When you lock horns with Bernie Goldberg, you do have to go with your best. So when Goldberg began his riff about Peter Jennings, Tim Russert deftly turned to the HOWLER:

And Bernie went off on his standard sob story about how conservatives are singled out in the media just like black criminals once were.

Russert did a little typecasting about the HOWLER, but we certainly don’t blame him for coming right here when the going with Bernie got tough. As readers may recall, Bernie loves to go anecdotal about the way the media beat up on cons—and he loves recalling the time when Jennings identified three conservative senators but IDed no liberals at all. But alas! As we pointed out in these very pages (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/1/02), Jennings named twenty Republican senators on the day in question, but only identified three as cons; Bernie got cute with Tim last weekend, pretending there were more, many more. And there was a back-story to the Jennings incident which we also incomparably recounted. If this is "Exhibit A" of liberal bias, we averred, it’s a wonder we discuss it at all.

But Bernie was all over the TV last weekend discussing this very same topic. In a book event in Washington, D.C. which C-SPAN was clever enough to tape, several spoilsports kept asking Bernie why his book seems to have so few data. First, a political science professor asked why he hadn’t done a systematic analysis of Jennings’ statements. "I didn’t want this to be written from a social scientist point of view," Goldberg said, adding, "I have total confidence that the point here is accurate." But twenty minutes later, he was challenged again, this time by a man named Sandy Grossman, a retired employee of one of the nets:

Goldberg batted it out of the park. Grossman had handed him "an easy one," he said. We include Goldberg’s own emphases:

Except, of course, it does happen. Kennedy isn’t on the evening newscasts that much—they mostly deal with back pain and neuralgia—but we looked at the first six months of 2001, as President Bush entered the White House. During this period, Kennedy was in the news several times. And so, it turned out, was the L-word.

January 23, 2001. Bush has been president all of three days. Senator Kennedy hails the chief. Ands Lisa Myers reports to the nation:

Myers had called Ted a liberal. But so did her colleague, David Gregory, reporting on February 2:

Gregory hit it right down the fairway—Kennedy was a liberal and Ashcroft was a con. On May 23, Ted was in the news again as James Jeffords left the GOP. And this time, look who was naming the "liberals:"

Russert didn’t explicitly call Teddy a liberal, but Leahy and Levin explicitly were. On June 14, Myers was back, discussing the education bill:

According to Goldberg, "they just don’t" call Teddy a liberal on the evening newscasts—"it doesn’t happen," he said. At NBC, that is plainly false. But then, ABC had its moments as well:

Douglas called Teddy a liberal two nights in a row! Why, it even happened at corrupt CBS:

But that was it for CBS; they only called Teddy a "liberal" one time. Were they hiding Teddy’s liberal ways beneath a burqa of their own making? Actually, they were hiding Teddy altogether. We checked CBS for the month of June, when the other two nets were calling him "liberal." Teddy was mentioned on the Evening News only once, on a night when Bob Schieffer subbed for Dan:

That was the only time Teddy was mentioned all month. And you’ll notice that Schieffer identified Teddy and Trent in a parallel manner.

Clearly, Goldberg was totally wrong in his statement to Grossman. He implied that network newscasts never call Ted a lib, and that is plainly false. Do they identify Kennedy more or less often than they do with conservative solons? That question we simply can’t answer. We don’t plan to do all Bernie’s research for him—but that is a question he should have studied before he published his laughable book, and before he went all over the country making pleasing but flagrant misstatements.

Indeed, Goldberg’s attitude on this matter is an insult to the American public interest. Here is the question put to him by that nattering professor:

We chuckled at the perfesser’s assumption—his assumption that a CBS newsman would have to hire an assistant to gather some actual facts. But Goldberg’s reply simply says it all about Bernie and others just like him:

Incredible, isn’t it? "Social scientists" might care if Goldberg is right, but "normal people" just want a good story. That is a process we’ve often described. We’ve called it "throwing feed to the cattle."

When he was challenged later by Grossman, Goldberg also referred to the "numerous studies" that nailed own his points so well. He also admitted that he couldn’t quite name them. (Goldberg rarely shows any sign of knowing anything about his own subject.) But why was he sure about his claims? Bernie sketched that out too. "I mean there are certain things that we just know are true because, because it’s just out there," he said. Of course, Bernie also knew-it-was-true that the evening newscasts never call Ted a "liberal." That claim is also "out there," thanks to Bernie. The claim is "out there"—and it’s totally false.

We pointed out, in our earlier HOWLERS, that Goldberg’s book is a laughable mess. To the extent that it discusses real issues at all, it is cut-and-pasted from other sources, some of them highly unreliable; Goldberg clearly did no original research at all in putting this opus together. It presents a list of shaky claims which Goldberg puts forward because they’re "out there." Of Bernie Goldberg’s inexcusable work, therefore, we ask this one question: Where are standards?

Next: How easy is it to yell "liberal bias?" A blast from the past helps you see.

And now for something else totally false: Once Tim had mentioned THE DAILY HOWLER, Bernie knew that he had all the facts. But the schmoes he met at the bookstore event were handed rank disinformation:

As we pointed out in the past, Jennings most definitely did not "identify every conservative" on the day which Goldberg constantly cites. Bernie didn’t peddle that bullroar to Tim. The folks at the bookstore weren’t so lucky.

This just in from the flight of birds: Truly, the guy gets stupider every day. Today, Andrew Sullivan spots the "liberal bias" in a movie which hasn’t been made:

Sullivan is upset about the documentary film version of The Hunting of the President, by Conason and Gene Lyons. The movie hasn’t even been shot—but Sullivan has espied its "liberal bias."

But then, Sullivan sets new records today for throwing fresh feed to the cattle. His first item attacks Daschle’s comments on the war, and is entirely concerned with Daschle’s motives—which Sullivan has somehow somehow mind-read. (Remember—Sullivan doesn’t do substance.) Then he takes on Sandra Bernhard, a wholly insignificant semi-performer, for something she said in a wholly insignificant, local throw-away paper. (Translation: No high school kid said anything stupid this week.) After that, he takes his clairvoyant look at the Conason-Lyons future feature.

But no one seems to notice. Jonathan Chait criticizes Sullivan’s crusade against Paul Krugman in today’s on-line TNR. But Chait is far too kind to Sullivan, and the reason for that may be lodged in this important paragraph:

"I know Sullivan and enjoy his company," Chait writes. That is a major problem. We don’t intend in any way to criticize Chait, who is one of Washington’s most valuable scribes. But that sentence expresses a major problem with the modern press corps in general. The press corps is a deeply incestuous, inbred fraternal order. Its members are heavily intermarried, and the clan is made up of many brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, uncles, nieces, social acquaintances and business partners (present and future). And that is why you almost never read the truth about someone like Sullivan. His ongoing work is an ugly joke—and at this point, you’d have to be a simpering idiot to think that it’s being done in good faith. But you aren’t about to hear such thoughts from inside the incestuous press corps.

How bad does the interweaving get? We often cite Inventing Al Gore, the influential bio by Newsweek’s Bill Turque. In the book, Turque presented the Standard Account of Gore-and-Love Story, in which the veep makes a deeply puzzling remark which helps show his semi-psychological problems. Gore claimed he inspired Love Story, the press corps clucked all through the election. Without getting into specific passages, Turque told the Standard Tale too.

And gee, we wonder why? Could it be because Turque is married to the NYT’s Melinda Henneberger, whose bungled piece on 12/14/97 virtually created the bogus tale to begin with? We support the institution of marriage, but Turque was literally married to the bungled, utterly ludicrous story that caused Gore so much grief. That is a terrible problem for this press corps—one which ripples through its work in a hundred ways. Many pundits know Andrew Sullivan; some surely like him personally, and some of them surely defer to his (growing) influence and power. This press corps is deeply interconnected—and that helps explain why you read nasty things about politicians, but will almost always see deference extended even to someone like Sullivan.

By the way, the reviews are in on Monday’s "anonymous economist." We aren’t going to use her name, but in our next incomparable DAILY HOWLER, we will point out some comical facts about her own institutional funding. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, Sullivan moves the nonsense up a notch. Meanwhile, trust us—you won’t read about this risible mess in the pages of TNR.