Georgene Rice Radio: Media critic Bernie Goldberg

Portland-Seattle Radio host Georgene Rice of KPDQ-FM interviewed with Bernie Goldberg, author of “A Slobbering Love Affair: The True and Pathetic Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.”

Georgene: It’s not often we tell a love story, but this is a story that just begs to be told. It is a slobbering, true story about the torrid romance between Barack Obama and the mainstream media. According to Bernie Goldberg, the media’s one-sided coverage of the recent Presidential campaign shredded any trust the mainstream media had with most Americans, moving from cheerleaders to active participants in the political arena.

BG: The book has a serious message. The media rolled over for one candidate over the other. They were on a noble mission and didn’t care who knew about it.

Georgene: This book is not just a retelling that the media has a media bias. This goes beyond that.

BG: This time they went from media bias to media activism. They thought it would be more important to elect the first black president than the first woman president. In liberal, elite circles race trumps gender. They had the opportunity to elect someone who was, young, cool, black and liberal. Chris Matthews said he felt a thrill running up his leg when he heard Obama talk. But, this wasn’t the worst I heard. On page one of the Washington Post they wrote an article about his exercise regiment. It read, “The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals, sculpted during four weight lifting sessions, a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.” This is something you’d expect to read in a romance novel. How in the world are they now going to cover him when he is president?

Georgene: That’s the part that really concerns me. It is one thing that they went out of there way to go beyond journalism and fawning, but now they have invested so much in his success they can’t permit him to fail. Whatever he does must have a silver lining to the exclusion of perhaps the whole story.

BG:
Anything that goes well will be credited to Barack Obama. But, if things don’t go well, he is too historically important to fail. They will find a way to blame someone else.

Georgene:
Do you think they were aware when the line was crossed and they were exposing themselves as ideologues? As you’ve said, they are like fish that don’t know they’re wet.

BG: They are the only ones left who don’t get what is going on. In a Pew poll, 70% of the people surveyed said the media wanted Barack Obama to win. That broke down into 90% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats.

Georgene: Let’s talk about another consequence of this shift. You call it the Palin Derangement Syndrome and make the point there were some hard and fast reasons that was the case.

BG:
Whether you like her or not, there was nothing that she did that warranted the insane hatred that was directed toward her. One wrote the rise of Sarah Palin was like the rise of Nazism. Part of it was her conservative pro-life policies. But, I think liberal feminists were incensed that the most prominent woman in America it was not one of them. It was a conservative, church-going, gun-totting woman with five kids who didn’t go to Harvard or Yale. What they really hated was not her politics, but that she was an ordinary American. Liberal elites look down there noses at ordinary Americans.

Georgene: Is there anything the media can do to salvage their reputation? What is the fix to the problem?

BG: If they think they have too much at stake in Obama to allow him to fail, they will lose any credibility they had left. I don’t care if they fail, but the real danger is that the press is the only institution that has government protections,  so they can be the watchdogs of government. But, if nobody trusts them and the watchdog barks, no one will pay attention, and that is scary. The fix is affirmative action for the smallest minority in the news room—conservatives. They have skin-deep diversity—black and white liberals, Hispanic and Asian liberals, male and female liberals, gay and straight liberals—but what we really need is a diversity of ideas. Both liberal and conservative reporters should be told to keep their opinions to themselves, but at least they would be bringing a different world view to their reporting.

### To catch all of Georgene Rice listen to her on KPDQ-FM here.


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