Getting Foxy With The Issues
Reported by Ellen - September 28, 2004 -
FOXNews.com is doing a series on the issues in the 2004 presidential campaign. The most recent issue is health care. Its article on the subject, Kerry, Bush Tout Dollars to Mend Health Care is subtly skewed to favor Bush.
It's not just what reporter Peter Brownfeld says but also what he doesn't say.
Brownfeld reports that 45 million people were uninsured in 2003 and that family premiums in employer-sponsored plans "surged" 11.2 percent this year over last. What he doesn't report is that according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (one of the sources in the article), the number of uninsured rose by 5 million between 2000, the year George W. Bush took office, and 2003. That's approximately a 12% increase. Family premiums in employer-sponsored plans rose 60% since 2001. This bad-for-Bush news is conveniently omitted.
Kerry's reform is described in the second paragraph of the article as "much larger and costlier." Brownfeld mentions that Kerry's plan would insure 26.7 million new people in that paragraph. In the next paragraph, it is revealed that Bush's plan would add 11 million to 17 million more. You'd have to be a careful reader, keeping the numbers in mind, to get that Kerry's plan provides a lot more than Bush's. Brownfeld never explicitly mentions that.
Brownfeld drops in this unrelated news that Kerry "until recently has tried to steer the political discourse toward domestic issues." In the next paragraph, he mentions that Bush's plan includes medical liability reform "that would prevent doctors' insurance premiums from skyrocketing, an experiment already being pursued with some success in the president's home state of Texas." Maybe so, but according to Kaiser, Texas is above average in every measurement of numbers of uninsured. Another conveniently omitted - but highly relevant - fact.
Another FOX trick: Rather than delve into the separate policy proposals, Brownfeld switches the topic to the election after a few sketchy details on the issues and positions. At FOX, whenever the topic becomes the election, it's nearly always good-for-Bush news that stands out. This article is no different.
"Polls show Bush has maintained a significant advantage on national security. But (Harvard health policy professor Robert) Blendon said Bush has also been surprisingly strong on the matter of health care reform."
Ironically, the article ends with this quote from Gail Wilenski, a senior fellow at Project HOPE: "I would like to see more discussion" about the details of the proposals. "I would like to see more focus on the fundamentally different implications."
Neither she nor anyone else is likely to find them on FOX.
