Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

What I'm Reading This Week

What I'm Reading This Week

Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News While I wait for my next infusion of books from Amazon I've been dipping into the book collection of my sister, the social conservative, who has an extensive assortment of books I would broadly label conservative polemics. I was obviously particularly interested in this one because I'd read so many reviews: Tom Shales hates it, for reasons decidedly biased. Jonathan Chait's tone is more reasonable, but his assertions that there's really no media bias were handily refuted by Jonah Goldberg. The most balanced review I saw came from Lou Cannon in the National Review, whose assessment agrees with mine: the phenomenon Goldberg is covering is real, but the book is hopelessly sloppy.

All of its evidence is anecdotal, but that's all right; I can enjoy anecdotal evidence even if I wouldn't want to use it to make policy. But there's too little even of this; the evidence offered to support the central thesis is thinner than Calista Flockhart on Slim Fast. The book certainly has its moments -- but they are widely interspersed between long plaints about how badly the network treated Bernie Goldberg, how much Bernie Goldberg was hurt by Dan Rather, how disgusted Bernie Goldberg is with modern newstrends . . . all bolstered mainly by inanely detailed recounting of petty incidents in the life of -- you guessed it -- Bernie Goldberg. I suspect this is why so many reviews have focused on the question of whether or not there is media bias -- there's just not enough meat in the book to write a good review on. Media accounts that have tried to dissect the facts in the book have ended up in the sort of exchanges

You did!

Did not!

Did too!

That's because you're a big fat [liberal] [conservative] dooty-head!

that make you wonder if the proper place to hash this all out isn't the principal's office.

That said, it's the sort of book you have to read, because everyone else is talking about it. It reminds me of The Bell Curve, which no one I know except me has read, but about which everyone I know -- except me -- has a strong opinion. Once you have read it, you'll find to your amusement that people make all sorts of wildly inflated or just downright odd assertions about it's contents, and it provides a glorious moment of superiority when you can trump someone's argument by cooly asking whether they've read the book. So go ahead: click the link and buy it. Then you can join the rest of us in wondering what all the fuss is about.

Posted by Jane Galt at March 16, 2002 02:00 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links