Project for Excellence In Journalism - Reports On Media Coverage of Healthcare Reform

What is really interesting is how the media avoids covering the substance of the healthcare reform debate, and instead portrays the whole debate as a mere philosophical argument, rather than discussing the ongoing crisis we have in healthcare:

http://www.journalism.org/index_report/pej_news_coverage_index_july_20_26_2009

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One sign that health care has become a more polarizing and political issue can be seen in last week’s coverage patterns. The two media sectors that include the ideological and debate-oriented talk shows devoted the most attention to the story—38% on cable news and 35% on radio.

In addition, a PEJ examination of storylines in last week’s coverage indicates that the horse race aspect of health care reform—the politics and strategy behind the legislative fight—was the overwhelmingly dominant theme.

A good chunk of the coverage, particularly in the talk-oriented media, portrayed the health care battle as a philosophical donnybrook between the forces of big government and big business.

“This is an ideological fight for the country,” declared liberal talk host Ed Schultz on his July 21 radio show. “This is the top two percent influencing the big medical, lining the pockets of the conservative Democrats.’

That night on the Fox News Channel, right-leaning host Bill O’Reilly asserted that “President Obama will try to save his health care vision with a prime-time press conference. He will not succeed. Americans understand the essential force of this country is freedom, not big government micromanaging what we can and cannot do.”

The July 22 press conference quickly spawned coverage and commentary that often played out along sharply drawn political lines.

On the July 23 CBS “Early Show,” Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal declared that the bill from House Democrats “increases the deficit…increases taxes on employers most fundamentally, it’s creating this government-run health care plan. My concern…is they drive out the competition and you have government bureaucrats deciding how much health care we can get.”

Jindal was followed by top Obama adviser David Axelrod, who countered that, “Mr. Jindal says ‘well the government shouldn’t interfere in the market.’ The bottom line right now is everyone is at the mercy of the insurance industry and this would reform the system and put consumers in control.”

Explaining the complicated state of health care coverage, as well as the details of various ideas to reform it, can be a very daunting task for the media. Monitoring the spin wars between the two sides is far easier and helps explain why the subject has finally climbed to the top of the news agenda.

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hate government that actually represents the American Peoples' best interests over those of corporations.

Big Business is four square behind the insane "War on Drugs" because that big government intrusion emasculates, the American Peoples' liberty, while disenfranchising many citizens from their government, this in turn alienates the people from government while empowering big business to run roughshod over the American People.

The same holds true for the world's largest expenditures for "defense;" exploding our budget, big business has no problem with that big government program; because it in turn allows big business to run roughshod over much of the rest of Earth's citizens.

It's not "big government" vs "big business," it's government that represents the American People vs government that represents corporate supremacy.

Thanks for the thread, TomCADem.

to rip us off. Government is Big Business' butt boy.

doesn't have a damn thing to do with it.

Big Health Care is the problem.