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| Home Front: Politix |
| Journalists Impotent in Health Care Debate |
| 2009-08-24 |
| The crackling, often angry debate over health-care reform has severely tested the media's ability to untangle a story of immense complexity. In many ways, news organizations have risen to the occasion; in others they have become agents of distortion. But even when they report the facts, they have had trouble influencing public opinion. Perhaps journalists are no more trusted than politicians these days, or many folks never saw the knockdown stories. But this The eruption of anger at town-hall meetings on health care, while real and palpable, became an endless loop on television. The louder the voices, the fiercer the confrontation, the more it became video wallpaper, obscuring the substantive arguments in favor of what producers love most: conflict. The WaPo has had an moment of clarity. Twenty members of Congress might have held calm and collected town meetings on any given day, but only the one with raucous exchanges would make it on the air. "TV loves a ruckus," Obama complained more than once. In fact, after the president convened a low-key town hall in New Hampshire, press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters: "I think some of you were disappointed yesterday that the president didn't get yelled at." There was a grain of truth in that. As Fox broke away from the meeting, anchor Trace Gallagher said, "Any contentious questions, anybody yelling, we'll bring it to you." If some Fox hosts seemed as sympathetic to the town-hall screamers as they were to last spring's tea-party protesters, MSNBC focused more on conservative efforts to organize the dissenters and whether they were half-crazed characters - especially the few who rather chillingly stood outside Obama events with their guns. A reminder to the government, perhaps? Still, it was a stretch for White House officials, who have a huge megaphone, to blame media coverage for the sinking popularity of health reform. It was equally odd for Gibbs to tell reporters that stories about Obama backing away from a government-run health plan were "entirely contrived by you guys" - this after Gibbs and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had said on Sunday morning shows that such a plan was not an essential part of Obama's proposal. For all the sound and fury, news organizations have labored to explain the intricacies of the competing blueprints. "NBC Nightly News" ran a piece examining how Obama's public health-insurance option would work. ABC's "World News " did a fact check on the end-of-life provision in the bill. "CBS Evening News" highlighted problems with the current system by interviewing some of the 1,500 people waiting at a free makeshift clinic in Los Angeles. Time ran a cover story on health care, titled "Paging Dr. Obama." And major newspapers have been filled with articles examining the nitty-gritty details. Those who say the media haven't dug into the details aren't looking very hard. All the shortcomings were, no doubt, exposed. What has the media done on uncoving the true costs of Obamacare? But the healthy dose of coverage has largely failed to dispel many of the half-truths and exaggerations surrounding the debate. Even so, news organizations were slow to diagnose the depth of public unease about the unwieldy legislation. For the moment, the story, like the process itself, remains a muddle. Maybe the public is uneasy for a reason, Einstein. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #8 "But even when they report the facts, they have had trouble influencing public opinion." GOOD. Too bad the piece didn't mention that today's so-called journalists rarely report the facts (and then usually by accident), and "influencing public opinion" is NOT what they're supposed to do in the first place. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2009-08-24 19:18 |
| #7 And I see another application for the strikout function - add back in some clarification from editing out whole paragraphs of wasted electrons and photons. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2009-08-24 18:09 |
| #6 "Eat your sandwich, you ungrateful proles!" |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-08-24 10:35 |
| #5 Alt, alt Title: Journalists Frustrated as Public Refuses to Swallow B.S. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2009-08-24 09:44 |
| #4 Perhaps journalists are no more trusted than politicians these days... No kidding. At least politicians can go to work for the corporations/special interests groups they've represented after they are retired/fired. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-08-24 08:46 |
| #3 Would journalist imp*tence be covered under the National Health Care program? |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-08-24 08:20 |
| #2 Anything which doesn't agree with their idea of how things could turn out is 'misinformation' and 'untruth'. The idea that people could draw different conclusions is alien to them. |
| Posted by: gromky 2009-08-24 07:32 |
| #1 It's articles like this that make you realise how WILDLY out of touch "journalists" are. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2009-08-24 07:24 |
