Health Care Mobs = Swift Boat Vets. And The Press Plays Dumb, Again

Here we go again.

During August's summer daze, right-wing mini-mobs (egged on by corporate interests) have run wild at town hall meetings, propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an effort to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet the mini-mob members have been treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.

Sound familiar? Recall August 2004, when the right-wing Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (egged on by corporate interests) stole a month's worth of campaign headlines by propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an attempt to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet they were treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.

Fringe players on the right are making wild accusations that cannot be backed up by fact. The mainstream media response? We must cover the phenomenon daily, even hourly!

So, day after August day, these vacuous health care "debates" are aired on cable television, just as news consumers suffered through night after night of vacuous Swift Boat "debates" five summers ago. In both cases, the press for the most part handed in its referee's whistle and focused its attention on simply reporting the fact-free claims and then getting the Democratic response. (i.e. he said/she said.) It turns out journalists are petrified of calling out right-wing activists as liars, and the other side knows it.

Read the full Media Matters column here.

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Comments

[grf67]

The press is about as curious as our previous president. It is easier to report what is being said rather than do the harder journalistic work of checking the facts. Our press is a shadow of what it used to be.

[expired]

NYT and WaPo- People it is time to get busy. We MUST not let them ruin our chances for health care reform. We must not allow them to get away with this farce. Let's band together and get this done.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/contactpaper.html

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/

[measie]

Maybe we, the consumers, are partly to blame for the fact that journalists are no longer living up to the high standards set by their predecessors. The public reacts with more passion and excitement to tabloid style reporting than to the hard hitting, investigative type reporter. Maybe if viewers conferred "rock star" status on hard working reporters and news anchors who strive to uncover and deliver the news, instead of on the talk show personalities who do nothing but sensationalize the news, we would have a better result on television. Like the saying goes "you get what you pay for". As consumers, Americans have the right to demand accurate, truthful, and unmanipulated news reporting. As long as viewers accept the content of news programming that is anything less, shoddy news distribution will continue. Or get worse. Our choice.

[MJinCanada]

Many journalists in Canada are appalled at the way the media in the US giving so much time to the anti-reform distortions, as if they were some kind of legitimate viewpoint instead of fabrications.

If the MSM follows through with this kind of "balanced" coverage, this week they should cover four 9-11 conspiracies, three haunted house stories, a Bermuda Triangle story, who really shot JFK, the latest Knights Templar theory and new developments in the Lindburgh kidnapping case.

[lbrty 2112]

What is it with the left and their inability to grasp that people don't want government involved in their healthcare? Can any one name me a government program that delivered what it promised, in the timeline specified and at the actual cost stated?

Govt. can only run healthcare one way and that is to ration it and the people know that means the lions share of care will be allocated to the viable tax payers. The very young and very old will essentially be left out.

[tck29]

Your arguments have been repeatedly shown to have no basis in reality. I am DYING to know if there is ANY rational argument against reform. Do you have one?

[lbrty 2112]

Can you answer the question tck29?? Which program?? Did I mis state the rationing part??

You have no response

[Estreet1964]

If no one wants the government involved in their health care, then why don't a few brave Republican senators or congressmen try to stamp out Medicare? The government runs it, so it must be socialism. Why aren't they trying to rid us of this socialist menace?

Why don't you tell us what would happen to ANY politician who tried to take Medicare, which is run by the government, away from senior citizens.

[lbrty 2112]

Estreet, medicare is broken. Govt cannot allocate resources efficiently. Seniors would be better off if the govt gave them the cash and the spent it on their own.

[Virgil Kane]

News Flash...there ARE republicans trying to stamp out medicare. Dick Armey and Ron Paul to name a couple. Remember, Medicare will go bankrupt in a decade on its current track. This system is far from perfect, in fact it is reminiscent of a giant ponzi scheme.

[dynwit]

And yet in June, before you people started poisoning the debate, many different polls showed that a 72% of Americans wanted a public option for health care.

Repubs... ya got no good ideas, so ya just spin your way thru life.

[radiclib]

.
.
OK, sure.
D-Day. . . The interstate highway system . . .
.
.

[lbrty 2112]

Ok rad you got me there! Though D-Day wasn't a govt program per se I must say it was a smashing success. And while I do agree the Eisenhower Interstate System is a huge success (the greens will disagree with us) it's largely maintained by the individual states who have to beg the feds for funds (which they dangle like carrots in front of horses). Most the of the time it comes with strings attached, a kind of quid pro quo. Maybe you're old enough to remember when the drinking age was raised back to 21. It was choice up to the individual states, but the feds witheld highway funds if the states did not comply. I think VT was the last hold out, but the finally gave in.

[MoeB]

The VA. Medicare recipients don't seem to be complaining about their healthcare. Poor people on medicaid don't seem to be complaining (much). I think the post office operates fairly well, as I'm yet to have a letter I dropped in the mail not get delivered (and I can mail it anywhere in the US for .44 cents). Government isn't perfect. But that's because it's run by people, who aren't perfect. Yes, there is a lot of red tape and unnecessary hold-ups in Congress, but so what? I can rarely speak with a live person when I have issues with my PRIVATE cable bill. Same w/credit card companies, so let's not pretend as if private industry is perfect by ANY means.

And same w/private insurance. And you are naive if you believe that private insurance doesn't RATION healthcare. They have to because if they paid for every medical procedure everyone wanted/needed, they wouldn't be NEARLY as profitable as they are now. Ask a senior citizen if they'd give up their medicare to opt into private insurance. See what answer the majority of them will give.

[HeevenSteven]

The press isn't playing dumb; they're playing along, and helping to spin the debate for the right.

[Estreet1964]

So true. They don't want to pi$$ the pharmaceutical companies who spend millions to push their pills to the oldsters who watch their nightly news broadcasts.

[HeevenSteven]

Exzactly! Revenue first, truth if it's convenient.

[Virgil Kane]

So there is a legitimate point hidden in all this that no one is addressing....with 50 million more people being put into the system, where are all the doctors going to come from? We have a shortage of doctors already. The only logical explanation is that care will have to be rationed until we can get more doctors trained.

I suppose we could bring them in from other countries...oh wait, we are already doing that and the foreign doctors must spend the 3-5 years in residency here in order to practice.

[MoeB]

So we should just continue down our current path because we don't have enough doctors? Hello-these folks w/out insurance STILL NEED CARE. They get it at emergency rooms that cost us with insurance TONS OF MONEY.

[josephXY]

Hannah Arendt, philosopher and author of several famous books, described in one of her
most relevant books "Violence" how regimes who, when in trouble, resort to violence do so at
the expense of losing power. Violence and state force might prevail for some time, be dominant,
but such a regime is losing all power. That book deals with regimes and was first published in 1968.

Yet the same result might be case here again, on a different level. Groups resorting to violence
might dominate the scene for some time because, among others ,the enjoy all the attention of
(the foolish) media. But the do so, possibly, at the expense of losing power (or more precise:
acceptance). In that case really problematic. While, for instance, terrorists can hold somebody
hostage, the media - if they chose to play the messengers - are compared to that in a very weak
position. All it takes is losing "power", (acceptance), or an active interest (and the willingness to
pay for the messenger service).
It's really an open - ended situation, considering that a media is media crisis taking its toll.

[lbrty 2112]

Do you mean losing power over you healthcare?

By 'regimes', do you mean people like, say, the founding fathers of this country?

[RuthAlice]

They remind me even more of the Brooks Brothers riot in that again, thanks to a media that validates and justifies right wing political violence and unrest, mob rule has displaced governance. Intimidation has displaced debate and thugs have displaced constituents.

In my opinion, even if they were right on the issues (which they manifestly are not) they should lose the policy debate because of their tactics. We cannot govern and make policy in a country that rewards organized political intimidation and thuggery.