OF COURSE, accusations of liberal media bias are even more meaningless since the terrorist attacks of September 11. The media have supported the war against terrorism as enthusiastically as the public, dressing up their newscasts with patriotic graphics and treating figures such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks as though they were Hollywood celebrities.

CBS anchor Dan Rather — whom Goldberg variously compares to a Mafia don, Richard Nixon, a horny prison inmate with a stable of "bitches," and a cross-dressing fetishist — has established himself as perhaps the leading media supporter of the war, bursting into tears on David Letterman’s show and declaring that he was ready to "report for duty." The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes, in a favorable review of Bias, nevertheless wrote, "The press has been more in sync with the American people since September 11 than at any time in decades."

It’s a point Goldberg himself concedes in a chapter he grafted on near the end. "For a change, they gave it to us straight," he writes of the September 11 coverage (the italics are his). And, once again, he follows it up with a critique that, far from being aimed at "liberal" bias, is an entirely unoriginal observation made by liberals, conservatives, and moderates on numerous occasions since the terrorist attacks: that we need serious, in-depth reporting on the roots of anti-American and anti-Semitic rage in Muslim and Arab countries.

"But here the media — apparently feeling squeamish about stories that put the ‘underdogs’ in a bad light — keep us virtually in the dark," Goldberg writes, ignoring entirely the fact that such nominally liberal publications as the New York Times and the New Yorker, as well as the explicitly liberal New Republic, have reported extensively on the irrational, pathological hatred that made September 11 possible.

And that’s just one example of how Goldberg selectively uses evidence to tilt the argument in his favor. Another concerns Goldberg’s claim that liberal bias is causing viewers to abandon network news in favor of The O’Reilly Factor, the pugnaciously conservative talk show on the Fox News Channel. As proof, Goldberg notes that the proportion of households tuned in to one of the Big Three evening newscasts has fallen from 75 percent to 43 percent since 1979 — and that Bill O’Reilly’s shout fest is "the hottest news and information program on cable television."

Here’s what Goldberg leaves out. The Big Three still draw about 30 million households per night. The O’Reilly Factor draws about one million, which puts it just barely ahead of CNN’s Larry King Live. Moreover, the network newscasts are broadcast at 6:30 p.m., a half-hour earlier than in 1979 and a time when millions of commuters are still on their way home. While Dan, Tom, and Peter are addressing their shrinking audience, nearly 10 million people each week are in their cars, listening to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered — one of the most liberal shows in broadcast news, if NPR’s conservative critics are to be believed.

In other words, if Goldberg had bothered to run the numbers, he would have had to admit that the liberal media are doing pretty well.

As Slate’s Michael Kinsley, who concedes that the media are largely liberal, observes, "The point is that this dumb book adds nothing to the argument." A well-reasoned critique on how the elite media’s cultural liberalism shapes and sometimes distorts the news would be welcome. Bias isn’t it.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com