ShareThisSuddenly, the hate that once blazed here in Hate City spread like wildfire -- even faster.
One day, only the Capitol seemed consumed by the fiery distortions and downright lies of the political right and left, as truth became the sad casualty of cable television's coverage of Washington's once-anticipated Healthcare Reform Great Debate. But in a flash, the flames of hate leapt beyond the Beltway and engulfed the land.
Everywhere cable television's big eye cared to look, there were scenes of anger and mean-spiritedness. Shouters and shovers hijacked town hall meetings drowning out debate with discord. Some congressmen ducked for cover in their own hometowns. Others looked like deer caught in democracy's headlights. None seemed to know what to say or do.
That of course led to more charges and counter-charges. Leading Democrats accused Republicans of organizing the disruptions. And there were some memos pointing in that direction. But mainly, there were large numbers of people who were clearly there only because they were very scared or very angry -- or both -- at what they had heard was in the various Democratic plans. So they had come to shake their fists and shout their fears. And all that was clear was that they cannot be dismissed as rented stooges doing political shtick. They were indeed real -- even if the facts that moved them often were not.
How they had come to feel and fear as they did? Surely some were rounded up by activists who are out to make sure that President Obama fails -- some because they don't like his health reform ideas, others who just want him to fail. Also, many were convinced by those talk radio partisans who scare people by deliberately distorting and deceiving.
But there are two other factors that we must also recognize in this mind-bending. One is the news media. As I have often noted, we in the news media often seem unable to cover the fires without fanning the flames. And this is one time where it has happened big-time.
This is especially true of the nonstop cable news networks. They have covered the debate by covering the sound and fury -- which, as we know, mainly signifies nothing. They see video of shouting and shoving as great TV.
Hour after hour they show the same footage, replacing it only when they have something with more action or more decibels. They breathlessly air excessive claims from each side, and pat themselves on the back when they find something as outrageous from the other side. They figure doing this flaming balancing act is fair enough and balanced enough -- and informative enough. It is not.
A few -- but unfortunately, only a few -- in print journalism do a good job of revealing the distortions and deceptions and downright lies the politicians tell. The St. Petersburg Times' Bill Adair just won a Pulitzer Prize for his web site (politifact.com) that researches the claims and reveals them for what they are. The site discovered that Newt Gingrich was "mostly true" when he said Democrats in Congress repeatedly voted against amendments to force them to use the public health insurance option they want to put into the health plan.
But that House Minority Leader John Boehner was "mostly false" when he said the Democrats' plan "will require (Americans) to subsidize abortion with their hard-earned tax dollars." And private citizen Sarah Palin earned a "pants on fire" -- that's the site's worst category of a falsehood -- for her recent claim that seniors and disabled persons "will have to stand in front of Obama's death panel so his bureaucrats can decide...whether they are worthy of healthcare."
Being nonstop, cable news has plenty of time and access to plenty of fact-based resources to disassemble the discord and reassemble it in its truthful form. Cable television news needs to turn its big eye on itself -- with an eye toward true public service. Nonstop cable news needs to reinvent itself as journalism's new Truth Squad.
(Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at martin.schram(at)gmail.com.)
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