The big loser in Tuesday's Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report release isn't President Obama. It's not Obamacare. It's not Democrats. It's the traditional media. This was a textbook case of reading incomprehension, preconceived assumptions, susceptibility to spin and inability to admit an error, spread out over the airwaves, the Internet, and blowing up in real time. In the aftermath, it's fascinating to see how it all played out: who corrected themselves, who backpedaled without ever ackowledging their fuck up, who insisted that even if they were wrong they were right, and who ran with the lie and are sticking with it.
The latter category is entirely predictable. For example, the National Review, which stuck with the headline "The CBO Just Nuked Obamacare" even after the debunking. Forbes doubled down, from "Congressional Budget Office: Obamacare A Tax On Workers" to "CBO: Obamacare Is A Tax On Work, May Cut Full-Time Workforce By 2.5 Million." The Washington Times, likewise, stuck with "Obamacare will push 2 million workers out of labor market: CBO" even after it was made abundantly clear that it would be the workers choosing to leave.
To its credit, the Washington Post was pretty much first out of the gate with a correction and with a very timely factcheck, which pretty much triggered the rest of the respectable media to correct themselves. But what was really fun to watch was the "well, yeah, but" crowd. Case in point: NBC's Chuck Todd.
He starts out with the unequivocal statement: "CBO essentially reaffirms GOP talking points on health care. Says it will cost jobs, feel as if it raises taxes and contributes to deficit." GOP wins! Then as his story falls apart, the idea that the CBO is hedging: "The CBO report has a lot of uses of the word "may" which for a forecast is obvious but certainly is reminder nothing is definitive." He finally ends with a complete head fake, changing the subject: "Biggest story out of the CBO report is the fact that long term econ outlook is all less than robust because of the aging overall pop." Uh, huh.
Another standout:
Tho much reporting & GOP response to new CBO report on ACA is inaccurate/false, problem for Dems: If you're explainin', you're losin'
— @calmesnyt
Well, yeah, maybe I got it all wrong, but it's the Democrats' fault! Interestingly enough, Calmes employer thinks it's pretty great stuff,
editorializing that the report shows a huge benefit of Obamacare: it "frees" people from the "insurance trap." That's an explanation Democrats can sure live with.
While it's fun to point and laugh at stupid reporters, the whole incident is pretty disheartening and problematic. Steve Benen sums up the problem well: "we can no longer focus on what is true; we must also consider what Republicans and reporters perceive as possibly true—which in turn is what the public will believe, whether it’s accurate or not." One part of that equation should be easy to fix, reporters just have to do their jobs.