ONLY KRUGMAN GOES THERE

[springhill]

http://www.dailyhowler.com/

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2008

ONLY KRUGMAN GOES THERE: Just yesterday, speaking with a friend, we marveled about the way the press corps dropped the late Trina Bachtel’s story—after her story stopped serving their interests. Bachtel is the young Ohio woman who died, a few years ago, in another insurance horror story. Last week, the press corps was all over her story—and then, it was dropped like a rock.

This morning, the Times’ Paul Krugman re-explores Bachtel’s story. But then, Krugman is the only person at our biggest news orgs who will go where this story leads us.

In his column, Krugman runs through the basic facts of Bachtel’s death, explaining what this story shows about our health care system. Then, he goes where his colleagues will not. Uh-oh! He discusses the journalism!


KRUGMAN (4/11/08): Some readers may already have recognized the story of Trina Bachtel. While campaigning in Ohio, Hillary Clinton was told this story, and she took to repeating it, without naming the victim, on the campaign trail. She used it as an illustration of what's wrong with American health care and why we need universal coverage.

Then The Washington Post identified Ms. Bachtel, the hospital where she died claimed that the story was false—and the news media went to town, accusing Mrs. Clinton of making stuff up. Instead of being a story about health care, it became a story about the candidate's supposed problems with the truth.

Last week, we felt we knew why the Post had fact-checked this story; almost surely, they were hoping they’d find a mistake, to be used as a club against Clinton. (This pattern has been plain for years.) But uh-oh! As things turned out, the Post and some other big papers had semi-bungled their own fact-checking; they thundered that Clinton’s story was wrong, then discovered her story was basically right. “In fact, Mrs. Clinton was accurately repeating the story as it was told to her,” Krugman continues, “and it turns out that while some of the details were slightly off, the essentials of her story were correct.” Yes, Clinton’s story turned out to be basically accurate. And when big pundits saw that was true, they dropped Bachtel like a rock.

Having created interest in the story, it would have been normal to follow up, in the way Krugman does today. But in truth, most pundits didn’t care about Bachtel herself, or about what her story might tell us. They had wanted to beat up on Clinton. Bachtel’s story lost its interest when that cause was denied.

[Elspeth]

1. Is that tool Ceci Connolly still working for the Washington Post?

Hillary should know to watch the Post after the 2000 election when Al Gore was lied about and misrepresented through the campaign.

[amihol]

3. I think yes

[Elspeth]

4. This sounds like a Spice Girl kind of attack

...

[Subdivisions]

2. Out of all the REAL sad stories that she could have drawn from...