Media Manipulation

Here is another example of how the media distorts "the news" and allows the radical right to manipulate the American public. This is from Dean Baker's web site Beat The Press. Baker's site is dedicated to identifying errors, distortions, and manipulation in the press. Lately he has been run ragged:

The NYT ran a "he said, she said" article on health care today in which it repeated several blatantly untrue statements by opponents of health care reform, alongside statements by proponents.

The most obvious falsehood was a comment, attributed to Senator John McCain that: "the language in some bills would have created boards to decide what procedures would be allowed for the terminally sick and dying. ... 'Doesn’t that open the door to the possibility of rationing?' he asked."

There is absolutely no language in any bill that would "decide what procedures would be allowed for the terminally sick and dying." There certainly are measures that would continue the current practice of limiting what procedures the government would pay for. However, it makes no more sense to call this rationing than saying that the government rations housing because it does not pay for everyone's home.

Senator McCain has been in Congress for more than three decades. Presumably he knows both the Medicare does not pay for every conceivable form of health care at present. He presumably also knows that absolutely nothing in any version of health care reform currently being considered would prevent anyone from getting any care that they are prepared to pay for.

Instead of the simply reporting Senator McCain's comment alongside other comments, the NYT should have pointed out that he is almost certainly deliberately lying in order to increase opposition to the health care bill. NYT reporters have the time and expertise to recognize this fact. Many of its readers may be too busy.

Something needs to be done. The press is supposedly the conduit of information. But when it becomes a propaganda tool for the elite in society, it is nothing more than a publicity arm of the Republican Party. That may make the Republicans happy, but it will destroy the country in the long run. Newspapers are folding at an increasing rate. Can you guess why? My guess is that people no longer trust them for impartial information and simply bypass the "newspapers" as mere propaganda/advertising broadsheets with no value to the average person.