McGowan, William. Coloring the News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003. 291 pages.

William McGowan is perhaps a conservative, judging from the fact that he is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, but this book has nothing to do with the liberal-conservative spectrum. Rather, it's about an issue that turns conventional political labels upside down. This is the issue of quotas, diversity, and political correctness. There aren't many topics where yesterday's bleeding-heart liberals can become super-race-conscious careerists, or where yesterday's property-rights libertarians can suddenly sound like egalitarian crusaders.

This is a study of how political correctness has run amuck in America's major newsrooms, by promoting the sort of spin that emphasizes diversity at the expense of objectivity. It's important to note (and McGowan should have investigated further), that this is not the result of pressure from below, but rather pressure from above. It reminds us of that spooky cold warrior McGeorge Bundy. After doing his best to eliminate the North Vietnamese people and failing, Bundy became head of the "liberal" Ford Foundation and started co-opting minorities with massive grants that promoted identity politics. Bundy said he was "making the world safe for capitalism." McGowan mentions the Ford Foundation in passing and he sort of smells a rat, but he hasn't yet absorbed the big stink.
ISBN 1-893554-60-0

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