One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?Let's pause here just for a moment. "Without precedent in our modern political history?" How about the relentless efforts of the NY Times, under Raines leadership, to destroy the Bush Administration through political attacks and the leak of secret information and plans? And let's not forget ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and most every other major newspaper in the country that joined in.
Getting back to the rant:
Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: "The American people do not want health-care reform."Portability and tort reform are just about the only things that would actually reduce health care costs without destroying our health delivery system. Mitch McConnell has it right - Raines and the Democrats have it very, very wrong. Republicans are absolutely right to stand up against a government takeover of health care that will only increase costs and debt and reduce the quality of care.
Fox repeats this as gospel. But as a matter of historical context, usually in short supply on Fox News, this assertion ranks somewhere between debatable and untrue.
The American people and most of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change. Yet congressional Republicans have managed effective campaigns against health-care changes favored variously by Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Now Fox News has given the party of Lincoln a free ride with its repetition of the unexamined claim that today's Republican leadership really does want to overhaul health care -- if only the effort could conform to Mitch McConnell's ideas on portability and tort reform.
Howell Raines was an idiot at the NY Times, and it's clear that time away from that lefty newsroom hasn't fixed that.
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And all those Americans burning up the phone lines, sending letters, participating in surveys (even in ones by CNN), attending town halls, barraging Congress with emails, marching on Washington (oops! forgot, that never happened since it wasn't covered by the "mainstream media") -- what was all of THAT?
What does he think the American public is? A potted plant? (Rick, you're old enough to recall that line, I know.)
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