A Thought Experiment
Let's take a moment to consider what the Health Care Reform "debate" would look like if we had an honest, functional press covering it in a responsible way. Imagine if every night a handsome and elegantly coiffed news anchor solemnly recapped the day's events, clearly identifying and differentiating between facts, opinions and lies. How quickly would the debate change if respected news reporting would simply say "Senator X stood up on the floor of the Senate this afternoon and told no less than four outrageous lies." There would be no need to speculate on the Senator's motives nor suggest that there was any agenda behind his lies. It would merely be accurate to take the position that he is either grossly mistaken or lying, and it is not reasonable to assume that someone in that position is ignorant. If the Senator would like to issue a statement that he was not lying, merely uninformed on the issues that would be perfectly acceptable, however any expectation that this might cast him in a better light is likely to result in disappointment.At first there would be outrage. Fox News would condemn the shrill liberal media voices that had the temerity to identify dishonest rhetoric, and to simply report that there is absolutely no truth behind these outrageous statements. I think most of us can remember a nation where it wasn't acceptable to state that the president is a racist who's singular goal is to kill elderly and disabled people. But if every other news outlet stuck to the facts, calling lies lies, opinion opinion, and fact fact, very quickly the nature of the conversation would change. Every time Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich tried to inspire fear and confusion, a calm, trusted talking head or a respected newspaper would point out that they are lying, that there is NO basis for their frantic pronouncements, and that the facts exist where anyone in the 21st century with an Internet connection can find them.
Soon, the "debate" would narrow. After all, as Ezra Klein points out, there is not a tremendous amount of daylight between the two sides, if you could just get past the insanity:
If we could stop hiding behind fear and lies, if we could make this discussion as truly serious as it ought to be, if we could accept that the American health insurance system is broken and something HAS to be done, something genuine and effective, then we could get to a place where the conversation might lead to something of value.Here are the things that, broadly speaking, legislators agree about: insurance market reforms, including community rating, guaranteed issue, an end to rescission, an end to discrimination based on preexisting conditions, and an individual mandate. Subsidies for low-income Americans. Delivery system reforms. Health insurance exchanges. An expansion of coverage to about 95 percent of legal residents. Prevention and wellness policies. Retaining and strengthening the employer-based insurance market. Creating some kind of incentive for employers to offer, and keep offering, health benefits. Expanding Medicaid to about 133 percent of poverty.
Here are the things that legislators disagree about, but are discussing, and will probably figure out: whether subsidies should reach 300 percent of poverty or 400 percent. Whether there should be an employer mandate or something milder. Whether medium-size employers should be eligible to enroll in the health insurance exchanges. Whether health reform should cost $1 trillion over 10 years or $1.4 trillion over 10 years. Whether it should be paid for through new taxes on the wealthy or a change to existing tax subsidies in the health-care system.
Here are the things legislators don't agree about: whether we should have a public option that is open only to the minority of Americans on the exchanges or a co-op option. How to handle abortion. How to handle geographic disparities in insurance costs.
Here are the things that aren't under consideration but are alive in the public debate: socialized medicine. Euthanasia. Government-driven rationing. Death panels. Illegal immigrants.
Alas, this is a dream. Do I believe the American media is entirely responsible for the embarrassing status of this critical political process? Yes. Yes I do. They alone have the power to turn this into a real conversation, to stop the lies and misinformation that serves no one but the Insurance industry and begin to develop something that serves the people and the nation. That would not just be good faith, that would be patriotic.
In the meantime, we have people in the streets, AMERICANS, demanding their government NOT provide basic health services to the population. How we have arrived here, and how we might find our way back, is beyond me...
posted by mikey @ 5:48 PM
14 Comments:
I have a thought on how we arrived here.
First, here's Joe Klein!
Poor Joe. Those mean vulgar right-wingers are mean! JUST LIKE those mean lefties who are always throwing rocks at him at Swampland.
~
I just don't agree with the people who hate Joe Klein. I don't agree with everything he says, but that doesn't make him valueless in my book.
If I only read people I agreed with, I would never learn very much. I like to think I have the intellectual wherewithal to read just about anybody and make an informed decision about how I feel about their work.
Unlike, say, a Goldberg or a Coulter, who in my experience have NEVER written anything worthwhile, Klein does some good work, along with some of lesser quality. Pretty much like me....
I would guess it would involve making it advantageous, somehow, for the pundit class and the owners of news orgs to be fact-based, rather than controversy based.
But Controversy drives ratings. And Ownership clearly sees the Right as allies, and will sympathetically portray them in order to maximize their own take.
So journalists and reporters who want to portray the facts and lies will be slow-laned, theri work will be marginalized. Man is a learning creature, to some extent, and the industry is currently configured to select against the behavior you cite.
And then there are the egregious greedheads and power junkies. David Broder is the first; Chris Matthews is the second.
As you say, I don't know where to go from here. But I canceled my local paper several years ago and barely miss it in it's Rightward oozing. The industry seems to feel that every slip in ratings demands another rightward lurch, which sheds more customers. They operate from an inherently tilted worldview, since they and their friends are all wealthy centrist-to-rightwingers.
I dunno. Somedays I think the only solution is to make a drink and watch it break apart, and other days I think maybe a joint would be better.
Either way, I've got a bitchin soundtrack for it.
Yeah. It would be an interesting debate over whether the newspapers or television was more egregious.
I canceled the Mercury News a few months ago, not because it was taking a particular ideological slant, but rather because it had become entirely useless.
In a sense, it would have been better if it espoused an ideology, ANY ideology. That would have at least required some people doing some thinking and generating some work product. What they did was pretty much get rid of all the people, aggregate a bunch of seemingly random bits from syndicates and wire services, and use them as a platform for display advertising. You learned more about Macy's than you did about the world.
Also, you're dead right about the ratings. This is widespread and obvious enough that the owners have clearly made a conscious decision to generate and drive controversy, rather than providing accurate reporting. And I'm not even talking about Fox news here, they have made a different, more corrupt conscious decision.
But the whole point is, only THEY can fix it. I don't think they will, but it's not like there's a alternate solution...
people are putting pressure on advertisers to shun Glenn Beck, and it's working, to an extent.
It's cumbersome, though, and as soon as Beck cleans up a bit, or they put someone else on, the advertising money will come back. It makes a poor cudgel.
Honestly, I don't even care about the likes of Beck or Klein here. Or Olbermann or Matthews. I'm talking about the guys who sit at the desk and read the news, the murders and the floods, and the people who write the stories on the front page, not the op-ed page.
If the people who deliver the NEWS, not the pundits but the "reporters" and "anchors" would just be willing (or allowed) to describe facts as facts and lies as lies we would be having a massively different debate...
I just don't agree with the people who hate Joe Klein. I don't agree with everything he says, but that doesn't make him valueless in my book.
That was not the point I was trying to make. Unfortunately, the point I was trying to make was going to take too long, so I went to bed instead.
Think of Joe Klein as Time's house liberal. (I do, anyways.) To the left of Joe Klein lie demons. (Imagine one of the old maps where the world is flat, and if you sail too far west, you go over the edge.)
Remember back when all sensible liberals nodded their heads, more in sadness than in anger of course, that we had to go to war in Iraq? There were a few who didn't...I can name Robert Scheer and Phil Donahue. Of course, those two guys got their asses fired promptly.
So there you had the full spectrum of opinion, all the way from we have to go to war right now (because we hate the sand people) to we have to go to war right now (because we'll make a lot of money!) to we have to go to war right now (or we'll be fired).
Since the stench of the Bush-Cheney failure became too great for sane people to ignore, peeps like J. Klein and Chris Matthews have edged leftward. But not too far, mind you.
Prosecute government officials for torture? Unh unh, that's only for dirty hippies like Glenn Greenwald.
You say If the people who deliver the NEWS, not the pundits but the "reporters" and "anchors" would just be willing (or allowed) to describe facts as facts and lies as lies we would be having a massively different debate...
Those people want to be the pundits. The pundits make up to 100 times what they're making, and anyways if they stepped out of line, the corporation that owns their asses would can same.
You could take out Joe Klein, and substitute the Washington Post as an entity (by which I mean to say that people like Dana Priest and Walter Pincus are still old time reporters...but the Post can just bury their crap in the back when it wants to). The Post, like Klein, has been happy to use the old dodge, "The right wing crazies hate us...the left wing crazies hate us...wry grin "whatcha gonna do".
And what they won't do is admit that the dirty hippies were right, and still are right. Their paychecks depend on it.
And that is how we have arrived here, or at least part of the answer.
~
But thunder, really, who cares? Whether it's klein or limbaugh, hannity or olbermann, yglesias or drum, the segment of american media that is presented as opinion will never stop offering, well opinions. Newspapers have had op/ed pages for way longer than I've been alive.
Do they influence public opinion? Of course they do. That is, ultimately their job. And there will always be pundits who you disagree with. And it's entirely irrelevant to say "they all want to be pundits" because even if they all BECAME pundits there would still be newscasters. It's a different role.
And I'm just going to say it again. If, regardless of what the punditocracy did, began to be willing to identify facts as facts, and lies, or at least assertions that are untrue/have no basis in fact as lies or untruths, the nature of the discussion would change in a matter of weeks.
Sure, pundits would still lie. You can't fact check opinion. But every time Michelle Bachman or Sarah Palin or Chuck Grassley repeated the lies s/he got called out for lying to his/her constituency, they would have to stop. Because they can only play fast and loose with their credibility when they don't fear actually losing it. If an opposing candidate could show a video loop of respected news anchors and journalists referring to them as "lying" it would be electorally devastating.
So you have a problem with klein. I have a problem with hannity. But what I'm discussing here is different, and more important...
My point wasn't specific to Klein, mikey.
It was more to the nature of the concentration of the media in the hands of a few very wealthy people/corporations.
And it's entirely irrelevant to say "they all want to be pundits" because even if they all BECAME pundits there would still be newscasters. It's a different role.
You don't understand. Don't get hung up on a job description like pundit. Do get hung up on "very well paid", and also "fired".
If, regardless of what the punditocracy did, (they) began to be willing to identify facts as facts, and lies, or at least assertions that are untrue/have no basis in fact as lies or untruths, the nature of the discussion would change in a matter of weeks.
This is my point. They don't, because they wouldn't have those jobs if they did.
~
This is my point. They don't, because they wouldn't have those jobs if they did.
But THAT is my point. I mean, yeah, you're right, but it just doesn't HAVE to be that way.
Would they really lose viewers if their reporting was more honest? I don't think they would. Would they get pressure from advertisers? Yeah, I suspsect they would. But if they kept their viewership, they'd keep their advertisers.
I'm too cynical to believe it will happen, but I can't come up with an actual structural reason why it shouldn't...
to paraphrase George Carlin-
Start crucifyin a few pundits, and you'll see the media became fact based in short fuckin order, my friends.
We should keep in mind that mainstream media are corporate conglomerates that behave as corporatists. Their revenues come from advertisers. Thus, they serve other corporations, certainly not the public.
About the current healthcare debate, here is a brief vignette to share with you:
“Last weekend, the healthcare controversy came to my door when friends from South Florida arrived for a visit (…) My former neighbors and now dear friends had an appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. Her cancer is treatable and manageable, but she suffers from fatigue and takes mega doses of Percocet and morphine to relieve pain. Last week, she and her husband checked into a Marriot Inn near the clinic for days of blood tests, X-Rays, MRIs, and consultations (…) On Monday morning, just before their return trip to Jacksonville for more diagnostics, the hospital called their cell phone: Their insurance carrier had not “pre-authorized” the tests.”
The full story here.
This comment has been removed by the author.
It is a complex equation, alright. My, admittedly shaky, grasp of how it works is that there are two layers to it now.
Layer 1: TV newspapers and radio: These outlets need ratings so have light easily digested soundbites that won't upset the advertisers. Some holdouts such as the BBC and SBS in Australia (both government funded) do actually try to get the real story but no one watches them because sometimes you have to concentrate.
Layer 2: The Internet. This is subdivided into those that watch porn and the rest. The rest look around, reading various stuff and make up their minds. There is a leaching in from Layer 1 and many of those in the porn group think that they are politically aware even though they are really looking for political porn.
The question is, how to get the inquiring minds from layer2 to transform the advertorials of layer 1? No way to do it at the moment.They are too entrenched and, frankly, do not want the layer2 people in there anyway.
Least I sound too sanctimonious, it's like that here, as well, but even less sophisticated.
So what is needed is too circumvent the major TV channels and set up a Factcheck.org operation. I think the great days of great TV journalism are gone, and they were great.
Post a Comment
<< Home