Steve Benen over at The Washington Monthly points out how a conservative set of lies became “news” this week. It begins with this lie from Betsy McCaughey who works for a wingnut think tank, published in the opinion section of Bloomberg:
Specifically, McCaughey insisted that the policy would create a “new bureaucracy” called the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, which will “monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective.” McCaughey said the federal government would then “‘guide’ your doctor’s decisions,” adding, “Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.”
You won’t be surprised to know that this National Coordinator infrastructure was created by BushCo (with no real achievements to its name, either), and that the text of the Final bill says nothing of the sort. (See pages 154 – 157; 442 – 450 of that pdf to see the entire provision and judge for yourself.) That didn’t stop the usual suspects — Limbaugh, Drudge and Fox Noise from running with it and trying to ramp up the usual fear and loathing, McCarthy-style.
Steve follows up his original post to talk about countering the wingnut echo chamber and the real limitations the left still has within the traditional media:
Again, the typical U.S. news consumer can easily get confused. On the one hand we have biased outlets on the right repeating blatant lies. On the other hand we have neutral outlets hedging on what may or may not be true, when there’s an objective reality staring them straight in the face.
Enter Keith Olbermann, who not only had a devastating segment on this last night, setting the record straight, he did so with a reach that blog posts can’t have. I don’t doubt that the right will whine that Olbermann isn’t objective enough, but just watch the segment — he explains the claim, explains why it’s false, and then offers policy and historical context. That’s what a news consumer needs because it’s true. Reality may have a well-known liberal bias, but so be it. The right’s lying, and Olbermann called them on it on national television. Somebody has to.
(And if you haven’t seen the Olbermann report, it is worth all 7+ minutes of your time.) What we do know is that news producers and reporters are more interested in making sure that they they have their properly oppositional quotes — not in the credibility, potential conflicts of interest or even track record of those they seek out. The only thing is getting the form of objectivity right, not in either real objectivity or in objective facts.
No matter what you may think of Olbermann, there is no doubt to me that if more media outlets were examining the claims of the folks they seek out as newsmakers, rather than just blithely passing them on, they could do alot to repair their image. That means, however, not making objective fact subject to differing POVs. It does mean being clear about pointing out the lies, for instance: Nancy Pelosi did not add funds to save an endangered mouse to the stimulus bill (be sure to read through to see were the GOP staffer who wrote that bit of business recants); there’s no legislative or executive effort to bring back the Fairness Doctrine (although I will concede that this fuels the perpetual victim narrative that conservatives need as an organizing element): and the White House isn’t taking over the Census operation (but again, the wingnuts are getting their rage on about management of the Census because they can’t figure out how to argue over the counting).
This also means that those of us writing for blogs need to make sure that the lies get pointed out and debunked in detail — not just making a huffy claim for fact as the right so lazily does, and hoping that bullying or being louder will make their case. And it also means recognizing when media sheds the easy reliance on the usual suspects and actually go check on the facts of an argument. Dem politicians won’t be especially good on smacking back the lies, so we have to do so, until our media remembers what it is there for.