Should You Believe All the News You Hear?

Who's Telling You What to Think?

Should You Believe
All the News You Hear?
Many people's outlook on current events, culture, society and the world is shaped by the news they read and hear. But how truthful is most reporting? Can you-and should you-believe everything you hear?

by Jerold Aust and Scott Ashley

The credo of professional journalists is to report facts and events objectively. Yet several recent books document journalists slanting their reporting to favor their biases and further their prejudices, especially left-leaning agendas.

Longtime CBS News reporter Bernard Goldberg realized how deep media bias can run as he reviewed a February 1996 story presented by fellow CBS reporter Eric Engberg. In his best-selling book Bias, Mr. Goldberg expressed his shock at the way Mr. Engberg's report poked fun at presidential candidate and Forbes-magazine publisher Steve Forbes' proposal for a flat tax rate.

"Steve Forbes pitches his flat-tax scheme as an economic elixir good for everything that ails us,"Mr. Engberg began. He then proceeded to interview three supposed tax experts, all of whom opposed Mr. Forbes' proposal to overhaul the massive U.S. tax code. He then referred to the flat-tax idea as "wacky" and a "giant, untested idea" that should be "test(ed) out someplace-like Albania" (2002, pp. 16-18).

As Mr. Goldberg points out, Mr. Engberg could easily have found respected economists who supported Mr. Forbes'flat tax- especially since two Nobel-prize-winning economists and various conservative university economics professors were on record as supporting the idea.

Mr. Goldberg concludes: "From top to bottom the Engberg piece was breathtaking in its lack of fairness. So how could CBS put it on the air? Well, news fans, here's one of those dirty little secrets journalists are never supposed to reveal to the regular folks out there in the audience: a reporter can find an expert to say anything the reporter wants -anything! Just keep calling until one of the experts says what you need him to say and tell him you'll be right down with your camera crew to interview him.

Read the full article at www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn40/believeallnews.htm