Here’s a crazy idea. The President of the United States and Congressional leaders are holding a forum on whether and how to reform the health-care system, a matter that affects pretty much everyone’s lives and is worth trillions to the economy. Wouldn’t it be wild if the TV networks airing the summit covered it mainly with analysts who are experts on, you know, health care reform?
I know! Crazy! Will never happen! Predictably, instead, the cable news networks brought in David Gergen, Donna Brazile, Chris Matthews—the same mouthpieces who are always on cable to cover politics, as politics. Which is fine, as far as it goes. But might it be nice to have some journalists or other experts on hand to take a stab at whether any of the competing claims are, you know—correct?
OK, I know the counter-argument. Cable is covering the summit as politics because, whatever anyone says, it is politics. Of course it is. Of course there are political ends and stakes, and there is nothing wrong with analyzing them.
But it’s not only politics. It’s also an issue about an expensive and vital system about which much of the audience—whatever their political beliefs—has considerable, and maybe life-and-death concerns. It’s an issue over which politicians are throwing around soundbites and claims about complex situations. Having guests on who can try to assess the competing claims, and actually give the audience a sense of what’s right, what’s possible and what’s fiction—not to mention ask informed follow-ups in interviews—would serve a function people actually want journalism to perform: informing them.
I suspect that part of the problem here is that, for mainstream news organizations, retreating to the cynical position that “It’s all politics” conveniently allows them to avoid having someone on the air who might claim that one side is more right than the other, or that one party is being more disingenuous. Which makes people mad, and is awkward. Better to take the meta-step back and ask not, “Is the President right?” but “How is the President doing?” and “Is the opposition winning or losing?”
Thus you get a summit whose biggest takeaway for viewers is whether Obama or McCain won their testy war of zingers, and which one was being disrespectful. Which is pathetic.
I will at least credit Fox News on this one. Though it was doing plenty of political analysis, and taking a lot of viewer feedback from a largely anti-health-care-bill amen chorus, it at least made some efforts to address the actual merits of the reform proposals, albeit from a definitely anti-Obama perspective. It featured its healthcare analyst Dr. Marc Siegel, a critic of the health-care bill who has likened some aspects of it to eugenics. It also visited a senior center, interviewing only seniors who opposed Obama’s proposals.
In any case, by early afternoon, cable was increasingly cutting away from the health summit, and MSNBC was airing hockey. Maybe that game will get it the fight it wants.