The myth of unbiased reporting
by Peter Johnson
Let’s get two things straight. Firstly, The President made a serious omission when he failed for years to acknowledge that with the implementation of the ACA, many policy holders would be forced to give up old insurance policies that they already liked. He did accurately point out that insurance policies issued before 2010, and before the Health Care law was passed, could be honored, allowing companies to provide the policies that they had previously provided for customers who did not want to leave the fold. But, the fact that some of these people with high risk policies, or insurance that provided less comprehensive coverage, but at lower rates, were left in the dark about the reality that came after 2010, negated this guarantee and clearly allowed a serious mistake to be made.
Secondly, the fact that the healthcare.gov.website, which was designed to supply those needing insurance with easily purchased and less expensive coverage experienced a host of problems related to its roll out, and, that the technical crew who engineered this site, made some serious errors and failed to complete the task of securing a functional site by Oct. 1st 3013, is absolutely true, and, this never should have been allowed happen.
But a third fact concerning the controversy that followed, is that, no matter how serious technical glitches on websites are, they are not the same issue as that of questioning whether Obamacare and the products the government website offers are somehow substandard, and, now beyond being considered worthy of being purchased.
Although the white house is culpable for not hiring a team that could produce the desired results, the President nor any of his team are (to my knowledge) experts in digital technology, or know how to design websites. This may not be a fully adequate excuse, but it does indicate that Obama and his advisers may not have had the know how to anticipate the many glitches that followed.
It is also worth noting that although most of us who own computers have experienced glitches on them, and that most televised newscasts are sure to experience intermittent cases involving “technical difficulties,” neither a television station , nor the technicians who are responsible for providing and maintaining our Internet service, really reflect on our own character or our moral integrity, when problems inevitably appear on our doorsteps—in other words, fixing the Obamacare website and its glitches, should not, and does not reflect on the President’s own intelligence or the value of the coverage that the ACA provides, and does not dispute the fact that it can benefit millions of Americans.
The success or failure of the ACA largely depends on the way it is sold to the public, and on the way its developments are covered by the media. But, like it or not, there are undoubtedly many people who still believe that the ACA wants to dictate when to unplug granny, along with a host of other ridiculous claims that have been soundly disproven by fact checking organizations like FactCheck.org and, PolitiFact. Anyone who wants to know what other myths circulated by Republicans are, should check out the seemingly endless numbers of them plainly included on such fact checking sites. Apparently falsehoods circulated by the media really can affect the public’s opinions.
While most members of the Press recognize the awesome responsibility that has been placed on their shoulders, they often seem blind to the fact that by repeating sensationalistic accounts of how hopeless and helpless the ACA has now become, just because of its many roll out issues, is a great way to plant the seeds of fear and uncertainty in the minds of (presumably) many of the very people who could benefit from it the most.
The website of AIBD (The Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development) as part of its description about what ethical values are most important for journalists to follow, comments:
Ethical practice
“Coverage of elections places the same type of responsibility on professional journalists as coverage of any other subject. It goes without saying that they must respect professional ethics. At the most basic level they must stay clear of blatant violations of ethics such as distortion of facts, over-emphasis on certain aspects of a story, headlines that misrepresent the content of the story and, of course, outright fabrication of stories, quotes, people and events.”
Although most modern day journalists do obey most of these guidelines (which should not be limited to elections but also extended to all important news coverage) what catches my attention is the reference pertaining to not (over-emphasizing) certain aspects of a story. I think it is fairly obvious that concerning the raging controversy about the health care law and the fact that it has been hampered by website glitches, the press has over-emphasized a “sky is falling,” narrative that heavily supports the possibility of immanent gloom and doom, and, because of the mistaken perception that an Administration which experiences technical glitches on its website is no longer deserving of the publics trust, and therefore, that the product it sells (affordable health care), is also suspect as not being worth its salt. But this is just not true.
During Roosevelt’s presidency, he experienced a barrage of similar stories of gloom and doom in the launch of the Social security system and critics despaired about ever seeing it being up and running. And, it’s worth noting this was in the days before digital technology and websites. Yet, eventually, the system became operational despite the wailing of its critics by using a system of filing millions of note cards in a group of ordinary office cabinets that took up several acres of floor space. Then as now, the harshest predictions of failure were mostly created by FDR’s political enemies who desperately wanted the new system to fail.
They, like Republicans today, were well aware of the ways that the press could be used to perpetuate their own narrative—which was a myth reporting gloom and doom as being virtually unavoidable after the certain failure of the Social Security law.
And, when it comes to discrediting the ACA, the GOP are masters at providing ominous scandals that the press (quite naturally) fixates on. This is because in many cases, the current stories pushed excessively by Republicans, offer the greatest rewards for news outlets that desire to gain readership by focusing on the most attention grabbing news—unfortunately these types of headlines are often skewed by political opponents who love the fact that their own misrepresentations and nay sayings, are bound to be hot news and, will potentially devastate their rivals.
Since this new health care law, is critical to the well-being of many consumers who will not be able to care for themselves and their children, due to limited coverage and pre-existing conditions, and who will not being able to afford the costly procedures that are often parts of successful treatment—the press needs to exercise great care by reporting the criticisms of the other side as well, and not obsessing on the sizzling stories which just happen to tickle the fancies of Conservative republicans—intent on doing everything they can to sensationalize such narratives. And, the press has not always been conscious of the fact that it is playing right into the hands of bias, by (over emphasizing) these takes on the ACA’s current difficulties.
When it comes to bad-mouthing the president and hauling his people before Congressional committees that are supposed to provide objective answers for the public, the GOP are experts at this game, and they now have a captive audience available to hear their scathing criticisms—whether or not they are always completely accurate or even if they are not all real.
I don’t want to excuse the President’s unfortunate lie, by criticizing G.W.’s administration, but I would like to lend some perspective to the notion of incompetency on the part of Obama’s team, by referring to the massive lie about WMDs used by Bush to start a war with Iraq based on the false pretense that Saddam Hussein was an active sponsor of Al-Qaeda, and a direct threat to our National security. In reality. Saddam was anything but religious and was not a cornerstone for the terrorism spread so effectively under the watch of Osama Bin Laden. And despite the fact that we are now learning about Laura Logan’s mistaken use of a source claiming to have witnessed the last moments of the attack on Benghazi, most of the public remains completely unaware that several attacks were made on embassies throughout the world under the Bush Administration (as well as other administrations) and that Bush’s intelligence agencies completely overlooked clear and ominous warnings about possible attacks on the Word Trade center, as well as maintaining friendly relationships with Saudi Arabia, where most of the attackers originated from.
Even so, the incompetence of the Bush Administration was mostly overlooked for years and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, and the relocation of millions of innocent refugees. Talk about a screw up!
Yet when Obama was caught in a lie, trying to ensure that millions of Americans can finally enjoy the dignity of adequate health care coverage, he was skewered by the GOP and the P\press almost immediately, even though the misinformation he disseminated was never hidden in the health care bill and was no secret to those of us who actually checked out his claims with fact checkers.
Despite all of Obama’s mistakes and his apparently misleading and deliberate lie about the ACA, let’s consider that HW Bush also claimed falsely that he would never raise taxes — something that eventually was also revealed as a lie, and which was used in a similar way — to gain support for his economic agenda. Then there was Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal which he didn’t remember authorizing, as well as the fact that the practice of collecting Mega data (as it is used today) primarily started with GW. Bush, and has never been a secret to congress, or to the courts, but still was somehow transformed into an moral crisis, mainly caused and perpetuated by Obama, and completely exaggerated by Republicans who made sure that the red meat resulting from a “scandal” like this was gobbled up by the press, and, offered as yet another attempt to smear Obama and everything he thinks says and does—including the unfortunate difficulties encountered while implementing the new health care law!
But OK—when giving a break to Obama we should also give a break to other Presidents, like George W. Bush, who was endlessly criticized for not landing in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. Recently I heard his wife Laura, explain that they were concerned about taking up vital runway space with Air force One that was more desperately needed by supply and relief planes. Believe it or not, this makes perfect sense to me.
So the perspective we need to take is that all Presidents lie and make mistakes as well as being hit with extreme criticisms that they often may not deserve. And, all of the hysterical doomsayers in the press who are so eager to predict utter failure and the likeliness of a complete meltdown of the ACA, are not even conscious that they are playing right into the hands of those who seek to sink a very promising, if not somewhat partial, answer to the medical woes of millions of American who desperately need it.
The over eagerness of the press to shoot (and report) from the hip, before all the pertinent information in a story is completely known, is also illustrated by the many court cases in which innocent defendants are convicted of serious crimes, without the inclusion of convincing evidence, yet are accused, tried, and sentenced way in advance, by reporters conveying evidence that may not be nearly comprehensive enough yet still fills a popular narrative and thought niche that has been spread by many others as being extremely likely.
One local paper published near the city where I live, often reports about the legal proceedings resulting from crimes that capture the public’s interest. But, much too frequently, the Press has been wrong about these cases, and scolding letters frequently appear in this newspaper’s opinion pages, accusing reporters of causing untold misery for the defendant and his or her family (and friends) just because reporters unwisely released misleading information about the case.
I often wonder (before they are cleared by DNA evidence) how many abandoned souls sentenced falsely and without sufficient evidence, are dragged from court rooms futilely screaming that they are innocent, but who, unfortunately, have already been chewed up by the feeding frenzy of a press and public hungry for someone to blame? This is not to mention the critical delay of important environmental legislation and acceptance of man’s role in global warming, which has been delayed by a press with the mistaken assumption that it has been allowing for fair and balanced coverage when allowing unqualified climate change deniers, who know very little about climate science, but are all too willing to convince others that only they are right, to be published in their journals—not the thousands of learned scientists with PhDs who have been trying desperately to make us hear the clear sound of the canary in the coal mine warning us of scientifically valid danger.
How much damage have deniers and the press ensured for our children and grandchildren who may unavoidably suffer in a hostile climate which we could have prevented but didn’t, because we were not willing to admit that climate change was really happening?
It is often difficult to decide just where big brother’s lies are coming from, but the point is that the press should be damn sure about examining all aspects of the information they report (especially about the ACA’s website failures) since it would be a shame to deny millions of people of the insurance they need, simply because they have been told for so long that the ACA is doomed to failure and that its political contributors are incompetent.
This discouraging information might then convince them not to buy the coverage that could have helped them so much, thus drying up the risk pool and making sure that the ACA really does fail—all because its promise was confused and thwarted by a self-fulfilling prophecy that allowed little or no room, for all the issues involved to be heard.
Peter Johnson is a senior citizen who has become much more interested in what is happening in America and the world, than he was as a young man. He’s interested in poetry and expository writing, and has had letters to the editor published in Time magazine, Newsweek and Playboy magazine. He is concerned about ignorance and indifference that has been circulated concerning the significance of man made global warming and is dismayed dismayed by the way political lies and corruption are being used to influence the public (apparently free from any penalties or adequate culpability). He frequently writes letters of opinion to the editors of his local newspapers.