Never Underestimate Your Opponent’s Sincerity
Marc Ambinder on why astro-turfing should not serve as a basis for discrediting the underlying movements:
Sometimes, as in the case of health care, both sides Astroturf. What begats success? The Astroturfing? Or the underlying anxieties? I’ll posit that Astroturfing tends to fail when there is nothing to sustain it, and it has a better chance of succeeding when the opposition can’t figure out how to Astroturf their way into the same enthusiasm channel.
Ambinder goes on to provide some thoughts about why it is inappropriate for the media to take a firm position on the claims made by those movements that make a lot of sense to me:
But that question is categorically different than asking journalists to come down on the side of a policy option where the truth cannot be known until the experiments are run. Taking the truth seriously means, I think, being able to know when and where the truth can be discerned.
In the case of health care, it is impossible to discern whether conservative outrage over Obamacare is justified much as it is impossible to discern whether Obamacare will actually do what it claims to do: we won’t know its effects for a fact until something is actually implemented. Until then, we only have competing theories and expectations that may or may not be validated.
Ambinder is only parting hitting the marc, heh, on the criticisms he has faced. There is plenty of anxiety about health care reform. Some of it is based on bald-faced lies, ex. reform will lead to forced euthensia, the press has been loathe to ever just call a lie a lie. I’m not talking about shades of opinion, policy or political belief. They tend to go for the one side says the world is flat , the other says it round, we report , you decide. There simply are things the press can say is crap, but they wont’.
I don’t think people can’t see the reform protests as sincere. The critism is the press will take the protesters solely at face value, without noting that they are following a script set by lobbying organizations. The press will say “wow look at all that heat. Obama is really in trouble” and then avoid taking about, you know, actual health care reform since it is boring. They will cover the heat and not the substance.Report
Greg, don’t you see how illogical it is to say that the only ones protesting healthcare are only doing so because they are paid and following a script? Do you really think nearly everyone supports what has been put on the table and the only ones who object secretly support it, but are objecting to it because it’s their day job to do so? I think you are looking at a reality distortion field as people can genuinely object to something – it doesn’t mean they’re closet supporters who only object because they are paid to.Report
Dave- who is saying that?. there is plenty of anxiety over reform. Some, of that is being stoked by out right, deliberate lies. the press doesn’t want to just say something is a lie.
It is also true that highly paid lobbying groups (freedomworks, for one) are making a strong push against reform. that is generally fine. But they are also producing scripts that detail many of the actions being done be the most raucous protester and their tactics ex, shouting down speakers, etc. I find some of the tactics like aiming to disrupt townhall meetings to be over the line. But the point about the press is that even though they know the loudest protests are scripted to a degree with loud mouths bussed in from different areas, they will not say that. they will report it as if the screamers are only concerned citizens without any of the background.Report
Greg has it exactly right. The nebulousness of the reform legislation makes it hard to write with any degree of certainty about what the bill will or wont do. But I think the media can be pretty sure it won’t be designed to kill your grandparents or force us all to have abortions.
Similarly, the media can look at the different proposed laws and say that Democratic claims that the law will fix the financial problems with Health Care are also liars.Report