Topic: Media Research Center
The truth doesn't matter to the Media Research Center.
A July 16 NewsBusters post by the reliably clueless Tom Blumer uncritically repeats a claim in an Investor's Business Daily editorial that the Senate health care reform bill contains "a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal," proclaiming that "you have to go to the editorial pages of publications like the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily to get your news when leftists are in control of the government."
Blumer's MRC bosses pounced on the IBD editorial as well, issuing a July 16 press release referencing "the bombshell easily discovered by Investor’s Business Daily and confirmed by the House Ways and Means Committee: a provision in the bill that severely limits private health insurance choice" and quting MRC chief Brent Bozell demanding that "the media understand – and at the very least, read – the health care bill before any further reporting" (underline in original).
But the IBD claim is not true.
As Media Matters details, the health care bill does not make private medical insurance "illegal" ;the provision to which the editorial referred establishes the conditions under which existing private plans would be exempted from the requirement that they participate in the Health Insurance Exchange. Individual health insurance plans that do not meet the "grandfather" conditions would still be available for purchase, but only through the Exchange and subject to those regulations.
So it appears that Bozell failed to read, let alone understand, the bill he demands members of the media read and understand. And Blumer looks even sillier than usual through his further slobbering over IBD's purported factual integrity:
This post proves the point, as if it even needs to be proven, that you have to go to the editorial pages of publications like the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily to get your news when leftists are in control of the government.
[...]
The fact that little old IBD (no offense, guys, but I know your resources are relatively thin) had to find and investigate all of this on its own should be a cause for shame in every major newsroom in America. More than likely, it is not.
Yes, the House bill writers really tried to obfuscate their handiwork. It's very easy to breeze over "does not" without realizing that it really means "cannot." But IBD caught it, and hundreds of other supposed "real journalists" did not.
[...]
Somebody at the AP, AFP, Reuters, other wires, the New York Times, the Washington Post, all major newspapers, the alphabet news channels (including Fox in this case), and so many other self-important establishment media outlets needs to explain to the public they supposedly serve why they didn't detect and investigate what IBD found.
They can't. Consumers of meaningful news, be advised. If you're not reading IBD's and WSJ's editorials, there's a high chance you're not truly informed. If you rely on the rest of the establishment media, there's a high chance you're misinformed.
There's a high chance that Blumer is misinformed because he's reading IBD editorials.
But it's not as if the truth matters to either Blumer or Bozell.
