Calling ‘Em Out
Time Magazine reports that the White House is getting more aggressive in taking on the disinformation that gets into the press:
All the criticism, both fair and misleading, took a toll, regularly knocking the White House off message. So a new White House strategy has emerged: rather than just giving reporters ammunition to “fact-check” Obama’s many critics, the White House decided it would become a player, issuing biting attacks on those pundits, politicians and outlets that make what the White House believes to be misleading or simply false claims, like the assertion that health-care reform would establish new “sex clinics” in schools. Obama, fresh from his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, cheered on the effort, telling his aides he wanted to “call ’em out.”
It’s about time. The ‘death panels’ lie persisted in the media for several days (if not more) before you even began to hear the journalistic hedge of some say there are no death panels in the bill. Chuck Grassley went back to Iowa and dutifully scared people, lying about the government shouldn’t be able to pull the plug on grandma. There’s Michele Bachmann who pretty is making up a ton of stories about whatever comes into here head (there’s something about her that reminds me of watching my college buds after they dropped a tab of acid). You can run down the litany of lies daily and you can count on one hand how many times the media will actually note that.
I’m obviously not a J School grad, but I am always gobsmacked when some media type reminds us that much fact-checking material is fed to them from some opposition. Damned odd. Especially since bills and other real info are up for review from desktops everywhere. Then people remind me that fact-checking costs money. And then I ask them how it is that simply writing down what someone says with no context gets to be journalism.
Wingnuts everywhere will get their pout-rage on over this. But as far as I’m concerned, if the media treats the swiftboaters, the teabaggers, the bullies and the liars as newsmakers there is something self-protective about doing the one thing that the media should be doing. Calling them out on the lies. And pushing the media to do better.
Tags: Complicit Media
At last night’s Town Hall with Markell, state Senator Dave Sokola did a GREAT job refuting the nonsense that a lady tried to pass on as facts.
He said something like ‘you have your right to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.’ At which time he refuted the crap that she tried to pass on as facts.
Earlier he laid bare the claim by an audience member that poor Valero CEO had done such a good job that the crap coming out of the chimneys of the refinery was a clean as the air in the school auditorium. Sokola noted that he gets notices twice a week from DNREC of violations/alerts from the Valero refinery. (Kowalko did a similar job of smacking down the crap that the audience member was spewing.)
It’s well past time for truth-squads.
The white house has enough to do by continually making statements of “this is actually what VP Biden meant to say.”
What would you have said if this were the Bush Administration calling out MSNBC, CNN, and the rest of the left-of-center media?
How many times would you have used the phrases “freedom of speech”, “freedom of the press”, “right-wing censors”, and “impeach them now”?
RwR,
The problem is the “left-wing MSM” DIDN’T call out the Bush Administration when it mattered. They only did it after Bush and his hoodlums made the “liberal MSM” look like fools due to their lies. They only did it once we were already dick-deep into Iraq. They only did it, quite frankly, when it really didn’t matter.
And… when those of us did call Bush out we were labeled un-American and told we didn’t support the troops. (Granted, the left is doing that now, but more in the name of tit for tat – still, I think it should stop. The hypocrisy on the right, it runs deep.)
Mike is right about that — plus BushCo openly called out the NYT for reporting on some of its surveillance efforts. Even tho the NYT waited months after it learned of this lawlessness to report on it. I think that if some noted Dem the world that Bush wanted to pull the plug on Grandma there would have been instantaneous fact-checking and pushback by a media who seems to think that checking on Dems shows objectivity.
But I imagine that it is no surprise to know that you are only concerned about the calling out — not whether the media is doing its job. Like telling us that Obama pulling the plug on your Grandma is a Lie.
I’ll agree — Obama isn’t going to pull the plug on anyone’s grandma.
Under the plans supported by Obama and the Democrats, grandma won’t get anywhere near a machine with a plug to pull.
And the rest of us will have to wait for months for treatment that we currently get in days — just like the model health care systems in Canada and the UK.
Well that would be a lie too, but you can’t be here two seconds without it.
People in Canada live longer than those in the U.S. But I don’t understand why we’re talking about Canada’s system. There is no proposal being considered in Congress that sets up a system remotely like Canada’s. That doesn’t stop Republicans from telling lies about their system while ignoring the huge problems in our own system. Republicans like the status quo, we get it. I don’t see why we need to have any discussion at all with Republicans any more. You want to keep things exactly as they are – U.S. #37 in health care outcomes, spending 16% (and rising) of our GDP to mostly give million dollar bonuses to health care CEOs. I understand perfectly.
I don’t get treatment in days and I have health insurance. In fact I made my doctor appointment for my physical months in advance. My father had to wait 6 weeks for his heart by-pass surgery. Some people never get any treatment at all, because they don’t have any health insurance. I’m sure RwR missed all those people who camped out overnight to get healthcare in Houston, because none are so blind as those who will not see.