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10/21/2003 Archived Entry: "Writing Hot on the Trail of the Lefty"

GOLDBERG IS BACK: Howard Kurtz reported yesterday that Bernard Goldberg, of Bias fame, reports that the ex-CBS reporter has a new book coming out called Arrogance.

"There's no question the media elites salivate more when they're going after Republicans and conservatives," he writes, and they would probably admit it "after a few drinks."

He sneers at "their liberal friends in Manhattan and Georgetown." He derides liberals for having "become precisely what they accuse conservatives of: being closed-minded and nasty." And he prescribes a 12-step program to cure journalists of their affliction.

But unlike in his first book, the best-selling "Bias," in which Goldberg mounted an argument -- a very personal argument, when it came to CBS -- that journalists lean to the left on many issues, "Arrogance" has a smug, us-and-them tone captured by its subtitle: "Rescuing America From the Media Elite." Maybe best-selling writers can get away with that sort of thing.

Goldberg scores some points, according to advance excerpts, but also renders sweeping judgments, as if everyone at every major news outlet is a card-carrying, Clinton-worshiping, ACLU-loving leftist.

The problem Howard isn't that everyone is a card-carrying, Clinton-worshiping, ACLU-loving leftist, but that a large number are. That said, Kurtz is one of those few journos I do admire. He's a liberal himself but he's exceedingly fair and always presents both sides without forcing his own beliefs on you.

Read on.