What Liberal Media?: The Truth about Bias and the News

by Eric Alterman

Confronts the question of liberal bias in the media, and provides an assessment of the realities of political influences on the news.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Journalism, History, Sociology, Social Issues, Political Science

357 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism, a media columnist for the Nation, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and the author of seven books, including the national bestsellers What Liberal Media? and The Book on Bush. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Brennan · Rating 2 out of 5]

While an interesting topic that needs to be analyzed, this book suffers from an author who approaches the topic with tunnel vision. Alterman seems to have his ideas shape his research, often cherry picking examples from simple statements or laying grand conclusions from weak evidence. In addition, the topic is naturally problematic, given that the conservative/liberal bias tends to increase/decrease given one's own political leanings. To pick out a true bias one needs to get beyond how news is presented, but rather in editorial decisions - something Alterman doesn not do enough of. While I appreciate the effort, and while Alterman's thesis is indeed plausible (increasingly), I don't know if I buy it in light of other media studies on how news is presented and why it is done so (see Hallin's "Uncensored War").

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

First rate – very detailed look at right wing media bias and provides much support for the fact that clams of “liberal bias” are the right’s equivalent of screaming at the ump to get a favorable ruling later in the game.

[Tracy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Painfully unnecessary tedium.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eric Alterman provides the leftist response to Bernard Goldberg's book, Bias, with his own mish-mash of personal vendettas and semi-sourced claims. His vitriol is reserved for those he sees as part of a right-wing noise machine, much of it masquerading as journalists (he takes time out to particularly vilify George Will). He also proclaims that media owned and influenced by corporate titans must be, by definition, conservative - an argument which must be a balm to the heart of socialists everywhere, even though such a correlation only exists in 300-level Marxist Theory classes.

Alterman falls into two traps in his screed: the first is deleting his sources from the material: multiple claims of "thorough debunking" are referred to his website, rather than his book. If the evidence for your argument is not co-located with said argument, that's, in my opinion, lazy. Furthermore, he makes a series of unfounded declarations, upon which much of his argument about what's wrong with media is based: Wealthy people cannot understand working class problems, There is no left-wing attack machine, Corporate-owned media must be conservative. As tiresome as Goldberg's axe-grinding got, at least he was entertaining to read.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an unimpressive presentation on the media's "non-bias". It taught me to look at the media as business entities with thin moral lining more than 'non-liberal'.

After reading this book I realize that media is, indeed, largely liberal! Thanks, Eric!

On the side, I realized this as one who rarely watches TV, listens to NPR, and reads articles from various news sources. When Katrina hit, I turned on the TV in one room - it happened to be on FOX - as my friends in the next room turned on CNN. Fox was explaining the process of rescuing people and getting the city running again, and CNN had Jesse Jackson claiming racism. The waters hadn't even receded, yet!

So, media is emotional, and Eric Alterman's thin description of how it's not "liberal" fell completely FLAT. In the above example, anger is a strong emotion, while objective analysis is not. My friends tuned in to CNN and got angry at Bush for causing the catastrophe. Very sad time on many fronts.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alterman is probably the most egomaniacal, self-aggrandizing, insufferable read for someone as liberal as myself. His arguments are steeped in he-said-she-said-about-my-column BS.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

To answer the question, not much, despite sizable propaganda to the contrary. Indeed, it's more like the other way around -- and overwhelmingly so. With 227-pages of tightly packed small print, author convincingly argues that conservatives have forcefully skewed our national discourse rightward. Culprits include media owners, TV pundits, talk-radio bloviators, Wall Street Journal editorial page and multimillionaire funded "think-tanks." In addition, many media outlets are so cowed by the bias myth that they often present opinions seeking to counterbalance something that does not exist! Two chapters are devoted to the "stolen" 2000 presidential election and subsequent media fawning over G.W. Bush. In all, the book is even tempered and accompanied by impressive documentation.

[Erin O'Riordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The audio version was abridged, and it can be listened to in a little over 5 hours. I found it quite fascinating. The common assumption of the liberal bias in the U.S. media is questioned in detail, and Alterman makes a compelling case that this assumption is false. It's always good to go over recent history to see how one's perceptions may have changed, and this is a good refresher course in the Bill Clinton/George W. Bush years.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

The valuable content saves the irritating writing from two-star status. Alterman makes a convincing argument, a necessary one as well (perhaps not as timely 10 years after the fact, but the general premise holds and is absolutely relevant today since the same "liberal media" charges continue to be constantly tossed around). The chapters on Gore were particularly illuminating for me since I was just coming into my political awareness at the time and was still not paying very close attention to the facts of the 2000 election. Additionally, his general theme of "working the refs," how the conservative establishment has shifted the center of American politics drastically to the right, is extremely important and well-taken. Reminds me of Coach K at Duke (there I go revealing my alma mater).

That said, there are some problems with the writing, most of them minor issues that just added up to sort of a sour taste over the course of the book, the chief offense being that it was occasionally clunky. I hesitate to call it "bad" just because that implies a level of expertise that I certainly don't have. However the word "bad" did keep occurring to me, so I'll just use "clunky" as a surrogate. A good example from the end of the book:

With an advisory board featuring Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, and Chester Finn, the organization presents itself as a champion of "intellectual renewal" and "academic standards" in the face of their perceived decline at the hands of leftist academics and fashionable post-modern theories that blur the verities of our time behind a facade of impenetrable professional vernacular. 251

Um, excuse me? I'm sure that sentence means something, but I'm equally sure that I'm not going to spend the time to figure out what. And it's not just me being dumb, I swear. Hannah Arendt is one of my favorite writers ever. Go and check out The Human Condition. Long sentences, really confusing. And totally awesome. This guy, not so much.

The book was strangely in need of some editing as well, which may have just been an issue in the 1st edition hardback that I had. Here's a prime example of the combination of these two problems of bad editing and too much info in one sentence:

For instance, his assertion that that [sic] the hope for welfare payments was the main source of illegitimacy among black teenagers posited no evidence for this claim and failed to explain why the rate of illegitimacy rose for everyone -- and not just welfare recipients -- after 1972, while the constant-dollar value of those welfare benefits declined by 20 percent. 90

So there was this tendency to try and cram too much information into a sentence, which is sort of a microcosm of Alterman's tendency to try and cram too much information into the book. The depth and breadth of his research definitely came across, but it seemed like overkill at times. He made very salient points and then kept making them over and over again, with many more examples than I needed or wanted. I think "pedantic" is the word for this particular offense. The most glaring example is how he spends 4+ pages on Rush Limbaugh, whose douchebaggery should already have been exceedingly familiar to any reader.

Perhaps, as with my first quote above, I'm just being dense. However I can't help but opine that with a title like What Liberal Media?, this is not meant to be a strictly academic work, requiring seven citations when two or three will do. Indeed, his informal tone through most of the book gives the same impression (speaking of which, I'm still trying to come up with any conceivable need for his mentioning on p.244 that Charles Krauthammer is partially paralyzed).

The last issue is more major, unfortunately: the book is overwhelmingly anecdotal. For an author who spends pages in an early chapter blasting Charles Murray for his misuse (and lack) of statistics in Losing Ground and The Bell Curve, it seems hypocritical for Alterman himself to largely eschew the use of statistics throughout the book.

This became more apparent as the book went on and I started thinking, Well, I can see all these examples of conservatives in the media but surely there must have been liberal viewpoints as well. Why isn't he telling me about those at all, or even mentioning them? The lack of mention made me suspicious, like he was trying to hide them to bolster his point. Of course all my suspicions would have been moot if he had just backed up his claims with a NEXIS search or some other statistical analysis (which, coincidentally, could have helped him trim his citations as well).

The cherry on top of this sundae of unprofessionalism occurs in the Clinton chapter when he armchair psychologizes journalists to explain how they incessantly attacked Clinton out of envy, "with the vengeance of a lover scorned." This could, of course, very well be the case, but Alterman makes a laughably weak case in the one jarring paragraph he dedicates to the outlandish claim.

All in all, I'm glad I read the book. I am now better equipped to counter the false claims of liberal media bias. I'm not sure I can really recommend it to others due to the writing problems outlined above. What I would recommend, however, is to find a liberal who has read it and can tell you about the main arguments, so that you'll be equipped as well, and without having wasted many hours on what would be a very slow and somewhat tedious read.

***UPDATE 3/3/13: This book loses more of my esteem after reading Noam Chomsky's Necessary Illusions, which makes Alterman's whole Liberal/Conservative dichotomy seem downright trivial, criticizing the constraints by which the entire liberal-conservative paradigm (and thus Alterman's book) exists. It's really a rather glorious proposition, and much more professionally and convincingly argued, albeit quite a bit drier. It honestly makes me wonder how Alterman could have written this book without even addressing the game-changing argument that Chomsky made almost 15 years prior. Basically, Chomsky makes Alterman's entire book seem facile. Please go there for a real book on media criticism.***

Not Bad Reviews

@pointblaek

[Gregg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The problem with a book like this: the right people don't read it. It's a total challenge to the ultimate myth: the media slants to the left. Alterman's thesis boils down to two facts: 1) in an effort to avoid liberal bias charges, the media slants itself to the right, and 2) the conservative media slam-dunks the left with the sheer money, resources, and overall support they enjoy that alternative media will always be befeft of.

I wish I could memorize this book. Alterman lists how the media totally shafted the Clintons and Gore during his campaign (including, by the way, the "liberal" bastions of the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post), how pundits have infiltrated the filter so as to completely mix opinion/observation with news (witness Cokie Roberts' musings about Al Gore having something to hide without anything but a hunch), and the schmoes like Rupert Murdoch and Richard Scaife getting chummy with the GOP, funding barely-literate newspapers and newsmagazines. Of course, nobody needs to be told that Fox News is not "fair and balanced" except for Fox News fans, but I was surprised at the examples Alterman trotted out regarding the New York Times' and the Washington Posts's coverage of items like the War on Terrorism and 9/11, slamming questions about motive and how U.S. foreign policy might have influenced the terrorists' actions as un-American and not up for discussion. Naysayers, beware: he uses footnotes and fact checks.

[Scott Goddard · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're looking for a light read, then I can assertively say this will not be an enjoyable book. If you're a national to any country other than the US, it will be even more difficult to read. All throughout the book the author constantly alludes to or directly references American journalists (so many in fact that I'm surprised he hasn't exhausted all of them). Unacquainted with almost all I have to hurriedly skip over them, as a quick Google search of each would turn into a disruption every minute or two. Mainly for this reason I found the book to be soporfic, insofar as putting me off for days at a time. There is an awful lot of history of the ensuing head-on battle between the Democrats and Republicans, which again goes into minutiae depth and (arguably superfluous) detail. The overwhelming Americanisation aside, the book does touch on arguments for the state of the media industry, and thoroughly debunks the erroneous assertion that the Left 'dominates' and manipulates the industry to the ideology's own end. This is not true and as the author demonstrates, the antithesis is in fact more truthful; the constant vilification subjected upon the Democrats is a decoy to divert attention from the actual monopolisation of the industry, which is the Republicans themselves.

[Jeanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an extremely dated book. The bias is so cherry picked in fact and in application that it's basically written for the choir. It doesn't begin to question the assumptions only liberals will instantly make in context and definition. It little questions omissions and altered focus of onus that has occurred for the issues and priorities that are NOT central to liberal marketing and agitation. His tone is also one of occasional vitriol and tending to scornful name calling or disdainful labels. So that alone tends to under mind his premise, IMHO.

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Again, take this information with a grain of salt. While Bernard Goldberg was an actual reporter and journalist, Alterman is more of a political pundit. Alterman does bring up good points in his book, however as I wrote before -- bias depends on the person reading it.

[Ivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well researched, but the author aims this at a solidly liberal audience and makes no attempt to win over any sort of moderate audience. Most of his argument rely on assumptions a large portion of the potential audience will not agree with.

[Melissa]

Alterman has provided me with enough evidence in the first 150 pages that I don't feel it necessary to trudge through the remainder of this fact laden book when my mind is begging to be captivated by a story. Where is the half-read shelf?

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually meet the author, he came to uwgb to talk and then talk to our class after words, maybe he was distracted but he came off kind of dickish, smart man don't get me wrong and great book

[mad mags · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don’t believe the conservative talking points!

Even though it was published in 2004, Eric Alterman’s WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?: THE TRUTH ABOUT BIAS AND THE NEWS is just as relevant and insightful today, as the 2008 election cycle begins to heat up. From the mainstream media’s misogynist slurs against Hillary Clinton to their love affair with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain (note to Chris Matthews: the media isn’t supposed to be ANY candidate’s “base”), the total lack of a liberal bias, even among ostensibly moderate-to-lefty journalists, is painfully evident.

Alterman debunks the myth of the liberal media from a number of angles. From the rise of right-wing pundits and well-funded conservative “think tanks” (an oxymoron if ever there was one), to the political leanings of and corporate pressures faced by individual journalists, Alterman illustrates how the Republican Party seized control of the mainstream media, all the while decrying its supposed bias in favor of liberal causes.

Especially timely is his discussion of how the media has treated George W. Bush with kid gloves, previously having eviscerated (sometimes, rightfully so) Bill Clinton for lesser evils. Yes, Bill Clinton deserves scorn for taking advantage of an awe-struck intern (power disparity, anyone?); but a BJ pales in comparison to an unjust war. (Mind bogglingly, the media’s slant has only veered further to the right in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.) Shortly after the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq passed 4,000, Dick Cheney declared “It places a special burden obviously on the families, and we recognize, I think — it's a reminder of the extent to which we are blessed with families who've sacrificed as they have. The president carries the biggest burden, obviously.” Bush himself said – with no hint of irony, compassion, or remorse - that he’s found his presidency “joyful” and he sleeps “a lot better than people would assume.” And the MSM didn’t even blink.

*head desk*

Seriously, WHAT liberal media!?

As the primaries drag on, it’s a whole lotta history repeating.

While WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? probably won’t sway any hardcore conservatives, it is a useful tool for liberals who wish to quash the myth of the liberal media, and might help to educate misinformed moderates and independents. Generally speaking, it’s a good read and a persuasive argument, but I wish Alterman had included more hard statistics and fewer anecdotes. Then again, there seems to be a dearth of research in this area; perhaps WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? can serve as a starting point for some enterprising young journalism or social science students looking to study the issue further. An update for 2008 would be a welcome addition as well; Alterman has four more years of dubya’s shenanigans to document, not to mention the farcical 2008 primaries.

To the content of the book, I bequeath four stars. To the format, which was for me an audiobook, one lonely star. I’m normally a huge fan of audiobooks, since they allow me to “read” 2-3 times as many books as I might otherwise. Yet Alterman narrated WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? himself, and the result is almost un-listenable. It’s truly awful. (His Bill O’Reilly impression is spot on, though. Hey, credit where credit’s due.) And this comes from someone who has a high tolerance for non-professional narration; I usually prefer that authors record the audio versions of their own books, since it lends an added authenticity to the reading. I loved listening to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s INFIDEL and Christopher Hitchens’ GOD IS NOT GREAT, both of which were read by the respective authors, thick accents and all. But Alterman’s publisher really should have shelled out the extra money for a pro.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2008/04/03/...

[Matt Baldus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book did a fantastic job of giving me some good insight into my research topic of into ethics surrounding media and journalism. Eric Alterman gives backs up his opinions with facts in the book "What Liberal Media?: The Truth about Bias and the News." He argues against a claim set up by Bernard Goldberg in his book "Bias" where Goldberg, arguing from a conservative perspective, states that the news media has a severe leftist slant. In this book, Alterman sets out to prove that the news media actually has a more conservative point of view. He argues that Goldberg is wrong because the media never covers liberal points of view on religion, the economy, and social issues to name a few, and that if the major newspapers actually had the same bias, they would all report stories in the same way. He gives and example that the New York Times and The Washington Post, both seen as having liberal slants by Goldberg, don't report on a story the same way. He also argues that the existence of ad revenue shifts the media rightward because many companies agree with conservative principles instead of liberal principles. These arguments definitely show that Alterman has a liberal bias while writing this book, but that doesn't stop him from clearly defining Goldberg's argument without any nuances, and then refuting it. This helped me get a great understanding of both the conservative and liberal view on media bias. The arguments made by Alterman at times have plenty of liberal bias in them, which is ironic because the point of the book is to dispel liberal bias in media, but the statistics he presents are undeniable. The book offered me a new perspective on both sides of the spectrum, and because of this I really think the book was helpful.

[Mark R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal Media?" is an intriguing, inciteful, and frequently entertaining investigation into the often taken-for-granted notion that the news media skews left, as opposed to right or center.

Alterman, a self-described liberal, explores the various methods of news media--radio, television, and print--and sites specific examples of a conservative point of view being expressed in all three. To the point that there is much more of a conservative, than a liberal, bias in media.

He looks into specific examples and cases regarding major news outlets, such as the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Washington Post, etc, that provide evidence for his argument. He also writes quite a bit about specific journalists and TV anchors, as well as organizations that contribute employees and money to these outlets.

Without sounding condescending or obnoxious, Alterman makes his case in an intelligent manner, with plenty of documentation for back-up, the lack of which is one of his primary complaints regarding much of the news media he covers.

Alterman is a journalist, and it is quite obvious, based on this book, that he has a profound respect for journalism and wishes it to retain the highest possible level of purity. That it hasn't is the reason for this book, which contains many good arguments for the existence of a widely-conservative-influenced national news media.

[Joe Soler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book years ago, but neglected to update my site. This book seems positively quaint in its evidence and arguments in 2021. Since that time, there have been "media" sites that are unapologetic propaganda machines for the Right, and the so-called "liberal" media is just soft corporatism profiting off of the same outrage porn that Alterman decried in this book.

This book is important to read because of its time and place, and because it brings evidence to bear on the central question, but the warnings in this book were not heeded and our media landscape is a giant disaster wherein actual truth-telling journalism is almost out of business, and profit-drive, profit-generating media dominates the landscape. Smaller sites that do the hard work, like Mother Jones, Pro Publica, etc struggle to make ends meet, while delivering facts and evidence, but the the American public battles around to whom to apply the name "fake news."

Alterman was definitely correct about one thing, when he predicted that conservative screaming about "liberal bias" would inevitable shift mainstream media to the Right, and it has. Most Americans do not even understand what true liberal, progressive or radical politics even are.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, this is a polemic, but a good one -- Alterman attacks the long standing charge conservatives lodge at liberals, that the media is inherently biased towards liberal opinion. Alterman links this philosophy back to the Nixon Administration's attacks against the liberal academic "ivory towers" critics of the Vietnam War made by Spiro Agnew, and works his way through the Reagan years, the de-regulation of the airwaves, the rise of conservative talk radio, Fox News, conservative journals like the National Review and Weekly Standard, and brings us to today's media climate of failing newspapers and 24 hour television news. Alterman posits that although the American media hasn't been collectively biased towards liberal viewpoints, the proportion of influential media outlets clearly skewed to the right (Fox News, Clear Channel, among others) has grown significantly. This book is a great introduction to the business of journalism and the ties between media and politics in the U.S.

[Ryan Kittleson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it is often a slow read and tends to meander into less-relevant side stories, this book does a great job of revealing how the conservative-manufactured image of the media being liberal has actually made it more right-leaning than it was ever charged with being left-leaning. It shows how underhanded conservatives have been exremely successful at creating a myth that the media is liberal. Alterman uses iron clad facts and logic to prove that the media as a whole in America is quite conservatively biased and that what is needed is more balance and more support of journalistic integrity from media corporations.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

You might think you know how to kick ass and take names, but Eric Alterman really shows you how it's done. My absolute favorite aspect of this book is how well documented and credibly sourced every single comment is. It's the hallmark of a good reporter and Alterman really earns his stripes in What Liberal Media?. If that wasn't enough, he packed this book with example after example of mass media malfeasance which really strikes a chord that resonates, especially if you are hapless news wonk such as myself. If you need a book on media, this is it.

[Quannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very in-depth look at the "liberal media" myth that continues to be expounded by the right. Alterman cites example after example of how the media has lurched to the right over the past 30 years, and how the "liberal media" doesn't really exist in the Mainstream Media anymore.

Well researched, well cited, well documented. A very good book if you're interested in the role the media is playing in the public sphere.

[Joshua Aiken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Explains how the media-television, radio, and print, are owned by only a few individuals. And these individuals can govern the content. Only specific information, usually false or half-truths are told keeping the public unaware/uneducated and blind about what people need to know about current affairs. I believe this book to be a must-read for all people looking for the truth about Big Businesses and the extremely wealthy!

[Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Grief! I read this book because of the title. It was the first book I read about the terribly conservative slant to America's media. It was a real eye opener. I'm glad that it identified many of the conservative think tanks (with not so far right-sounding names), and their funding, that are behind so much American thought. Everyone should read this book.

[Vince · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decided to read one book from the left and one book from the right in regards to the media. Of the two from a purely subjective point of view this book comes across as the more analytical book. A lot of his statement are backed up by fact, but still come across as slightly arrogant. I wouldn't say its a must read, but its an interesting point of view read.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it with an open mind; you may be surprised.

[Paul Hathaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nail. Coffin. Hammer.

[Punk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very insightful