— I heard Wm. McGowan on the radio today, pitching his book Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism. He discussed the made-up anti-Arab backlash that was supposed to have swept the nation in the wake of Sept. 11, a fine example of the liberal media suffusing their reporting with wish-fulfillment. Here’s a description of the book from his web site:
McGowan subjects the journalism of the New York Times, the Washington Post and other prestigious news organizations to careful analysis in showing how the quest for “diversity” has influenced not only editorial policy but news gathering itself. The diversity that has seized hold of the nation’s newsrooms does not value true diversity of opinion, he maintains, but instead promotes one-sided reporting-by-the-numbers.
The message seems to be similar to that of Bernard Goldberg’s Bias, and I hope it’s better-supported. There’s nothing worse than a weak argument for the correct point of view.
Some links for your reading pleasure:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28745-2002Jan10¬Found=true
http://www.coloringthenews.com/
http://mediaminded.blogspot.com/
Ah, the Anti-Arab backlash. Well do I remember all the anti-Arab things I did! Like go out to eat at local Middle Eastern restaurants (mmm, lamb shishkebab, hummous, baba ganoush (sp?)), taking Islamic Thought last semester, going to Islamic Understanding week events at my university, etc., etc,. Truly life in these United States must be a trial of fear for Arab families.
The mention of the reasons for the reporting of the non-existent Arab backlash reminds me of a paragraph in a New Yorker essay a few weeks back. The writer decided to check the source for racist aspects and didn’t find any. How do we know? Because she told us.
Doesn’t anybody edit these people?
I have read both “Bias” and “Coloring the News”, and I can attest to the fact that McGowan’s book is much more persuasive than Goldberg’s effort. Goldberg’s book was written from a rather limited, personal perspective, whereas McGowan cites example after example at a multitude of targets. “Bias”, despite its strong points, seemed to be a hatchet job on Dan Rather, while McGowan doesn’t resort to personal attacks in :Coloring the News”.