Americans Are More Confused About Health Care Reform Than Ever: Thanks Corporate Media!

Last week, I interviewed Trudy Lieberman, a veteran journalist, who has reported on health care and consumer issues for over thirty years. I asked Lieberman to grade the media’s performance in explaining the issue of reform to the American people.

Initially, she gave the media a C-. Then she seemed to rethink her overly sunny estimation and recalculated. She concluded, "I would give them an F."

Lieberman's main beef is the way the media has been covering the health care reform debate like a horse race, or as she put it, the "Who's up; who’s down? Who’s winning today? Does Pelosi have the votes? What’s going to be the game-changer? What should Baucus do because he can’t get the votes out of his committee?"

A media consumed with tracking Obama's popularity has failed to educate the American citizenry about the key elements of the debate. Ask any 30 Americans to define Obama's plans for subsidies, mandates, insurance exchanges, or the public option, and you're likely to hear 30 different answers. That's because the media has been reporting on health care issues as if gossiping about the conflicting personalities crowded in any high school cafeteria.

Though many so-called journalists are guilty of this crime, I offer ABC's Rick Klein as merely the latest example of this watered down breed of journalism. On his blog, Klein goes on for some length about the various superficial aspects of the reform debate with which we all are well-acquainted. Fasten your Waders. We're going in.

Did you know the campaign is over, and President Obama won? Well, Rick clears up any confusion regarding who the President is in his first paragraph. He transitions smoothly into some meaningless gossip about how things are "getting personal" in the brawl for reform. As proof of this, he cites President Obama during his interview on 60 Minutes. ”You know, I intend to be president for a while, and once this bill passes, I own it ... I'm the one who's going to be held responsible." ... Me-ow ... ? I guess?

Rick promptly dives into some poll numbers, the favorite past time of desk jockey journalists. This is the horse race aspect of coverage that Lieberman detests so profoundly. Is Obama up this week? Did Joe Wilson hurt him? It's hard to hear anything over the breathy excitement with which Rick quotes ABC Polling Director Gary Langer. Why interview a health care expert when one can shove a microphone in the face of a man whose skill set entails reading numbers aloud?

Just in case you weren’t taking Rick very seriously by now, he drops this bomb: “Bottom line: right now, voters are almost exactly where they were before the speech,” an almost breathtakingly uneducational remark from George Stephanopoulos, who I’m being told is a very serious man whose thoughts matter.

Rick then types out more polls for you to read.

Then he writes about tea parties protesters.

He quotes someone at Politico on more horse race matters.

He brings up Lehman Brothers (??)

In typical dismissive fashion, Rick devotes little time to the public option. In fact, it probably would have been better for everyone is he had devoted zero time to it, since this is how he phrased the critical matter

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http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/americans_are_more_confused_about_health_care_reform_than_ever%3A_thanks_corporate_media%21/#142614

And I live in uber-liberal Massachusetts.

We certainly are an educated lot, no?

and I broke a personal rule of mine: we ate at a restaurant which served "freedom fries." I shit you not. Fwiw, the food sucked - something I should have realized based on using such a stupid term, but it was also the only thing open at the time.

Don't almost all want health reform? We must not be fooled by what the MSM says about the public, or WE will be the ones confused by the corporate media.

NO!!! The media deserves an A!

Most of the time it's NOT the media's shoddy reporting, but it's the media's deliberate disinformation. In other words the MSM has gone out of its way to confuse people. the MSM has done what it has intended to do.

Its easy to define and easy to defend. The problem is, it doesnt make the corporate masters happy, so we cant have it.

explains how the Republicans and the media try to scare and confuse people about the nature of mandatory insurance, and what it really means.

However, it seems to me so many people struggle to survive holding down different jobs from morning to night, if it were "on the up and up" (which it surely wouldn't be, given the criminal nature of your insurance industry), the "mandatory insurance" they have in France, for example, in America, would have to amount the public option in all but name. So why not cut out the larcenous middle-man from the start.

Actually of course, there was never any question of prohibiting health insurance. That was a farcical fantasy dreamt up by the Republican crazies. They know full well that the public option would simply be an addition, and would not eliminate the insurance companies and the cover they would provide for those who want to supplement their health-care with fancy add-ons.

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/09/americans-have-become-weak-and-fearful-things.html