Obama Makes A Good Point (With Update)

It is a point that needs to be made more often:

"...I have to say, part of the reason it spreads is the way reporting is done today. If somebody puts out misinformation, 'Obama's Creating Death Panels,' then the way the news report comes across is: 'Today such-and-such accused President Obama of putting forward death panels. The White House responded that that wasn't true.' And then they go on to the next story. And what they don't say is, 'In fact, it isn't true.'

"You know, it's fine to have a debate back and forth -- he said, she said -- except when somebody else is just not even telling remotely the truth. Then you should say in your reports, 'Oh, and by the way, that's just not true.'

"But that doesn't happen often enough."

You have to give the Republicans a lot of credit on this. Folks who give us the news know that if they report on the "death panel" story and then end the report by saying that nothing in the proposed legislation would result in the creation of death panels, the Radical Right would be all over the report claiming that it reflects left-winged thinking. [As Stephen Colbert once said: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."]

So instead of having to deal with the Radical Right Wing ire that will occur if the actual truth is told, members of the mainstream press simply forego pointing out that Sarah Palin and the rest of "the Deathers" are a bunch of fucking liars and thus give momentum to a story that is nothing more than a huge pile of horseshit.

Joe Klein recently summed up the problem this way:

Given the heinous dust that's been raised, it seems likely that end-of-life counseling will be dropped from the health-reform legislation. But that's a small point, compared with the larger issue that has clouded this summer: How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? And another question: How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?

Think about that for a second. America's Extreme Right has spent years accusing the Corporate Media of having a liberal bias -- the same Corporate Media, ironically, that cheerleaded us into the Iraq Debacle by ignoring BushCo lies -- and all that effort has paid off big time because now members of the Radical Right can spew the most outrageous lies knowing that the cowards in the media will report it without pointing out that it is all a lie.

Isn't that a form of right-wing media bias? Just asking.

UPDATE: Atrios says it better:

The thing is that press doesn't simply tolerate lies, they grant additional authority to the lie and the liar. Hosts and reporters who fail to correct lies implicitly bless them, adding their credibility to it.