Krugman: Reporting on health and the health of reporting

[chill_wind]

Paul Krugman - New York Times Blog
June 23, 2009, 4:39 pm
Reporting on health and the health of reporting

Both Igor Volsky and Ezra Klein catch major media organizations picking up completely false GOP talking points, and completely misrepresenting the CBO “scoring” that created so much consternation last week. Neither of the plans CBO studied contains a public option — yet people who got their news from allegedly reputable TV shows were led to believe that the CBO results were devastating news for advocates of a public option.

This is disastrous — but it’s also nothing new. (...)

You know, this isn’t even a matter of investigative reporting — it’s about getting reporting on simple facts, facts that are right out there in the public domain, somewhere in the general vicinity of the truth.


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/reporting-on-health-and-the-health-of-reporting/


MORE of what he's talking about:


CBS and ABC Help the Private Insurers Misrepresent the Public Health Option
By: Scarecrow Tuesday June 23, 2009 5:07 pm

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5928

(Oxdown Gazette)

[WeCanWorkItOut]

1. Paul Krugman once told Al Franken about doctors being overpaid

Specifically, he explained that American doctors are
"paid much more than doctors in other countries".
Franken replied to Krugman rather disdainfully,
in comedian-speak,Tell me something I should care about.
And Krugman essentially caved.

(A friend sent me a tape of this interview.
I was appalled. And now that (in my opinion)
elitist idiot, seems to be a senator.)

I wish Krugman would do more to get basic facts out there.
Admittedly, he is not a health specialist.
But we have serious problems with the overpaying of doctors and hospitals,
overuse of technology, the problem that some insurance companies make much
more than others, and a variety of other abuses of power.

We have the problem that our fellow citizens could understand
much more about health than they do.

So there are many issues we should have been talking about.
But now, it seems that the Democrats have got hold of
what they think is an easy answer. Yet their easy answer
could do a lot of harm. So it would be better
if Krugman spent more time explaining, insofar as he understands it,
the complexities of the situation.

[Winterblues]

2. You seemed to have missed the entire point of the article.

It was about the Media misrepresenting the facts, it wasn't about Health Care. And I thought Krugman got the "facts" out there quite well.

[chill_wind]

6. There's a lot of that going around, I'm noticing.

as for Krugman himself-- he could say the sky was blue and he would be in all kinds of trouble for it.

[Romulox]

3. With all due respect, Paul Krugman works for the house organ of the status quo

He has little room to point any fingers at other news organizations, when he works for a paper with as spotty a history as his!

[chill_wind]

4. Whatever.

[Romulox]

5. Indeed. How goes the war? nt