That?s the headline for Ramesh Ponnuru?s analysis in the new National Review of mainstream media coverage of the health-care reform debate.
Among Ponnuru?s key points:
Journalists? use of the phrase ?health-care reform? has also skewed the debate. The Washington Post headlined a story on Sen. Jim DeMint ?S.C. Senator Is a Voice of Reform Opposition.? Actually DeMint has long championed a variety of free-market health-care reforms. He is a voice of opposition to the health-policy changes that Democrats are currently seeking, but it is inappropriate for journalists who aspire to objectivity to identify those changes, and only those changes, as ?reform.?
One of the outcomes of this blatant ?malpractice? is public indifference to the decline of the mainstream media, as Rick Henderson recently described in a presentation to the John Locke Foundation?s Shaftesbury Society.
