I see that the Democrats are once again pointing fingers and burning President Obama in effigy for his "failure" to explain his healthcare proposals even as he tours the country, conducts press conferences, and hosts TV specials on healthcare reform. Is there a disconnect between the media now attacking President Obama for failing to explain his his healthcare proposals and the need for reform and the facts on the ground that President Obama is devoting a substantial amount of time promoting healthcare reform?
Well, what is missing in these attacks is a critical examination of the role of the media itself in essentially censoring and obscuring the debate. Even "liberal" shows fail to discuse the substance of President Obama's healthcare proposals or alternatives such as single payer or even the problems with the status quo. Instead, we just hear lables "single payer," "government takeover," "public option," and "socialism." However, when President Obama or anyone else for that matter "gets into the weeds" and discusses the substance of the proposals, cable news often cuts away, as though the political sport and campaign tactics are more important than the underlying public policy.
We saw this during the Presidential campaign. We are now seeing it during the battle for healthcare reform. The mainstream media has utterly abandoned any pretence of trying to educate the public about important issues effecting them. Instead, we are left with soundbites and Monday political quarterbacking. In the new age of infotainment, its as though President Obama's failure to explain the need for healthcare reform is due to his failure to make it trivial and entertaining.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-onthemedia29-2009jul29,0,566995.column###
A key senator had begun to explain a proposal that might help clear the way to national healthcare reform. Television cameras zoomed in as Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, began to explain the potential compromise.
But if you were watching CNN on Tuesday about the time that Baucus mentioned instituting a cost-control commission he called a "Med-Pac on steroids," you quickly found yourself whisked back to the studio. The senator had gotten into messy details, "a little bit in the weeds," as CNN anchor Tony Harris said.
Rather than try to explain to its viewers how such a commission might control Medicare costs, CNN cut away to an all-important update on . . . Alberto Contador's ongoing war of words with fellow cyclist Lance Armstrong.
By all means, let's recap the story of two big-name jocks man-slapping each other, rather than help Americans sort out the central domestic issue (Snore!) of the moment.
America has a healthcare crisis, yes, and so do broad segments of the media, particularly television news. They have transformed the story of how to fix an overpriced and inadequate care system into an overheated political scrum, with endless chatter about deadlines and combatants and very little about the kind of medical care people get and how it might change.Campaign-style "horse race" coverage seemed to me to have shoved aside more pertinent reporting, and on Tuesday, that view got some confirmation, in the form of research from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The Washington-based watchdog group found that more than three-quarters of the coverage (by 55 outlets across television, radio, newspapers and websites) in the week ending last Sunday focused on politics and legislative strategy. That means less than one quarter of the coverage centered on current medical care conditions, the details of reform proposals or the effect of healthcare on the larger economy."If the debate over healthcare reform is a potential teaching moment about how we take care of ourselves in America versus other countries, how much healthcare costs and the quality of our medicine, that teaching moment so far is passing us by," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project, which examined 244 stories about healthcare.
The complexity of the debate has not been lost on anyone, but even accepting the difficulties, many outlets have shown a dazzling determination to highlight conflicts and legislative timetables while telling us almost nothing about potential changes in insurance and care.
Many outlets have obsessed, in particular, over the likelihood that the legislation would not be settled by this week's congressional recess.
"Journalists want to be first to identify a turning point, that critical juncture in history when an initiative is doomed to failure or on its way to ushering in a new era," said Michelle Levander, who runs a fellowship for healthcare journalists at USC's Annenberg School for Communication. "In our rush to judgment, we sometimes overlook the fine point of whether we are calling that moment in history or creating it."
Fox News, not surprisingly, seems most intent on reporting on the potential failure of President Obama to make this week's deadline, which he set himself.
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