Six basic facts about how the media handled coverage of health care reform have been distilled from a study of more than 5,500 health care stories in the mainstream media from June 2009 through March 2010.
A new report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that coverage was dominated by the politics of the debate and there was far less coverage of how the health care system works. Some other findings:
First, health care coverage followed a roller coaster trajectory, spiking dramatically at times and plunging at other points. And the media platforms best suited for ideological debate proved to be especially interested in the subject—particularly the liberal talk media. In the war of words over health care, however, the opposition seems to have prevailed, as their terms and ideas showed up far more often than the key ideas of supporters of the Democrats’ reform plans. The media also seemed to focus far more on the politics and the passions that drove the debate than the health care system it was trying to reform.
Finally, President Obama’s presence as a key figure in health care coverage vacillated markedly over the 10 months studied, lending credence to the idea that he did, at times, lose control of the narrative.
The report’s conclusion tells us that, in the heat of the battle, when politics became most partisan, the media focused on those aspects rather than the system. It points out that while some outlets did good work, “the public seemed consistently confused by the health care debate and had a difficult time sorting out fact from fiction.”
