are not interested in objective reporting, but in championing causes. Some even scorn the ideal of objective reporting as a white cultural imperialist idea! Others take the multiculturalist/relativist idea to the hilt and claim there are no such things as facts, only different "stories." These are the kinds of things that really send this book over into 5-star territory--the actual admissions by journalists regarding their view of the news, newspaper editors crying out that their paper is going to stop a certain referendum in an election, of reporters admitting they are afraid to write some things they have discovered for fear of ostracism and loss of career possibilities...

This book shows that it's even worse than I thought. Knowing that journalists' own worldviews are far more liberal than Americans as a whole, it's understandable that their views are going to come out in their reporting. But to learn of the many blatant attempts to aggressively filter the news so that their causes never get bad coverage, to learn of the McCarthyism present in newsrooms, and to learn of their own admission that "the news" is no longer about facts, it shows that American journalism has truly lost its way.

I used to think of the New York Times as a classy newspaper. I have now finished three books that deal with news reporting (My Country Vs. Me, It Ain't Necessarily So, and this one), and in all three books, there is example after example of the shoddy journalism of the New York Times. In "It Ain't Necessarily So," sometimes the New York Times comes out on the side of accuracy, but even in that book, the inaccuracies far outweigh the accuracies. The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post are two other newspapers rife with dogmatic adherence to the Script.

My policy has long been to read from magazines on both the clear Left and the clear Right. I have found this to be a better way to discern what's really going on than reading mainstream media. This book shows how much they cannot be trusted.

McGowan exposes in great detail about what many of know: the media, in its conscious decision to add minorities to its staff at any cost, has destroyed journalistic impartiality on many important issues. McGowan's major point is that as this country moves headlong into major demographic changes, without any input from its citizens, the media has been complicit or silent about this historical change. Most of this is due to the fear and intimidation of non-minority journalists coupled with the addition of minority journalists who are cheerleaders and advocates for these changes. McGowan is particularly strong on the subject of immigration, where he describes the nearly universal lack of discussion on this critical subject. In light of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, the failure of the media to discuss this subject has had tragic consequences. A must read for those concerned about the future of journalism and the future of the United States.

In the same vein as Bernard Goldberg with his book "Bias:", Bill McGowan speaks out about the heresy of those who are purveyers of the news as reported by the major networks and the nation's leading newspapers. He cites the by-now familiar tale of political correctness gone awry thru yet another attempt by the politically Left to be fair and balanced. The hitch is that this group's idea of fairness and balance is as exclusionary as any you can name in any historical context you care to conjure up. Bias is bias whether from the Left or the Right, but man's need to feel virtuous coupled with his infinite capacity for self deception leads to a metaphorical snow blindness when it comes to seeing reality thru a clear lens.

McGowan's thesis is that the media, in an attempt to be more inclusive of different opinions in the newsroom, has hired reporters who have become advocates for their particular issues which has resulted in the omission of facts unsupportive of that individuals particular advocacy. This has reduced to a stream of issue advocacy reportage on subjects such as racial relations, gay and lesbian musings, feminist positions, the homeless, global warming, and PETA to name just a few. The result has been a steady stream of slanted world views conflicting with those of mainstream America. According to McGowan this has fueled the rise of talk-radio and the internet as mediums where dissenting listeners and viewers can now go and get there information. One might aver that this syndrome is also responsible for the falling market share of the major networks juxtaposed to the commensurately risng share garnered by the Fox Network.

This trend is merely another example of trends going to extremes before correcting back to more normative levels. In this instance most of those on the Right would suggest that it's about time. As an example, the media became furious with Richard Nixon for labeling Helen Gahagan Douglas a Communist back in 1948 and they never forgave him for it. This would suggest that Left-leaning bias goes back far beyond this recent period that McGowan describes in his book. In any event, the explosion of power of the microchip, and its declining cost has propelled the proliferation of information which has accrued to the betterment of us all notwithstanding our political persuasions. And, this has made a better world than the one where dictators have been able to persevere by preaching the big lie to their followers. Think Taliban.

This is another good book to add to your library of books on man's continuing search for liberty and justice.

If you want to know how a Jayson Blair could have happened, this is the book for you.

Although Coloring the News was published in 2001, author William McGowan shows how Blair, far from being the fluke he has been portrayed as by the mainstream media, was inevitable. McGowan chronicles how - following the lead of New York Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - major mainstream, daily newspapers, and TV news operations all over America, gave up on telling the truth as the goal of the news business. And he names names.

Sulzberger & Co. replaced truth with "diversity" (radicalized affirmative action aka multiculturalism aka political correctness), which involves not only hiring as reporters and editors black and Hispanic (also gay and feminist) applicants with inferior qualifications, but also imposing the multicultural/pc "script" on the reporting of events, which means that often there is no reporting at all, or only fraudulent reporting, in which certain parties are quoted and certain research cited, no matter how dishonest the former and no matter how discredited the latter is.

McGowan demonstrates how many media organizations, particularly the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, ABC News, CBS News and NPR, have botched story after story after story. He does his best work skewering the New York Times, which over the past ten years, has become a self-caricature of a great metropolitan daily. I know what a good job McGowan does on the Times, because I've covered many of the stories he discusses, and have caught the Times misrepresenting many stories he doesn't discuss.

The author argues that in seeking to be cheerleaders for certain groups, the media have hurt them, by suppressing unpleasant truths which must be faced, in order to help the groups.

Examining dozens of stories focusing on race, sex (feminism and homosexuality) and immigration, McGowan shows how in each case the mainstream media engaged in deliberate misrepresentation, ignored salient facts that contradicted their "script," or killed the story outright. For instance, he contrasts coverage of the Matthew Shepard murder with coverage of the murder of Jesse Dirkhising.

In the first month after two thugs robbed and murdered openly gay, Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard, over 3,000 stories were devoted to the case, which was exploited, in order to get hate crime legislation passed that treated the murder of gays as more of a crime than the murder of heterosexuals. Meanwhile, the murder of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising by two gay pedophiles in Arkansas, was "killed," with only 46 stories appearing the first month after the murder. The New York Times alone ran 195 stories on the Shepard case, but NONE on Jesse Dirkhising, including during the March, 2001 trial of one of his killers (he was convicted; the other later pleaded guilty). The reason was simple: Covering the Shepard case cast gays in the role of victims; covering the Dirkhising case cast gays as the villains, which political correctness forbids.

Another group of botched big stories McGowan which dissects concern female Air Force and Navy officers who, though incompetent and/or guilty of flouting service rules, were pushed along the path to pilot, because the Pentagon had adopted illegal quotas for women pilots. As McGowan shows, any number of major media outlets (CBS News, the Times, NPR) insisted on presenting these stories, the facts be damned, as cases of heroic women battling an oppressive patriarchy.

And McGowan shows how the corruption of the Washington Post, via diversity, harmed the District of Columbia during the years-long political control of Mayor Marion Barry, a corrupt, drug-addled, megalomaniac. Instead of exposing Barry, black Post reporters and editors protected him, and harassed white reporters out of doing serious work on his corrupt administration. The black staffers engaged in openly racist harassment, "spiking stories," or causing them to die the death of a thousand cuts, through constant demands for more information.

Considering the author's restrained tone, it is a minor miracle that this book was published at all. Consider the review from Publisher's Weekly posted at the amazon.com web site, whose author called McGowan's book "inflammatory." The critic didn't come up with a single example of "inflammatory" writing, because none exists. What the writer really meant was, 'How dare he show up my politics for the soft totalitarianism that it is!'

Similarly, Library Journal reviewer Susan M. Colowick calls McGowan's evidence "impressive" and "anecdotal" in the same sentence, and attacks him for "refer[ring] to the 'outdated paradigm of white oppression' and repeatedly us[ing] the value-laden term illegitimacy for out-of-wedlock births."

In a review for Washington Monthly, McGowan's old stomping grounds, Seth Mnookin attacked McGowan for laying into a New York Times writer who had described mass murderer Roland Smith Jr./Abubunde Mulocko (who committed the December, 1995 Harlem Massacre, murdering seven people) as a man of "principle." But McGowan told the truth! (I read the Times article.)

And then there's the Times, the "Grey Lady" herself, whose brass refused to assign a writer to review Coloring the News. (When the Times' editors are pushing a book, they will run as many as three positive reviews of it by different writers on different days.)

In the mainstream media, nothing has changed. In the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, where internships and jobs were thrown at an incompetent, unqualified young man by the nation's biggest media organizations (the Boston Globe, Washington Post, AND the Times) solely because of the color of his skin, mainstream reporters have been screaming from the rooftops, "Race had nothing to do with it!" and branding anyone who would state the obvious (in spite of then-Times Executive Editor Howell Raines' confession) a "hater."

As McGowan points out, the refusal of the mainstream media to honestly report the news, has fueled the explosion of the Web and talk radio as news sources. And so, Big Media can call their critics "racist!," "sexist!," and "homophobic!" all they want, or try and kill them with silence. Bill McGowan warned the media, but they ignored him. The corporate media still push agitprop in place of the news, and continue to wonder why the public increasingly deserts them.

Affirmative action corrupts, diversity corrupts absolutely.

Originally published in The Critical Critic, 6 July, 2003.

Absolutely enlightening! McGowan's "Coloring the News" reconfirms that the mainstream national news media, certainly the New York Times, have a devious, "politically correct" agenda.

The most recent debacle of the NY Times and their ex-reporter, liar and plagiarist Jayson Blair, is merely more fuel on the fire of "Big Brother" media manipulation of the public.

As a retired Chicago Police Department sergeant and homicide detective, I know first hand that what is arguably the most egregious and sadistically degrading murders in America within fifty years, if not ever, culminated on December 15, 2001 in what has become known as "the Wichita Massacre". However, the New York Times and the mainstream media, with the possible exception of Fox and the Washington Times (NOT the Post)totally ignored coverage of this home-invasion, robbery, burglary, rape by the the two perpetrators (the hate-filled, bloodthirsty Carr brothers, Reginald and Jonathan) and the five victims. The three male and two female victims were even forced to have sex amongst themselves at gunpoint, using beating and torture. This all culminated in the five naked victims being taken to a desolate soccer field in the freezing pre-dawn hours, forced to kneel in the snow and being shot in the head, execution-style. The Carr brothers then returned to the initial scene where they burglarized "everything but the kitchen sink" and shot and killed a tiny, helpless pet dog.

Despite all this and my letters to the New York Times and other major media, the heinous and hate-filled details of this case--indeed, the case, itself--was confined to local Kansas news coverage. After promising gavel-to-gavel trial coverage for its viewers, even Court TV reneged.

Oh, one other thing! Unlike the tragic, cause celebre murders of James Byrd, Jr. and Matthew Shepard, all seven Wichita victims were white and the since convicted and condemned Carr brothers are black.

(Sgt.) John Northen (Ret.)
Chicago Police Dept.
Area 6 Homicide-Sex

This book made me sick.

I had already known of the left bias of the majority of the media (save the Wall Street Journal and Fox News Network among others) but I had no idea of the stomach-churning depths to which reporters and editors would go to further a doctrine.

Time was when the press primarily reported the news, and gave us opinions on a separate page. True, everyone may have a bias, but one can at least make an effort to report objectively! Not only do many reporters reveal their blatant biases, but they actually print stories to "futher the cause" (you name it, affirmative action, welfare, bilingual education, ubiquitous racism, socialized medicine etc).

McGowan certainly did his homework. His book liberally plumbs the depths of the media's "crusade for diversity" making it quite clear that there is nothing wrong with diversity as a quality. But a dogmatic forced diversity serves no one, and in fact leads to balkanization.

The New York Times is possibly the worst offender. The Wall Street Journal in fact, publishes all the news that's fit to print, and the New York Times prints everything that's left. (Pun intended)

Small criticism: the hundreds of reference citations in the back of the book are listed by page, rather than using numerical footnotes in the body of the text. While this is less distracting to the reader, it is a little frustrating to try to look up his source for a specific quote.

I strongly recommend this book. If you don't believe what he says, then simply look up his sources to check his data. You'll be saddened by the truth.

Next to terrorism, race may be the most important issue of our day. It affects us in the workplace, as taxpayers, as human beings. This eye-opening, astonishingly brave book powerfully shows how the media is brainwashing us and how that brainwashing is devastating us all as individuals and as a society. This is the most riveting non-fiction book I have read in years.

Growing up in socialist Eastern Europe and now working in
the American academia, I'm often struck by similarities
in two societies when it comes to political debate. In one,
as in the other, there are assumptions you don't dare to
question if your career is dear to you. In the American
liberal circles, to which the intellectual elite (academics,
journalists, lawyers, business leaders, etc.) largely
belongs, the commandments are of two major types: first,
you must believe in the state supported corporate capitalism,
second, you must feel that the world owes something to
``minorities.'' The definition of various minority groups
seems genuinly crazy (as a good excersise, try to
find who is a Hispanic), and lack of a priviliged
life is definitely not among the requirements, but
propaganda on their behalf is relentless.

The book describes how this development, commonly
referred to as ``promoting diversity,'' is affecting the
news media. It is a little irritating that the author
doesn't even aknowledge the other ideological tendencies
of the media, such as the pro-business bias, jingoism,
penchant for irrelevant crime and medical scare stories, etc.,
but he does a good job on his chosen subject. The book is
well-written and tells good stories interwoven with
passionate arguments. This is a book easy to hate if you
disagree with the author, and it will raise your blood pressure
if you dislike political correctness, but is intelligent
and over all a good read.

William McGowan has written a telling analysis that does for newspapers, especially the New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, what Bernard Goldberg did for television commentators, especially those at CBS, in his recent book, "Bias." Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but when newspapers hide differing points of view from their readers, as McGowan says these journals do, then they are giving us editorials instead of news and disguising the fact. McGowan's chief asset is that he offers in one book of some 250 pages, all the facts we need to judge whether he fairly targets the "enemy." He claims to be neither liberal nor conservative, but conservatives will have more cause to rejoice after reading this book.