Thursday, June 24, 2004

Media bias alert

It's pretty horrendous that CBS devoted a full 60 Minutes episode to Dan Rather's fawning interview of Clinton. In fact, of all the reviewers, he's probably the only one who liked Clinton's memoir, My Life.

But here's what is worse: CBS is actively profiting from the book because it has partnered with Amazon to sell the blasted thing. CBS has a link on its website to the book that takes you to Amazon's listing. If you buy the book, CBS gets a referral fee. So CBS not only gave an hour-long promo for free, but is actively hawking a book by a liberal former president. See anything wrong here?

Here are the details, from a CBS watchdog, Ratherbiased.com.

The most forthright butt-whipping a reviewer gave the book is from the NY Times' reknowned shrew Michiko Kakutani.

Kakutani tends to be somewhat liberal, but she will give anyone a whacking if they deserve it, and praise when it is due -- see her reviews of Edmund Morris' ridiculous Dutch, Frank McCourt's excellent Angela's Ashes, and McCourt's not excellent 'Tis.

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