So the theory is true — that proponents for health care reform will get little to no media press coverage as compared to those opposed to it. A few weeks ago when a Republican judge ruled the entire Health Care Reform was unconstitutional and should be thrown out, because of one aspect called the individual mandate, the media went crazy! They were all over the story like white on rice. But yesterday, when the third judge – U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler – ruled in favor of the Obama administration and agreed that the bill is constitutional, we heard crickets!
And I am not the only one saying this. Here’s what Jed Lewison said about the unfair coverage;
coverage of Judge Roger Vinson’s decision against reform saturated the media, even though his ruling had no immediate impact on health reform.
The Vinson ruling received A1 coverage in The New York Times and dominated cable news. The Kessler ruling was covered on A14 of the Times and as far as cable news goes, I was only able to find two references to it — both on Fox, and each for less than a minute. (I’m basing this on closed caption text searches, so it’s possible I missed a couple of references, but there was hardly any coverage at all.)
After the Vinson ruling, Steve Benen pointed out the huge disparity in coverage between the two rulings in favor of reform and the two rulings against reform. Even if you were to dismiss the significance of those numbers on the theory that the rulings against reform were bigger news because they happened after the rulings that upheld reform, yesterday’s ruling should be at least as significant as Vinson’s ruling because it means that three judges have now ruled in favor of reform compared with two who have ruled against it.
If you’re keeping score, it’s 3 Democratic judges for the constitutionality of the bill, and 2 Republican judges against.
But have no dispare. There’s sure to be another Republican judge to rule against Health Care Reform, and then we will once again hear all manner of analysis and theories and punditry, references and cross-references, and interpretation, and evaluations, and breakdowns, and…..
