Think Progress‘ Matt Corley (8/19/09) has the depressing, if predictable, news that recent polling shows “‘all the misinformation out there’ about healthcare reform proposals in Congress is taking root with many Americans.”
Corley is discouraged to see that, “for instance, 45 percent believe the false claim that legislation includes ‘death panels‘ while 55 percent believe the false claim that coverage will be extended to illegal immigrants”—and an MSNBC passage says that, in particular,
self-identified viewers of Fox News are disproportionately misinformed“:
In our poll, 72 percent of self-identified Fox News viewers believe the healthcare plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79 percent of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69 percent think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75 percent believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly….
As ThinkProgress has pointed out, Fox News regularly distorts the truth about health care reform.
In fact, just “last week, Media Matters found that over a two-day period, opponents of health care reform outnumbered supporters by a 6-to-1 margin on Fox.” Hear a strong corrective to all this deceit on FAIR’s radio show CounterSpin: “Trudy Lieberman on Health Care Reform” (8/14/09).
Can you tell me why so much time is spent on defending this godawful “reform” from false charges as to what it does do, and so little on castigating it for what it *doesn’t* do?
Shouldn’t that be the focus for folks who give a damn about true universal healthcare?
As for these lies – isn’t there a case to be made for wishing they weren’t? Is “gummint takeover” a bad thing? It seems to work pretty well with the NHS for the Brits, doesn’t it? I’m sure it ain’t Jesus on a stick, but it’s got what we have – and what we’ll get through “reform” – beat by a mile, doesn’t it?
Abortions? Aren’t many abortions medically necessary? Why shouldn’t they be covered?
The undocumented? Aren’t the vast majority of “illegal immigrants” here because of what US corps and foreign and economic policy have done to their countries? How do they get their health needs taken care of?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers on these. I just think they’re legitimate questions to ask, and treating them the same as the obscene lies about death panels isn’t what I’d call “progressive”, would you?
I quit watching Fox News a long time ago – – In fact, I go to online news from outside the US most of the time. Not much of the media in the US is interested in presenting either a balanced or comprehensive view of affairs in this country or globally either.