Today in bad journalism: Confusing Americans on Healthcare
I’ve been following the hashtag #hc09 on twitter to eavesdrop on the zeitgeist for the raging healthcare debate as congress runs at breakneck speed to avoid the issue before going on summer vacation August recess.
Having been monitoring coverage of the health care debate closely for a few days now, it is clear that news media is universally covering the debate with precious little context or depth in the actual issues or proposed plans. This is another classic method of latter-twentieth-century journalism: covering politics as theater or sports.
At the heart of most good stories is conflict. Journalists are taught this, and therefore find the red vs. blue angle easy to use to tell a story about a current event. In this case, we know that red doesn’t like “socialized” health care and blue wants to pass some kind of reform. The details, though, are completely lost on everyone.
Today, the NYT ran a story with a headline “New Poll finds Growing Unease on Health Plan.” At first blush, this headline suggests that citizens are not in favor of the proposals being put on the table. Actually, the poll shows that Americans have no idea what the plans are and are completely confused.
Tim Fernholz wrote this response at the very liberal American Prospect:
Snark aside, I think every time journalists read a poll that says the public is incredibly confused, they should understand that this situation is their fault. Maybe one reason that newspapers are dying is that it’s incredibly unhelpful to read an article that informs you, the reading public, that you have no idea what’s going on. You probably already knew that. But maybe you’d like something explained to you.
Politics aside, that hits the nail on the head. I threw out a #healthmediachallenge on twitter:
tweet a solid fact/detail about health care legislation, no politics. cite links. how well has media informed you?
and was met by chirping crickets. While it may something about my followers and influence on the twitterverse, it probably says more that people actually don’t know what is happening, despite wall-to-wall coverage of the politics around health care reform. Everyone has an opinion about it that falls somewhere between no socialized medicine and insure everyone, but clearly the story is absolutely too hard to explain to people. So instead, journalists are falling back on covering politics as sports or theater – reds win today, blues win tomorrow, a soundbite here and a misleading headline there.
No wonder the news cycle is more than happy to cover something simple like what brand of beer will be served at the White House. It isn’t hard to figure out and explain. Except for the wrinkle about Bud being owned by a foreign company now. Whatever.
