Ezra Klein: The MSM's Michael Moore Inferiority Complex

[babylonsister]

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_msms_michael_moore_inferiority_complex

The MSM's Michael Moore Inferiority Complex

In a world full of political provocateurs and public hotheads, why is it that only Michael Moore triggers the media's all-too-absent obsession with factual accuracy? Because he scares them.


Ezra Klein | July 12, 2007 | web only


"Facts," Ronald Reagan famously said, "are stupid things." But that may be too harsh. They can just be made to do stupid things. For instance, if I told you that the American economy had grown by a robust 3.2 percent in 2004 and 2005, you'd think it had done pretty well. If I told you that the bottom 90 percent of American workers actually lost income over that same period because so much went to the very rich, you might think differently. Both facts are true. They just need context.

And context is what facts so rarely get. Here at The American Prospect, the economist Dean Baker writes a blog dedicated to providing some of that sorely needed context in the media's reportage of economic and social policy data. It's a big job, because he's one of the few people doing it. Except when a new Michael Moore movie comes out. Then, suddenly, the press becomes obsessed with facts and context and the relevance of omissions.

Take CNN. A few days after the release of Sicko, they set a whole team on fact checking the provocateur's documentary. "We found," they said, "that his numbers were mostly right, but his arguments could use a little more context. As we dug deep to uncover the numbers, we found surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film. In fact, most pundits or health-care experts we spoke to spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film."

So Moore was on solid ground. But that wasn't enough for CNN. This week, Moore was set to appear on Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room. Before he came on, though, Blitzer had CNN's medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, offer a "reality check" on the film:

As Dean Baker pointed out, the "reality check" needed a reality check of its own. But never mind that. It's more important to ask, what accounts for this unrelenting obsession with Moore's accuracy? As a certified health care wonk who loves nothing more than posting comparative spending graphs, I'm all for rapidly increasing the complexity and accuracy with which these issues are debated. But the media rarely indulges such passions. Apparently Michael Moore has a peculiar effect on them.

To wit, Moore is a documentary filmmaker. Fred Thompson is a likely Republican candidate for president. Thompson recently released a radio commentary on the Moore's movie that mixed outright falsehoods with deceptive omissions. There was no media outcry, no Wolf Blitzer follow-up, no CNN truth squad. Nothing. Silence.

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[markk]

1. one of those articles that really puts things in perspective

puts the focus on the more important part of the whole mm vs the media thing.