Murat Altuglu
Since it became clear that many millions of American will not be able to keep their insurance and doctors under Obamacare, the attentive media observer can see how the so called liberal media in the States is making up excuses for Obama’s failure in implementing Obamacare.
The instructive and revealing aspect thereby is that the media engages in speculative excuse making rather than reporting what is going on, which is what is usually seen to be journalism.
Over the weekend, the New York Times became the prime example for such speculative spin (as well as becoming the laughing stock of the serious media). The editorial board of the flagship Democratic news-media made the claim that Obama “misspoke” when he stated that Americans with insurance would be able to keep their insurance and doctors if they wanted to once the Affordable Health Care Act was implemented.
This is now evidently not the case. Up to a 120 million Americans will not be able to keep the health care plan that they have currently. On top of that, the White House allegedly knew about this when Obama was making this statement over and over again when reading it from a teleprompter. Thus we have to assume – following the logic of the NYT editorial board – that while Obama said over and over again that everyone insured could keep their insurance, no one at the White House bothered to tell him he was not saying the truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCUpJDzyRnY#t=71
When the editorial board of the New York Times says that Obama “misspoke,” then one has to point out to them that Obama rarely, very rarely speaks. Obama almost always performs a speech, reading it from a teleprompter. Thus the excuse of the editorial board of the New York Times would have been more convincing if they had chosen the word misread instead of misspoken. And Obama must have misread his speeches all the time. Not once did he say something else than that one can keep one’s insurance and doctor.
On the radio equivalent of the Democratic media outlet, NPR, the excuse given is that Obama’s “management style” is just the way it is.
Obama is “interested in big conversations” and does not bother with the details. These excuses are accompanied by reassuringly repeating that Obama is “smart, bright,” etc. “The smartest president ever.” And again, we see how a certain segment of the media engages in speculative spin while looking for an excuse for Obama. They are not even attempting to report what happened.
Yet all the excuses for why Obama failed are pure speculation (and not analysis). As such, it is entirely fluff. A defensive fluff, but still fluff. All the unproven assertions made to defend Obama are not based on thought and reflection but purely on reflexes. It is astonishing example for mass-behavior in the media. It noteworthy that inside their intellectual-bubble, no one at the New York Times and NPR minds to ask the question on what facts these journalists base their assertions.
I find this type of media and propaganda (applied objectively and not normatively) disturbingly familiar to the state of the Turkish media, as an example, where large segments of the media have been coerced into loyal mouthpieces of the government. Here in the States, the so called liberal media voluntarily forfeits its journalistic credentials by engaging in such speculative spin.
If there would not be a balance in the media in the form of FOX and similar media outlets, they might even get away with such spin.
