BIAS: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. sic by Bernard Goldberg, 2002, Perennial

That's MEDIA plural. What an awesome book. It's about time someone with authenticity and believability took the plate for team Truth. Just got the paperback from Amazon and I'm loving it. For years I've been staring, mouth wide open almost every night between 6:30 and 7 at the idiot tube, aghast at what passes for "news". I have just not been able to believe that "no one but me" can see the glaring discrepancies, fallacies, portrayals, and overtly, even commercially biased material that they call reporting. And it's not just the words. The camera angles, the lights, the color, the backgrounds...

Like tonight I decided to watch a whole hour of McLerher Report. I did not make it through the whole hour, but I got my jolly anti-entertainment anyhow. (You know I guess I really like this stuff now, to be honest, because it's like a sport, but a negative sport like golf, you know, the more points that you get the worse your score. So I sit there and add up points for every time there is even a slightly notable bias twinge, one way or the other to be fair, and believe me it's usually one way, and then compare that with other shows I've watched. There have been some doosies.) So here is a long comparative analysis between Senator Tom Daschle and wannbe Thune going on, and then breaks in between shots of this panel of discussion folks all sitting around pontificating. But what struck me, as usual, as I'm a visual person first and foremost, was the choice of where the interviews took place, and the lighting, and the situation. Daschle was in a nursing home, he was seated at an old upright piano with the old wood showing over his left shoulder and flowers and a nice picture over his right. The lights were up brightly. Thune, however, was in a restaurant, and just over his left shoulder was a cash register; an old one with the big funky buttons that have black metal curves under them and over the other shoulder there were rows of ice cream glasses on shelves upside down and waiting to be used for customers. There's one guy resonating with the people and caring about old folks, and another guy with cash and ice cream. Here was another case as well of a media piece that was clearly backing Daschle, and gave Daschle a much more highlighted version of what he had to say about Thune's tax legislation that he pushed and help pass.

What's eerie for me is that I just read in BIAS the quickie version of the whole "Forbes’s Flat Tax" fiasco and "Bold"berg's first attempt at tackling the BIAS issue, and it sounded VERY MUCH LIKE the same story, and Daschle taking the offense and saying that such legislation was "not good for this part of South Dakota". Anyhow, about the book:

There are plenty of great laughs and pointed jabs and just plain-speaking great truth exploding out of every page. It's readable and does not pander to the intellectual; reads fast like a short and intense novel, and confirms every notion I've ever had about the whole news business. It's like he is saying, in my words as interpreting, "It's what you always suspected but no one credible has ever been able to actually say without being put in witness protection or an asylum".

This is also perfect timing for me personally. I'm co-teaching a class this spring on the methodologies in film and TV that they use to create sympathetic synthesis and disarm disbelief. It's called "Wag the Dog: Media and Methodology". We will be viewing the title film of course, but other tasty morsels include:
Network
Broadcast News
Nashville
Ed TV
The Truman Show
takes from Westwing and
various News shows

And then we will be treading on less traveled territory for most college students in the area of study of Semiotics and Mise en'Scene, psychological constructs of screen space and the theatre, and Cinematography. Sound like science? You bet. Well that's all for today. Tired. Gotta write some other stuff about other places and other things. Thanks for tuning in. READ BIAS! Great book.

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