Now that health care reform has passed and the media has done a 180 on Obama, moving him from “Jimmy Carter” to “Ronald Reagan” faster than you can say “This just in!” it’s a good time to go over how that works.
It’s not, as people usually suspect, media bias. Most of what people think of as media bias is actually institutionalized stupidity and laziness.
Looking back at the year-long struggle to pass health care reform, it is clear that the vast amount of “reporting” on the issue — by national news organizations, Web sites, blogs, TV programs, talk radio and everything else — was garbage. Not “biased,” just bad.
Most of the reportage was pulled from the rumor mill; most of the predictions were pulled from where the sun don’t shine. Musing on the inner psychology of Max Baucus’ motives, handicapping the horse race of Republican opposition, questioning Rahm Emanuel’s competence, asking who had the President’s ear ... all left readers and viewers less informed about the ultimate size and shape of reform, not more. We weren’t writing the first draft of history — we were gossiping about the history teacher.
The result was not only a media that failed to predict virtually every twist and turn, it was an American public that was woefully under-informed about the health care proposals on the table.
This ought to be a call to action, a trumpet for change — but it won’t be. Much in the same way that the media’s disastrous coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war was supposed to change the industry; much in the way that the Jayson Blair scandal was supposed to humble the industry; much in the way that the media’s utter failure to predict the recent housing bust/financial collapse/Enron bankruptcy was supposed to bring a new set of standards to the business of news. The latest failure will lead to a few recriminations and no actual results. If anything, it’s probably going to get worse.
In the 24-hour, profit driven, news cycle, no one has the option of not reporting something — “content” (that is, loosely on-topic verbiage) must be provided every moment. Yet the vast majority of stuff that happens is not actually news. On any given day someone on Capitol Hill is going to say something stupid, and two White House staffers will disagree about policy. Does it matter in the long run? Not usually — and reporting it as if it did is the equivalent of coughing at a lecture. At best it’s harmless, at worst it makes important points hard to hear.
