"Questionable"
Under the anodyne headline, "White House Adapts to New Playbook in Health Care Debate," Jim Rutenberg and Jackie Calmes offer this in the morning NYT:
WASHINGTON -- The White House on Monday started a new Web site to fight questionable but potentially damaging charges that President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health care system would inevitably lead to "socialized medicine," "rationed care" and even forced euthanasia for the elderly.
Questionable.
As in, it's questionable that Obama envisions "death panels"? Questionable that, in the language of the father of a disabled child in Michigan, a distraught man who on Fox "News" declared that Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer had sent "thugs" to his house to intimidate him because he protested at a town hall meeting, Obama intends to "put [him and his son] down"?
Is it too much to ask that America's most indispensable newspaper reward its readers, where possible, with actual, ascertainable information?
The mad charges in circulation now are only "potentially damaging" insofar as sane, well-informed people refrain from using their access to the information stream to inform people that these charges are garbage.
I would have thought that Jim Rutenberg had grown out of his bad habit of withholding judgment on whether the moon is actually or only reputedly composed of green cheese. Last October 7, he informed us that the anti-Semitic whackjob Andy Martin's charges against Barack Obama as a Muslim-furrner whose idea of community organizing (ghosted for him by Bill Ayers, yet) was a cover for overthrowing the goverment, were...wait for it... "unsubstantiated."
From "unsubstantiated" to "questionable": what a difference ten months don't make. Even though Rutenberg's October 7, 2008, tiptoe was succeeded by a follow-up five days later that dared use the words "falsehood" and "false rumors" concerning the Muslim-furrner-Manchurian-Candidate stuff that was flying around Obama, with no small assist from Martin. Then, I took the second piece as an admission of embarrassment on the NYT's part and a gesture toward rectification. Looks like I was naive, or at least premature.
P. S. As of 1:26 pm, "questionable" is still up in the running NYT coverage of Obama's attempt to turn the tide.
Yesterday, the NYT did run a decent start at fact-checking disinformation and hysteria: "A Primer on the Details of Health Care Reform," by Robert Pear and David M. Herszenhorn. (It had fallen through my sieve of a memory, and was brought to my attention in a gracious note from Jim Rutenberg.) But (1) not everybody who reads the Tuesday paper reads the Monday paper, (2) not everyone who reads the Tuesday paper remembers the Monday paper (as witness yours truly), and (3) when charges have been refuted, the fact that they were refuted bears repeating if the charges are going to be repeated.
The peerless James Fallows, on returning to the US after three years in China, the other day wrote a not-to-be-missed Atlantic post on the shock of discovering that the same sort of garbage that destroyed the prospect of health insurance reform in 1993-94 is being recycled to torpedo Obama's plans:
it is striking to come back -- from the world of controlled media and not-always-accurate "official truth" in China -- and see the world's most mature democracy, informed by the world's dominant media system, at a time of perceived economic crisis and under brand new political leadership, getting tied up by manufactured misinformation.
What's questionable, is that Jim Rutenberg and Jackie Calmes practice journalism!
August 11, 2009 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Or that Democrats practice tough politics. They look horrendous right now. They should be threatening to through the NYT's out of the Briefing Room over this $hit.
Dear Dems: Grow a pair!
August 11, 2009 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is one thing to give the Republican party's inaccurate spin undeserved credibility (though on that I am being VERY charatable nonetheless) it is something else totally to give unhinged rightwing conspiracy theorists any ink at all. This crap should never even see the light of day in the paper that claims to be the place where they report 'all the news that is fit to print". Let the National Enquirer do stories on the "government euthanasia panels", Andy Martin and Pelosi/Hoyer domestic hit squads...that is where it belongs, not in The Times. And they wonder why their readership/circulation is tanking.
Actually this post dovetails nicely with this weeks TPM book club discussion.
August 11, 2009 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah - it would be nice if this crap was relegated to the Enquirer and Weekly World News, but unfortunately we have the Vice Presidential nominee of the GOP spouting this crap - as well as several GOP leaders - and half of their "think" tanks and astroturf orgs. So until the GOP is relegated to the Weekly World News/Fox-n-Friends, it's going to get coverage. But that coverage should be able to provide the bare f-in' minimum of calling out an obvious lie.
"Mealy mouthed weasels" is the phrase I'm looking for here.
August 11, 2009 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Would they were the only ones. It's getting so the checkout line at the supermarket is a lethal zone. Here's the lede from the August Sixth Globe
Sometimes I think libel laws need to be revised. The Globe couldn't print this about me because I'm not a public figure. If I was, they could print pretty much whatever they wanted and I'd have no recourse.
Truth is always a defense against libel--so maybe some way needs to be resurrected to hold trash magazines accountable.
August 11, 2009 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
spot on.
problem is that it's the republican spin that is holding the door to let in all the unhinged rightwing conspiracy theorists. how can the NYT distinguish between the two when, at this point, nobody else can. they all of them showed up together and they all got out of the same clown car.
August 11, 2009 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
And yesterday's Times "primer" on health care reform featured this gem:
--
Conservative critics say the legislation could limit end-of-life care and even encourage euthanasia. Moreover, some assert, it would require people to draw up plans saying how they want to die.
These concerns appear to be unfounded.
--
APPEAR to be unfounded? sheesh!
August 11, 2009 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Look at how the article ends:
No mention of who Kibbe is. No contention of the "trillion dollars we don't have or the "rushed process." Such slanted journalism!
August 11, 2009 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Savannah Guthrie of NBC referred to the euthanasia claims as "controversial" in her report on the Sunday evening news. She set a clip of Gingrich from "This Week" against a clip of Obama addressing the B.S. in his weekly address. But she made no attempt to discern the truth.
August 11, 2009 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oops, wrong spot for that comment. What I meant to say, elaborating on wyt's comment, was that the Times fails to mention that the reform package will be roughly revenue-neutral -- unlike, say, the Medicare rx benefit or just about anything else during the Bush years. So the "trillion dollars we don't have" is more B.S., but the Times lets it stand as the last word.
August 11, 2009 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like to make a "questionable charge" that FreedomWorks and the editorial board of the NYT want to euthanize poor people. (arguably a partial result of our current system). When do I get an article?
August 11, 2009 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
As suspected , their game plan worked .
1. Big Lie
2. Big NOOZE reports big lie
3. Easily befuddled masses swallow lie as fact
(I read it in the NYT it must be true)
Earth is Flat some say yes - you decide.
Thank you Mr. Orwell.
August 11, 2009 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is it too much to ask that America's most indispensable newspaper reward its readers, where possible, with actual, ascertainable information?
The run up to the invasion of Iraq kinda definitively answered that question, don't you think?
August 11, 2009 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is questionable whether the NY Times is worth reading any longer.
August 11, 2009 9:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
This reminds me of a classic newspaper headline a few years back in the San Diego Tribune. The school superintendent at the time, Alan Bersin, was the target of teachers and others who thought his style was "top down" and didn't take their concerns into consideration. This anti-Bersin campaign escalated into hysteria in some quarters, including comparing Bersin, who is Jewish, to Hitler.
So the headline was:
"Attacks that compare Bersin to Nazis go too far, some say"
Gotta have that "some say"!
August 11, 2009 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I love it!
August 11, 2009 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yet another example of dumbing journalism down.
August 11, 2009 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Please note correction in new graf beginning "Yesterday." Apologies for earlier omission.
August 11, 2009 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
this morning as i opened tpm i happened to glance at the 'breaking news and analysis' that shows up as the header on the front page. and as i poured my coffee i kinda absent-mindedly considered the meanings of the terms 'breaking', 'news', and 'analysis' and their role in journalism - and the role tpm plays in the spectrum of journalism being practised today.
what's a shame is that not only is the sort of analysis found at tpm across its sites - the sort of analysis that, while being concerned above all else with determining factual accuracy - has a distinct perspective - a leftward point-of-view, dismissed (if not sneered at) by the mainstream 'old' media for refusing to pretend, as they do, that point-of-view and factual accuracy are mutually exclusive concepts, but the mainstream 'old' media relegates any sort of analysis to 'opinion', quarantined from 'news', kept behind a firewall.
determining the factual accuracy of claims made in an argument (or, in this case, multi-million dollar lobbying campaign) isn't the job of 'news' reporters. no, the job of 'news' reporters is to (accurately) report the facts of the argument. like dutiful stenographers. that the argument took place is the fact. that one side's 'argument' was, in fact, nothing but lies and misinformation, must necessarily be left to the 'opinion' page to debate.
the practitioners of disinformation understand this all too well. they don't have to be concerned with facts and reality. they only need to release their lies into the 'news' environment and they will infect everything. they can skip the whole business of debating what health care reform should look like by instigating a smokescreen 'debate' about nothing - shit that isn't in the bills, never was in the bills, and never would be in the bills.
just as the point of the tea shirts is to make it impossible for members of congress to communicate directly with their constituents, the point of the disinformation campaign is to fill the 'news' media with stories about anything but what's actually in the bills or should be in the bills. both exercises require useful idiots. the former pulls the strings of fear and resentment. the latter pulls the strings of 'journalism as passive observation' (and nanostory distraction, as being discussed in the book club).
August 11, 2009 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
You need to apply some logic here. Let's assume that our problem is that the press really does just report what was said, with no attempt to verify the truthfulness of what was said. What must result from that assumption is that we would see approximately an equal number of "news" reports like the nonsense about the health care plans, and about left wing assertions. We would be seeing daily news about how the world is doomed if we allow people to profit by investing money, or that government should be the sole owner of all economic enterprises, paying every person the same amount of money per year.
None of those left wing falsehood "news" stories ever make the front page. If one gets reported on at all, it is with instant analysis demonstrating that the assertions are utterly false.
If that assumption were correct CNN would interview leftists and just let them talk, with no back arguments. But, we never see that. Instead we get an airhead like Kyra Phillips debating one of the prime weapons inspectors when he asserts that there are simply no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
I'm not a genius at logic, but it doesn't take one to notice the difference in press treatment of left wing nonsense, or even left wing absolute truths, and right wing nonsense. So, the assumption that the press simply reports what is said, and doesn't attempt to verify the truth is incorrect. The press in fact is aiding the right wing by giving only them a forum for spouting nonsense.
We need to determine exactly why this is happening, and cure that problem.
August 11, 2009 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hoppy, you may well be right. Somebody should do some rigorous research. But at first blush, I can't think of any left wing nonsense that gets the benefit of the doubt in MSM. Many works of scholarship lean in your direction, including my own ancient The Whole World Is Watching.
I wonder if any other reader can think of counterexamples.
August 11, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
August 11, 2009 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
my contention would be that there is an infrastructure in place from corporations to lobbying outfits to the republican party itself that actively pushes the right-wing noise (including even the batshit crazy stuff).
while corporate-owned media might more readily regurgitate the right-wing noise than they would if there actually were a comparable left-wing effort to push misinformation and whacked-out conspiracy theories, the fact is there's nothing that even compares on the left.
certainly there's plenty of outlandish left-wing whackjobbery out there but there isn't any MONEY or large-scale coordination behind it. and that more than any right-wing bias which may well exist in corporate media accounts for the disproportionate representation of right-wing whackjobbery in the media.
August 11, 2009 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you... I've run out of high enough plaudits, and the renewing shipment hasn't yet arrived. So a simple thank you will just have to do.
August 11, 2009 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you... I've run out of high enough plaudits, and the renewing shipment hasn't yet arrived. So a simple thank you will just have to do.
August 11, 2009 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, it is too much to ask of our most indispensable newspaper, now that we have seen the little man behind the curtain. Let's just be thankful that it's clear to the world now that the NYT's revered political team is just a handful of scrambling, confused, not-overly-bright people who are skeered of offending the Republicans in the room --- any room. Before the Intertubes we had no way of knowing that. Now I get to save lots of time every morning by not reading their questionable analyses.
August 11, 2009 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink