Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, the leading media watchers in America, continue to aim the harsh light of truth upon the news business with their third book of columns, Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News (Common Courage, $15.95).
Solomon writes a weekly column that appears in print around the country, including the web page of The Columbus Free Press. His cohort Cohen is founder and executive director of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Media). Together they provide the most stinging criticism of the mass media, aiming their investigative methods at errant publishers and editors on both sides of the political sector.
The newest book contains columns from 1995 to the present, tackling targets both big and small. In perhaps the most revealing section in the book, the authors expose the fallacy of the so-called liberal media. Cohen and Solomon rightly point out that network television gives the left almost no time or consideration, while such right advocates as George Will, Bill Buckley, and John McCormick continue to rail against the liberals, who are barely a blip on the TV screens of network and cable stations.
As to the newspapers of the U.S., they point out the widening trend of op ed pages containing a heavy slant toward the right. And they aim devastating criticism at TV talk shows, now almost completely dominated by right wing zealots who skirt near the edges of advocating terrorism against the government.
Columns reprinted in the book also take to task so-called "public broadcasting," which some members of Congress seek to cut funding, while its programming continues a sharp slide to the right.
Other bright lights in media are taken to task, including Ted Koppel, whose slanted reporting is listed chapter and verse.
The cyberspace revolution wins attention, as the authors point out that Microsoft owner Bill Gates teamed up with NBC and the cable giant TCI, a connection whose "thread that connects them all is the bottom line." They quote journalist Frank Beacham, who observed that instead of the Internet offering new opportunities for unadulterated access to world events, "The Internet is in full transition from a participatory interactive communications network to a broadcast medium dominated by electronic commerce."
As Studs Terkel points out in his introduction, "Fortunately for our sanity and self-respect, there have always been muckrakers; those few who have sought out the hard truth."
Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon are among the few muckrakers who have pointed to the fact that the media emperors are wearing no clothes.
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