If I had to pinpoint the moment in my life that set me on the political path that I am on now, it was the day I was looking for something to read when I was in 11th grade and found my mother’s copy of Bernard Goldberg’s Bias. For those who have not read it, Goldberg was a reporter at CBS News, and this was his whistleblower memoir telling the world how news agencies, specifically CBS News, would curate what they put on the air to fit a particular political narrative, and if the story did not fit the narrative, it did not make it to air.
Of course, today, this does not come as any surprise. We know that news agencies are first and foremost in the entertainment industry, then the political sphere. So, anything you see on news outlets has already been deemed to be entertaining enough and show the right political bent. After that careful narrowing down, the remaining reporting is the truth, or what media decides is the truth. This is now true of the entire media landscape from Left to Right. But in 2001, this was earth-shattering news. An agency like CBS, which was built on the sterling reputations of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, was being undressed for their Bias.
Over the last few years, the political Right has directed its ire towards CNN and MSNBC primarily. CNN claimed to be centrist, but has proven to be anything but, and MSNBC reports exclusively from the hard Left, making them both easy targets, the same way Fox News is seen from the Left. However, CBS News seems to slide by on this.
Until a few weeks ago.
First, in the most glaring example of beating oneself, CBS posted a clip from an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that her talking in her now-expected word salad, making the VP sound less than ideal. However, when the actual interview aired, they edited out her answer and clipped in a response from a different question from another point in the interview. This not only opened questions to what else was edited in the interview, but in all their reporting.
This was only exasperated by the reaction to a separate interview conducted by CBS Mornings by anchor Tony Dokoupil with noted pro-Palestinian activist and author Ta-Nehisi Coats about his new book, The Message, which deals in large part with the situation in Gaza. Dokoupil, who converted to Judaism in 2014, has two children living in Israel, and is extremely well-informed on the situation there.
The clip, which now has over 380,000 views on YouTube, is actually a refreshing dialog between two people with opposing views on this subject. Nobody was disrespectful; Dokoupil asked pointed questions. Coats gave reasonable answers (answers that I disagree with, but certainly reasonable).
This did not stop CBS News from reacting to the internal outrage at the interview with forcing Dokoupil to spend an hour with their so-called Race and Culture Unit, presumably so he can be reeducated on proper cultural sensitivity, where he was lectured on tone and body language used during the interview. You see, cultural sensitivity matters, depending on which culture is under attack.
Once again, CBS News proved itself to be in the business of political reporting instead of news reporting. And when someone dares to challenge a guest “expert” on a topic, if that topic is of the wrong political side, they are eviscerated. To prove the point that CBS has never cared about journalistic standards and ethics, in a later interview, Coats informed Trevor Noah that Dokoupil’s co-anchor, Gail King, gave Coats a heads-up about the incoming questions. Bias wasn’t merely a report of what went on at a moment in time at CBS, but a descriptor of how CBS News will always try to spin news, and what happens to those who refuse to play along.
Izzo Zwiren works in healthcare administration, constantly concerning himself with the state of healthcare politics. The topic of healthcare has led Izzo to become passionate about a variety of political issues affecting our country today. Aside from politics, Izzo is a fan of trivia, stand-up comedy, and the New York Giants. Izzo lives on Long Island with his wife and two adorable, hilarious daughters.