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.