Steve Benen Archives

Judge Rules Health Care Is Constitutional, News Media Gone Fishing

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…..

Ezra Klein Is Wrong On This Issue

Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly ran an interesting piece, stating that judges who voted against the Affordable Care Act, or what the conservatives are calling ObamaCare, receive more press attention than those who voted for the bill.

He then broke it down by the numbers showing that on verdict 1, which supported the Democratic position of Health Care, received an average of 581 words from The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press and Politico.

On verdict 2, which also went in favor of the Democrats and the Obama administration, received an average of 438 words per article from the same four news agencies.

However, when verdict 3 came out by Federal District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson, whose decision went against the Democrats, the same four news agencies wrote an average of 1648 words in articles. Then yesterday, January 31st, another Federal Judge in Florida issued verdict 4 against the Health Reform Bill, and receive an average of 1742 words from the four. Mr. Benen question was, “If there’s a sensible explanation for this, I’d love to hear it.”

Ezra Klein, who writes for the Washington Post responded to Mr. Benen’s article saying,

“I actually think there is a sensible explanation for this: The two judges who ruled for the bill upheld the status quo. And they went first. So their rulings changed nothing. No one could accuse me of harboring an anti-ACA agenda, but I didn’t give those rulings much coverage.

The two judges who ruled against the bill called for enormous changes to the status quo, and enormous changes to the status quo are almost the definition of what “news” is. These two rulings have genuinely called the bill’s future into question, and that’s a big story.”

Well, although I tend to agree with Ezra Klein on many issues, and besides the fact that we share the same first name, I’ll have to disagree with his position on this matter.

Benen is right! There is simply no sensible explanation for the one-sided coverage. And although some may claim the sensationalism of a Federal Judge voting against the status quo is the “definition of what news is,” I prefer to think of the sensationalism of a life changed, if the Health Care reform law remains in effect. Now that’s news!