Is Media Treating Candidates Equally?
BECK: During that little streak of Hillary, you know, losing primary after primary after primary after primary, the media seemed to get a little bit bored. Did you notice? Coverage became -- I don`t know -- less about what the voters thought, what you thought about the candidates, and more about what the media thought of the candidates. And I don`t know about you, but that`s what I really wanted to know. They quite obviously took sides in newspapers across the country, from the "New York Times" to "The Los Angeles Times." There were stories about Barack Obama that I swear to you read more like love letters than hard news. To put it mildly, the liberal media has been fawning over Obama like a teenaged girl at a rock concert. And it hasn`t even changed after Texas and Ohio. It`s still going on. Bill Clinton, the media`s darling in the 1990s, has taken issue with the way his wife has been treated in the press. Not only has he blamed the press for ignoring his wife, something he might know something about. But this past weekend he had one of his trademark meltdowns at a meeting of California super delegates, ranting about bias until he was red in the face. Then said that Governor Richardson had lied to his face five times. And I went, "Hmm, where have I heard that before?" Bernard Goldberg is the author of "Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve." It`s a fantastic book, and it`s got some new chapters in it. We`ll talk about it in a second. I want to -- I want to start where I just left off with the Clintons. I can`t believe these guys. Do you think they -- do you think they noticed that this is karma coming back at them? That they see, wait a minute, hold on, you guys loved me a little while ago and now you hate me, and I`m doing the same thing.</s>BERNIE GOLDBERG, AUTHOR, "CRAZIES TO THE LEFT OF ME, WIMPS TO THE RIGHT": No, the Clintons don`t get that kind of stuff.</s>BECK: Does the media see it at all?</s>GOLDBERG: No, the media has chosen sides in this matter and as far...</s>BECK: Do they -- see, and this is the thing I can`t decide, if they actually get it, if they know -- they swear to me they don`t -- they don`t see it. And I kind of believe them.</s>GOLDBERG: You could hook reporters and their editors up to a lie detector machine and ask them if they have a bias in favor of this person or that person. They would say no, and the needle wouldn`t move.</s>BECK: Right. Here`s the thing. We have had quite a few discussions about Barack Obama in this building. On the coverage of Barack Obama, specifically Reverend Wright. I think Reverend Wright and Barack Obama going to that church and paying $27,500 to that church says a lot about him.</s>GOLDBERG: Oh, absolutely.</s>BECK: And you understand his views on victimization and everything else if you listen to his preacher, but nobody in the media sees it that way.</s>GOLDBERG: Yes. But there`s a reason for that. And we tend to think of the media as some separate entity. They`re just one more element of the liberal coalition. I mean, they have the same positions on civil rights, on women`s rights, on abortion, on global warming, on a million other things. And liberals in general speak to black people in a very interesting way. It`s a liberal paternalism type of way. So they hear the Reverend Wright say racist things. America -- white people created AIDS in order to kill black people. That`s not only racist; that`s stupid.</s>BECK: Right.</s>GOLDBERG: The government is giving drugs -- giving drugs away to black people so we can lock them up. That`s stupid. If a white person said this, the media and other liberals would say, this is both -- this is stupid, this is dumb. But the way liberals speak to black people, it`s -- they say, "Well, let`s minimize this, because you`re not black and you don`t quite understand it." And what they`re really saying is, "Look at me. I`m one of the good white people. You see, I`m not a bigot."</s>BECK: But there is a case to be made that a lot of white people will do the same thing, where they`ll vote for Barack Obama without -- it`s -- it`s -- it is -- it is a distortion and a slap across the face to Martin Luther King to vote for somebody on the color of his skin, not the content of his character. And a lot of white people will say, "But I want to -- look, I`m not racist. I voted for Barack Obama."</s>GOLDBERG: And there`s been talk, and there will be more talk about whether America is ready to elect a black person. In a country -- it`s ridiculous. They would have voted for Colin Powell in a second.</s>BECK: Yes.</s>GOLDBERG: In a country of 300 million people, are there some white people who won`t vote for a black person? Yes, but there are more, I believe, there are more who will vote for a black person precisely because he`s black and liberal, to try to get this whole thing behind us. So if race is a factor, arguably it`s a factor that will help, not hurt Barack Obama.</s>BECK: Doesn`t this, though, actually hurt Barack Obama that, for instance, the media -- I mean the media, PBS did like 1,400 days on the Mormons. And, you know, he had to answer everything from 1881. They won`t address black liberation theology, but I can tell you, the 527s will.</s>GOLDBERG: Yes, they will, sure.</s>BECK: So doesn`t that sanitize him and hurt him...</s>GOLDBERG: It might not toughen him up enough. But that`s -- that`s his problem and the media`s problem. My point is that liberals speak to black people in a certain way, and the way they do it is to show how good they as white people are. It`s to cleanse themselves of America`s racial history. It`s to show their racial virtue, it`s to say, if you`re a black person and I`m patronizing you and letting your racism go by and letting your stupid remarks go by.</s>BECK: Will you stick around for a second? We`ll be back with more with Bernard Goldberg here in just a second.