Media Coverage of Health Insurance Reform
It's all about the "ground game", as TPM put it on the front page a few days ago.
Very little media coverage has been devoted to explaining the content of the bill which has passed out of the house, probably much like a bill which will be passed out of the senate.
The media coverage, including, sadly, here at TPM has been about the "ground game". I am unable to recall any post here at TPM which has explained what is contained in the prevailing health insurance reform proposal, though there have been many recounting the lies and gaffs of those intent on nothing more than defeating Obama.
Hardly Polk Award worthy coverage of the matter, I am sad to say.
Very little media coverage has been devoted to explaining the content of the bill which has passed out of the house, probably much like a bill which will be passed out of the senate.
The media coverage, including, sadly, here at TPM has been about the "ground game". I am unable to recall any post here at TPM which has explained what is contained in the prevailing health insurance reform proposal, though there have been many recounting the lies and gaffs of those intent on nothing more than defeating Obama.
Hardly Polk Award worthy coverage of the matter, I am sad to say.
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This complaint has been made before, and has been answered with: the game, not policy, is "What We Do." But that doesn't mean some of us can't keep kvetching about it. :-) I happen to think that the "blogosphere" moving away from doing that so heavily is one key to improving the governing of this country in the future.
August 15, 2009 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is hardly satisfying.
Why should I visit TPM when almost every other media outlet is coverage the "horse race" rather than the matter at hand?
August 15, 2009 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Turns out that the focus on "ground game" coverage may be very specifically market-driven, right down to how many clicks come on which stories from a certain zip code or similar. See the story I just found here on Todd Gitlin's thread:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/19/against_the_fantasy_of_a_self-aerating_media_syste/#comment-3568273
That's not to say that they don't also like and desire to mostly cover that side of the stories. Actually, that's implicit way back in the "What We Do" post. They've been saying it consistently over and over in different ways over several years: this is a site more interested in process than issues.
We should probably give up our dreaming, I guess.
August 19, 2009 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate the coverage of the game, but I find myself just looking for the facts of a particular subject--apart from the spin-- more and more often.
It would be nice to have both side by side.
August 16, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink