So says veteran CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg in his new bestselling book, "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News." In 1996, Goldberg wrote an op-ed piece about liberal bias in the media for the Wall Street Journal. After being shunned by fellow reporters, he was eventually compelled to leave CBS.

Goldberg's revelations about media bias should come as no surprise. For years, many Americans have suspected that media people tend to be well to the left politically of their fellow citizens. In 1996, for example, a survey found that 89 percent of Washington news bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents had voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, as opposed to 43 percent of other voters.

According to a 2000 survey, journalists also tend to differ substantially from other Americans on a number of social measures. One observer summed up matters with a rhetorical question: "How many members of the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch belong to the American Legion or the Kiwanis or go to prayer breakfasts?"

In "Bias," Goldberg argues that journalists' political and social leanings strongly influence the way they report the news. It's not that reporters conspire to slant their stories, he insists. The problem is more subtle, and thus more serious. Goldberg maintains that most journalists share an ideological worldview. Generally, they support abortion rights, affirmative action, gun control, gay rights and environmental regulation, and oppose school prayer and the death penalty. Moreover, they tend to surround themselves with friends and colleagues who think the same way.

The result, says Goldberg, is that most journalists don't view themselves as political liberals. They simply believe that all reasonable and humane people think the way that they do. In their own eyes, they are politically middle-of-the-road. According to Goldberg, most journalists divide Americans into two kinds of people: moderates like themselves and right-wing nuts.

How does this affect the way that journalists report the news? First, it frequently leads them to label conservatives as such, while failing to identify liberals. (Real example: Phyllis Schlafly is a "conservative spokeswoman," while radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon is a "noted law professor.") Goldberg says that journalists label conservatives in order to signal readers that they are outside the mainstream -- in other words, to suggest that they are not objective or credible. Likewise, journalists often subtly disparage conservative policies and positions by describing them as "controversial" or "risky."

Reporters' bias is also apparent in the groups they choose for reactions to important stories. Need a comment on legislation about an abortion waiting period? Go to the National Organization for Women (NOW). After all, NOW is the group that speaks for women, right? Goldberg once asked Susan Zirinsky, senior producer of CBS Evening News in Washington, how often she had asked conservative women's groups for reactions to Supreme Court decisions or congressional votes on "women's issues." She couldn't think of a single time. Though she found this puzzling in retrospect, she hadn't previously given it a thought.

But media bias appears most clearly in the issues that reporters choose to highlight, and the way that they portray those issues. Take homelessness, for example, one of the 1980s' biggest stories. During the '80s, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there were roughly 230,000 homeless people in America. TV newscasters, however, routinely reported the figure as 3 to 5 million.

Where did these inflated numbers come from? Journalists got them from homeless advocacy groups, and uncritically passed them on. The media never treat numbers from prolife groups or the National Rifle Association this way. But reporters saw homeless advocates as inherently credible, because their cause was "worthy." Indeed, journalists themselves enlisted in this cause. Through the stories they wrote, they sought to awaken the nation's conscience and compel public action, like increased funding for homeless shelters.

The media also sought to create sympathy for the homeless in other ways. For example, reporters routinely portrayed homeless people as middle-class folks who were down on their luck, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. During the 1980s, experts increasingly attributed homelessness to substance abuse and untreated mental illness. But the media told a different story. One analysis of 129 news reports found that only 4 percent of these reports cited mental illness or drug and alcohol abuse as important causes of homelessness. The other 96 percent blamed social or political conditions, like high mortgage rates and a shortage of low-income housing.

Media bias is a serious problem, though for many Americans it still exists below the radar screen. Obviously, we can't look to the Washington Post or "60 Minutes" to give us the disturbing details. By writing "Bias," Bernard Goldberg has performed an important public service. Maybe we should consider the solution he half-facetiously proposes: affirmative action for conservatives in the newsroom.

-- Katherine Kersten is a senior fellow of the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis.