CNN made no accommodation for balance during a panel discussion
segment on ObamaCare on Monday's American Morning, bringing on two journalists- New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Time magazine's
Karen Tumulty- who both dismissed the Democrats' lack of transparency
in the congressional negotiations over the health care "reform" bills,
and both shilled for the legislation.
Anchor Kiran Chetry introduced Kristof as someone who merely
"supports the health care bill as it stands now" during a panel
discussion segment at the bottom of the 7 am Eastern hour. After
introducing Kristof and his liberal colleague Tumulty, Chetry asked,
"Does this hurt the President if indeed Congress goes forward with
doing this behind the scenes?"
Kristof acknowledged that "to some degree it hurts him politically
[and] I think he shouldn't have actually made that promise," but
continued that, from his experience as a journalist, the lack of
transparency was actually a good sign:
KRISTOF: One of the things you learn as a journalist, whether you're covering a negotiation over health care, a negotiation over nuclear weapons with North Korea or Iran, is that when people talk to you, that means they're not serious. When they actually are quiet and they are really negotiating behind closed doors and it's not transparent, that's an indication that they're actually serious, and they're willing to make the kinds of compromises to get a deal done. So I think that the only way you're going to get these compromises to get a health care package worked out is to have it be a non-transparent process.
Tumulty similarly tried to explain away the lack of transparency:
"Well, I mean, that promise, that campaign promise was a bit of
demagoguery, and...it's certainly something that a sitting U.S. senator
should have known better that that couldn't happen. But the fact is
this deal is not going to get done unless it goes behind closed
doors....They know that they need momentum on this deal. They need to
get it done as quickly as possible. So I think at this point they are
picking expedience over transparency."
The New York Times columnist then tried to underscore the apparent urgency to get ObamaCare passed:
CHETRY: And why is it- explain, Nicholas, why it is so critical right now for some health care reform bill to pass. I know that the State of the Union [address] is one of the markers, but then you're also looking at the 2010 elections, the midterm elections, where there is a lot of fear over whether or not they are going to continue to have the 60 seats needed, let's say, in the Senate to make something happen.
KRISTOF: Well, it's certainly crucial for the future of the Democratic Party to have something to show for it, but more importantly, this is crucial for the American public. There was a Harvard study that was published in December that showed that more than 40,000 Americans each year die prematurely because of lack of access to health care. We've got a huge problem with lack of access, and we have a huge problem with rising health care costs. I'd say that the ObamaCare proposal certainly doesn't resolve either problem, but it does begin to make some serious steps in both directions.
Even with Chetry's earlier muted disclosure of Kristof's position,
the journalist became utterly shameless in his vouching for health care
"reform" near the end of segment:
CHETRY: The Wall Street Journal did an article [1] a couple days ago talking about the- quote, 'marriage penalty' in the version right now, showing that basically, if you stay unmarried and you're making a lower income salary, you're better off. If you had a combined income, meaning two people making $25,000 and living together, actually pay less for their health care if they have to go buy it on the open exchange than, let's say them being married and bringing in $50,000 for their household. A marriage penalty is not something that the Democrats really want to be associated with.
KRISTOF: Right, absolutely. As with the tax code, you have a real problem creating neutrality for a couple, and so, you tend to have either a marriage penalty at some moments or a widow penalty at others, where a single person- it's really hard to achieve that neutrality. They've got to do better on that. But I also think that we need some perspective. I mean, if you think back to when Medicare was brought in 1965, there were all these kinds of real problems with it, and those were legitimate criticisms. But at the end of the day, when we looked back, the real achievement was the fact that we hugely expanded health care for Americans over 65, and made a dramatic transformation in the state of American health care.
CHETRY: And you think that's going to happen- this bill's going to happen.
KRISTOF: Is there some wood I can touch?
CHETRY: This is all Lucite actually, but you can feel free to knock on it anyway.
KRISTOF: (laughs) Okay, let me do that because, yes, I think that this is going to make real strides that will benefit Americans. We will look back on it with pride.
The CNN.com transcript of the 7 am hour of American Morning [2]
strangely omitted Kristof's "knock on wood" remark near the end. One
might guess they didn't want to make him look too much like an
ObamaCare sycophant.
-Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center.