Today's Stories

July 29, 2009

Franklin C. Spinney
Winning Hearts and Minds, Pentagon Style

July 28, 2009

Jean Bricmont
Bombing for a Juster World?

Uri Avnery
Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements

Dean Baker
Right to Rent: a Remedy for the Foreclosure Crisis

Heather Gray
Stupid Cop Tricks: Driving Too Close to a White Female and Other Episodes in Racist Policing

Jonathan Cook
Can an "Arab Soul" Yearn for Israel's Anthem?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Beyond the F-22: the Future of Pentagon Reform

Belén Fernández
Thomas Friedman Does Afghanistan

Carl Finamore
The Hotel Workers' Kickass Local 2

Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Striking the World Cup

Harvey Wasserman
We All Stand Before Peltier's Parole Board

Website of the Day
Behind the Wheel

July 27, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Gates: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

Patrick Cockburn
Elections Shake Kurdistan

Roger Burbach
Hillary and Obama Nix Change in Honduras

Steve Breyman
Bomber Joe and Russia: Why is Biden Channeling Cheney?

Ramzy Kysia
Gaza: On the Right of Resistance

Stephen Soldz
Will the American Psychological Association Renounce the Nuremberg Defense?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Sexual Hocus Pocus in the Episcopal Church

Greg Moses
The Color Line is Black

Binoy Kampmark
Swine Flu Panic

Kim Ives
Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

Website of the Day
Meet the Paid Assassins of Health Care

July 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"A Damned Murder, Inc."

Clifton Ross
Surreal Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Party of "Change" Challenges Old Guard in Kurdistan

William Polk
Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman

David Sterritt
Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

Ray McGovern
Hooded in Bush's Hood

David Lindorff
Cops Gone Wild

Hannah Mermelstein
"The War is With the Arabs"

Carl Ginsburg
The Actually Existing Health Care System

Helen Redmond
The Selling of Single-Payer Features

John Ross
The Song of the Guerrilla

Bill Simpich
Fair Play for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution

Mark Weisbrot
Learning From China on How to Beat the Recession

Lee Sustar
U.S. Labor in Crisis

David Macaray
Union Workers Forced to Accept Massive Cuts

Felipe Matsunaga
Obama's Slow (and Familiar) Dance With Cuba

Sara Mann
Why Health Care Will Kill My TV

Martha Rosenberg
Which is Worse? Germs in Our Food or the Antibiotics That Kill Them?

Missy Beattie
Cha-ching Culture

David Ker Thomson
Empty Nest: a Natural History of Now

Ron Jacobs
United4Iran, a Footnote

Stephen Martin
The Crying of Lots 1 Thru 50

David Yearsley
Psst, I Show You a Feelthy Gluck

Gilad Atzmon
Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism?

Kim Nicolini
Guilty Laughter in the Dark: Seeing Brüno Twice

Poets' Basement
Kakak and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Dead Prez: Summertime

July 23, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Masters of Perfidy: AIG and the System

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
Hypocrisy and the Honduran Coup: Term Limits Only Apply When Governments Help People

Jonathan Cook
The Reality of Israel's "Open" Jerusalem

Nadia Hijab
Israeli Warships in the Red Sea

Dave Lindorff
Living in a Police State: the Gates Incident

Laura Carlsen
21st Century Coups d'Etat

Steve Breyman
Bankers Beware?

Ellen Brown
How California Could Turn Its IOUs Into Dollars

Norman Solomon
Spinning Health Care

Jorge Mariscal
Youth Activists Demand Military-Free Schools

Website of the Day
Copy-Editing Sarah Palin

July 22, 2009

Bernard Chazelle
How to Argue Against Torture

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras

Carl Ginsburg
The Recovery, Phase Two

Clifton Ross
Back to the Future? Return to El Salvador

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine

Michael Donnelly
The Whoppers Behind WOPR

Nadia Hijab
Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

Dedrick Muhammad
Structural Inequality: News Not Fit to Print?

Charles Thomson
Cronyism at the Tate

Alan Farago
Ted Williams and the Florida Keys

Website of the Day
Himmelstein: Howard Dean is a Liar

July 21, 2009

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Iranian Election and Its Aftermath

Uri Avnery
Breaking the Silence on Israeli War Crimes

Dean Baker
Séance on Wall Street

Jonathan Cook
Team Twitter: Israel's Internet War

Dave Lindorff
Saving Private Bergdahl

Andy Worthington
Interrogating the Uighurs

David Macaray
Heat, Dust and OSHA

Carl Finamore
The Deferential Party

Harvey Wasserman
Cronkite and Three Mile Island

Walter Brasch
The Marie Antoinettes of Health Care

Website of the Day
Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduras and the Big Stick: Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

Paul Craig Roberts
Threatening Iran

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Policy on China and Iran

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Time Bomb: Building in the Vineyard of the Mufti

P. Sainath
Put Your Money Down, Boys

Binoy Kampmark
The Moon Landing and the Cold War

Stephen Fleischman
The First Anchorman

Norman Solomon
Cronkite and Vietnam: Beyond the Hype

Andy Worthington
Predictable Chaos as Gitmo Trials Resume

Ron Jacobs
Out of the Haze, Into the Darkness: Recalling 1979

Website of the Day
Why Publishing Can't be Saved (as it is)

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

July 29, 2009

The More You Watch, the Less You Know

Health Care, the Media and Public Opinion

By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

People have a remarkable ability to believe what they want to believe, even in the face of contradictory evidence.  Recent media coverage of political debate on the “public option” for health care reform is a case in point.  A review of the nightly programs on the liberal MSNBC - including those of Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews - shows that all of these hosts cited public opinion as supportive of the Obama health care plan at some point during the week of July 15th to 21st.  Conversely, every pundit-based program on Fox News’s feature lineup - including those from Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Bret Baier, and Glenn Beck, cited public opinion as overwhelmingly opposed to the public option.

Critics of Obama’s public option have no difficulty distorting public opinion data to fit their own prejudices.  A prominent example is the July 19th Meet the Press, in which guest Michele Norris of NPR’s All Things Considered argued that “some 90 percent of the people who voted [in 2008] actually have health insurance and three-quarters of them are satisfied with what they got.  And there’s different ways of looking at that.  And one way to look at that is to say that perhaps there is not the public mandate for this that would dictate this sort of rush to legislation.”  Wall Street Journal editorial writer Paul Gigot agreed with Norris’ claim in the roundtable Meet the Press discussion, maintaining that Obama “is making the same mistake that he made on the stimulus…he’s governing from the left…That’s why you see these extraordinary costs and extraordinary taxes.  There is a better way to govern through the center, the way Bill Clinton did on welfare reform…But [Obama] won’t do that because he knows that will upset his political left.”

At Fox News, pundits wasted no time suggesting that the American people were actively opposed to government health care.  Alexis Glick of the Fox Business Network argued on the July 21st Hannity that “nobody really understands the urgency [on health care reform], and what the American people are now starting to distrust is that urgency.”  As mentioned above, Hannity, O’Reilly, Baier (from Special Report), and Beck’s programs all drew on public opinion, framing Americans as opposed to Obama’s health plan.  The only program host who took exception to this trend was Neil Cavuto (Your World with Neil Cavuto), as he conceded in his July 15th show that most Americans support a government health care initiative.  Cavuto’s admission was heavily qualified, however, as he framed Americans as selfish and unenlightened for wanting government health care: “most American people think that access to affordable health care is a desire.  And many argue that there’s nothing to argue there, because if someone else is going to pay for that up front [in this case through a tax on wealthier Americans], hey, sign me up, right?”  Cavuto followed up this comment with a declaration that “open season” had been declared “on the rich.”

It’s important to note that none of the above depictions from Fox and Meet the Press are fair representations of public opinion on health care.  In this case, as with so many others, it is difficult to deny Danny Schechter’s conclusion that, the more you watch of corporate news, the less you actually know about what’s going on in the world.  In the case of health care reform, Fox News blatantly misrepresents public opinion polling, framing Americans as fiercely opposed to a public option.

A more in depth exploration of public opinion reveals a picture that is radically different from that seen in the conservative media.  Polls conducted in recent years find consistent support for a national health care initiative.  A Gallup poll from November 11, 2007 found that 64 percent of Americans agreed with the claim that it “is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage,” while only 33 percent felt it was not the government’s responsibility.  Public support for a government program remained steady (ranging between 58-69 percent from January 2000 through November of 2007).

As of July 15th, 2009, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 54 percent of Americans thought Obama could do a better job on health care than Republicans in Congress - while only 34 percent felt Republicans could do a better job.  The same poll found that 72 percent felt Obama was placing either the right amount of attention on health care or needed to focus more attention, as opposed to 25 percent who felt he was placing too much attention on the issue.  Between 55-64 percent either strongly or somewhat supported a government plan to compete with private insurers according to the Washington Post/ABC poll and polls by the USA Today/Gallup and CBS, while between 29-43 percent somewhat or strongly opposed such a plan.

It is certainly true, as Norris claimed on Meet the Press, that most insured Americans say they are happy with their health care plans.  The Gallup survey mentioned above consistently found that, from 2001 to 2007, between 71-81 percent of Americans said they were “satisfied” with the total cost of health care in this country,” with only 17-28 percent saying they were “dissatisfied.”  Additionally, between 65-71 percent rated their health care coverage as “excellent” or “good.”

To simply claim that Americans’ happiness with their health care plans is proof that people don’t want national health care, however, is grossly incompetent at best, and manipulative at worst.  If Norris were to provide an accurate depiction of public opinion, she would have expanded her use of data to a series of other questions.  She would have explained that, according to the very same Gallup poll mentioned above, 73 percent of Americans feel that health care is either in a “state of crisis” or has “major problems,” with only 26 percent saying there are “minor problems” or “no problems.”  Similarly, over 80 percent of Americans in the Gallup survey describe themselves as dissatisfied “with health care in the country as a whole.”  Some of the most recent data from the Pew Research Center similarly finds that, as of mid 2009, 71 percent feel that we need “fundamental changes,” or to have our health system “completely rebuilt,” as compared to 24 percent who only want “minor changes” in the system.

Many might wonder how it is that people can be happy with their health care programs and yet support a major transformation in favor of government health care.  The answer is no mystery: most Americans realize that our health care system has become a complete catastrophe for those 50 million Americans who have no health insurance.  These people are not included in the polling numbers cynically cited by Norris and others, who claim that three-quarters of Americans are happy with their health care plans.  The major caveat here is that the three-quarters cited by Norris entails only those Americans who already have health insurance, and excludes those cut out of basic care.  Only someone with an active contempt for democracy would leave these people out of their discussion of public opinion, as Norris and other opponents of reform are all too happy to do.  From their perspective, why focus on the poor at all?  The disadvantaged are simply not a real concern for those affluent few who dominate much of our media.

If pundits in the conservative media want to deal with the issue of health care honestly and with transparency, they should stress a number of facts: 1. Most Americans strongly support major reforms in our health care system, and wish to see a government sponsored health care program that will provide for the poor and disadvantaged.  2. Strong resistance does exist to government health care, but only amongst a small, loud minority.  My own statistical analysis of Pew Research Center data finds that older and wealthier Americans, conservatives, and men are more likely to oppose government sponsored health care, whereas younger and poorer Americans, liberals, and women are more likely to support it.  These trends shouldn’t be surprising, since older Americans are traditionally much better covered than younger Americans due to the Medicare program.  Relative affluence for the elderly, sadly, translates into less sympathy for less well off, younger Americans who are less well covered.  Wealthy individuals are likely to oppose government health care since they do not need to rely on the public option, and since it will likely cost them disproportionately more in taxes.  Finally, men are less likely to support government health care than women in light of the fact that women disproportionately suffer under the feminization of poverty, and have a more difficult time providing for themselves and their families.

The debate over health care in this country, contrary to the deception at NBC and Fox News, is not between the masses who oppose universal health care and an Obama administration that is “governing from the left” in opposition to the public will.  The real conflict is between those privileged few Americans who are desensitized and unsympathetic to the demands of the masses of people who are overwhelmingly supportive of national health care.  Sadly, in order to understand this basic fact, we must first come to the realization that corporate media often misinform the public about vital political issues.  Without a steady dose of alternative media exposure, it will remain the case that, the more you watch of mainstream news, the less you know.

Anthony DiMaggio teaches American and Global Politics at Illinois State University.  He is the author of Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008) and the forthcoming When Media Goes to War (2010).  He can be reached at adimagg@ilstu.edu

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