One of the burdens of being a very serious Beltway journalist is that you want to maintain access (relationships, really) to people on both sides of the aisle. That makes it hard to simply report, for example, that you talked to Eric Cantor and he’s lying through his goddamned teeth. If you do honest reporting like that, Eric Cantor won’t answer your calls the next time you want to interview him or get a catchy response quote for your article. In broader terms, this phenomenon allows the Republicans to do or say almost anything and still avoid getting treated like fringe-lunatics or shameless shilling liars. That is what is happening right now with the Medicare debate.
The media does report the facts about Paul Ryan’s plan, but they balance that out by accusing the Democrats of “trying to scare seniors” when they talk about the same facts. The Republicans proposed ending Medicare as we know it and replacing it with inadequate subsidy that would leave soon-to-be seniors broke and lacking access to health care. Then the Republicans offered to take the savings to the government and not apply it to the deficit but to cutting corporate tax-rates and personal income tax-rates on the extremely affluent.
Why wouldn’t seniors and soon-to-be seniors be afraid of that? What’s wrong with pointing out the truth?
In the Medicare debate, the media is irrelevant. That is the lesson of NY-26. On pocketbook issues, the truth gets through unless there is a high-priced disinformation ad campaign–which cannot change opinions but only sow confusion. Interestingly, around here folks have tuned out Rush and company when it comes to Medicare — even the dittoheads who are on Medicare. And the good Republican families who made sure to get grandma on Medicaid when she went into the nursing home are scared about what the state legislature is doing.
What is more troubling than the access problem facing reporters–skilled ones can get around that if they just think of what they would do reporting from Tripoli and maintaining access with the Gaddafi regime. Cantor is the same sort of megalomaniac–is the deliberate hiring of known serial liars for the opinion pages and opinion slots on TV. But fortunately no one can listen or read these bloviators (think George Will) for long.
The news function of the US corporate media is dying. Other news operations are gaining an audience. I am interested to see how al Jazeera develops in the US audience–although their reporters have to do the Washington two-step as well. And whether Current TV begins to get some traction. Even the BBC has a large US audiences through arrangements with local public, community, or classical music broadcasters.
NY-26 tells us that the media are very important, because people mainly learned about Ryan’s plan through their televisions and newspapers and on the Internet. What I think you mean is that media pundits are powerless to overcome people’s aversion to gonorrhea.