Boy, our ever reliable media was out in full force today fact-checking President Obama after his healthcare address last night. But, some of this suddenly responsible behavior was simply a back-door way to be able to keep the discussion of Rep. Joe Wilson’s disrespectful behavior last night going. Or an attempt to frame further discussion about his outburst as responsible journalism. Suddenly they’re all grown-ups
But on CNN’s morning show, Hardball and on MSNBC Shuster and Hall are fact checkers too. I didn’t see this much homework during the townhall fiascos. No, no, no...Instead we had town hall characters all over TV in our living room every night screaming lies and holding up signs depicting our President in every horrible representation known to modern man, scaring seniors and brandishing guns for heaven’s sake and what passed for fact checking then? Where were the media adults?
I’ll tell you what passed for fact-checking in August. While we got our daily stream of horror the media engaged in superficial discussions with the crazies! They even tried to net themselves real wound-up townhallers to bring on TV so we could see crazy close-up, and they gave far too much time to continue spewing their factually WRONG lies.
What constituted fact checking was usually two opposing views on split screen, let them have-at-each other and the lies were just left to hang out their like a stale fart.
Here’s an example.
Sometime in mid-August...
RW, "Your grandmother is going to be forced to go before a death panel and some bureaucrat will decide if she can live or has to die!"
Our side, "That’s not true!"
Host, "OK, thank you for this lively discussion, certainly a lot to cover here in this debate but we’re out of time. Join us again tomorrow!"
September 10...
Host, "President Obama said last night that your grandmother is not going to have to go before a death panel – let’s fact check his claim."
Special expert guest, "Why yes, (fill about a ½ minute with chatter about August). After careful fact checking it seems the President was correct. There are no death panels under consideration in the house bill. But to be honest, we have yet to know what the Senate bill will look like so we can’t say it won’t show up in the final bill."
And yes, fact checking the President is a very good thing.
American media please grow up and keep it up as a way of doing business!