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Critics exposing liberal bias in the media are making news themselves. Former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg has climbed to the top of best-seller lists with Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. William McGowan, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, is making waves with Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism. Journalists no longer can ignore a topic that has captured the public's attention.

"Books like these force journalists to rethink issues they would rather not think about," says media analyst Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, based in Washington. "Whether they change anyone's mind is anyone's guess. But you can't change anyone's mind if you are not forced to think about the topic."

Both writers have taken pains not to align themselves with conservative causes. Nevertheless, their criticism will roll off the backs of their intended targets, says Stan Rothman, director of the Study for Social and Political Change at Smith College and a longtime media analyst. "They ignore these people, because it would require a change in how they view the world," Rothman says of the networks. "The majority of journalists strive to be fair, but they are not dead horses, so they tend to be left of center. And the public as a whole knows it. Plus, the journalism schools are more to the left than the journalists themselves."

McGowan argues that political correctness in American newsrooms has resulted in "journalistic malpractice," citing cases such as that of black obstetrician Patrick Chavis. The physician was a poster boy for affirmative action, his career lionized by the national media. But when one of his patients died after a botched liposuction, a criminal investigation for other professional misconduct barely was reported by newspapers and magazines. The New York Times, for instance, "ran nothing to amend its false portrait of an affirmative-action hero, or to question the legitimacy of a race-conscious social policy that had made him a doctor," McGowan writes.

"The average news exec is a fiftysomething white guy who the last thing he wants in his basket is a problem on the race issue" McGowan says. "So they let themselves get steamrolled again and again. There is so much sanctimony and moral preening going on in this agenda. Whether the issue be the integration of gays and women into the military, AIDS, abortion, gay marriage or gay adoption, the press has tended to side with gay and feminist groups, trimming its news-gathering zeal to filter out realities that might undercut the cause."

Newsrooms started a crusade to diversify their ranks around 1992, McGowan continues, making senior editors' salaries dependent on the number of minority journalists they hired or promoted. Special intern programs for minorities were created by organizations such as the Freedom Forum, whose parent organization, the Gannett Corp., had an stringent diversity policy at its top-selling newspaper, USA Today. Editors were required to run photos of minorities above the front-page fold and reporters' evaluations were weighed on how often they quoted minorities vs. white sources.

But instead of improving news coverage, such workplace engineering has fostered dishonesty, according to McGowan. "Much to the chagrin of news organizations, who thought they could leverage diversity to bolster sagging readership and viewership, the new minority readers and viewers never really materialized," he writes. "In fact, the push for diversity has pushed away many white, middle-class readers and viewers who often find the ideologically skewed reporting on diversity sharply at odds with their sense of reality."

As diversity efforts have brought in more minorities of every sort, newsrooms have become Balkanized kingdoms where "certain groups feel more empowered in the journalistic shouting match than others," McGowan writes. Those who dissent keep silent. "People can read the signals and they don't want to speak up. I had bureau chiefs in Washington for major newspapers who didn't want me to use their names because they could lose their jobs. Those who toe the line get promoted and end up at the better news organizations, whereas those who do not end up in career backwaters or career Siberias or get retaliated upon."

Others find fault with the media for hiring only certain types of reporters. Former ABC-TV religion reporter Peggy Wehmeyer, a highly rated professional who was dropped from the network last year ostensibly for economic reasons, faults networks for "lack of diversity" when it comes to religious beliefs and ideology. "As much attention as the media give to make sure that there's representation and diversity in the area of race, gender and even sexual orientation," she told Baptist Press, "I think it's time for the media to pay attention to ideological diversity, especially when it comes to religion."

But Islam has gotten a free ride, says McGowan, who calls American Muslims "the new objets du jour of journalistic solicitude." He explains: "Although there were indeed some hateful acts committed against Muslims in America, or those confused for Muslims, post-September 11 these acts have been exaggerated by the press, with facts rarely supporting the PC [politically correct] generalization that America was overtaken by a fit of `anti-Muslim fervor' as the New York Times characterized it.

"If a publisher was interested in real diversity rather than diversity on the cheap, he would hire, for instance, a female reporter who opposes abortion, or a born-again Christian or, for that matter, a Republican. I don't necessarily endorse the viewpoints of any of these groups, yet researching this book has convinced me that these viewpoints, and others considered `retrograde,' are systematically excluded from today's newsroom."

JULIA DUIN WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER DAILY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.