I had a boss - and longtime mentor - who loved to tell me that perception is reality. And more often than not, that's true. Like it or not, what people see is what you get.
Just ask Mel Gibson; I'm betting he won't be starring in the latest Spike Lee joint. And I doubt Lindsay Lohan's lining up any MADD PSAs after they let her out of the halfway house. So it should come as no surprise, then, that the health care debate - if we can even still call it that - is such a skewed, hot mess.
And, in case you're wondering, a Pew Research study confirms my technical assessment.
Believe it or not, before last year (in 2007 and 2008) health care consumed less than 1 percent of mainstream media coverage. From June 2009 to just a couple of months ago, the study found, it actually became the No. 1 story in the mainstream press, gobbling up 14 percent of airtime and news ink. This despite the fact that, in December, nearly 70 percent of Americans admitted the debate was "difficult to understand."
But what really bugged me the most was what the media chose to cover. More than 40 percent of the press focused on "politics and strategy," basically the politics surrounding the story. It would be a lot like covering the Gulf oil spill in terms of what it means for various political campaigns rather than in terms of what it means for the New Orleans fisherman or the suffocating seagulls.
In fact, the actual state of health care - and how our system actually works - barely garnered 9 percent of the coverage. While the specifics of the legislation that ended up becoming law earned only about 5 percent of the media's attention.
So, forget the politics of Fox vs. CNN or the Post vs. the Times, because they're all clearly culpable in what amounts to nothing less than a dereliction of duty. The Fourth Estate I've always been so proud to be a part of has clearly become second-class.
