Editor’s Note: This is a different look at an event previously covered here.

The 340 students of Mitchell Stephens’ Foundations of Journalism Class were visited Tuesday by a spectral, otherworldly voice – a voice that they never thought they’d hear in safe, enlightened Manhattan. It was the voice of Bernard Goldberg, writer of the controversial 2001 book Bias that detailed the liberal bias that Goldberg saw in most mainstream media. The students knew that there were people who thought that way, but for many, this was the first time they’d talked to one – even if it was just over the phone.

“It isn’t the media’s role to affect change in society,” said Goldberg, his voice booming across 680 shocked ears. “It’s not the media’s role to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That’s the role of a minister, a priest, a social worker, a politician, but not a journalist.”

The students squirmed uncomfortably and glanced toward Professor Stephens for his reaction. That “comfort the afflicted” quote was one he’d used on them before.

“The last presidential election showed the media in a worse light than ever before. It isn’t unusual for the media
to put its thumb on the scale…but this time it was different, because the media wasn’t simply trying to witness history, it was trying to change history. But it’s not the media’s role to affect change in society even when it’s a noble cause in the minds of reporters,” Goldberg stressed.

Mitchell Stephens’ Foundations class was overwhelmingly liberal, as had been determined by an informal hand-raising poll a few weeks ago. But a poll wasn’t even necessary. It was a journalism class at NYU in Manhattan: three factors that conspired to produce some of the most gay-marrying, abortion-having, war-protesting, Obama-supporters in the country. Although the class had joked about their liberal leaning in a slightly guilty – mostly conspiratorial – way, no one really thought there was anything wrong with it. Was there?
“The problem is group-think,” Goldberg went on. “There are too many like-minded people in America’s big newsrooms today. Part of that is because they live in a bubble, mainly in Manhattan and in Washington, a comfortable liberal elite bubble. You can go for a lifetime and never run into anybody who has a really different view on the social issues of today.”

As Goldberg criticized the students’ Daily Show culture – which, admittedly, they probably shared with the students of Georgetown and GW – and especially when he dared to say that that bubble could turn people “into provincial folk,” there started to be some grumbles around the class. Wasn’t this conservative scumbag starting to sound a lot like crazy Sarah Palin? What was his agenda, what had CBS ever done to him? How had he been so manipulated by the Bush administration that he could turn like this against his fellow journalists?
Goldberg brought up the issue of affirmative action, a subject that he accurately guessed would really rile up those NYU students.

“How about a plan for affirmative action for the smallest minority in American newsrooms? Conservatives,” he said, which generated some more grumbles. Some people weren’t listening anymore.
“We have White liberals, we have Black liberals, we have gay liberals, we have straight liberals, we have Latino liberals, and we have Asian liberals. I’m glad we have a newsroom that looks like America, I really am, but I think we need a newsroom that thinks like America,” Goldberg said.

But not many of the 340 were listening by then anyway.