With all the noise about the online blockage for the new health care marketplace, you'd think that using a computer for access to the Internet was the only way to sign up. It's not.
From Day One there were, and are, alternate -- if old-fashioned -- ways to get information on affordable health care plans. And we can fault the media for not pointing out the other ways.
What are these ways? Telephone, the U.S. Mail, and in person at a government office. But for all the drumbeat from Obamaphobes and their opposition to the Affordable Care Act -- aided and abetted by TV talk show hosts and news shows -- many potential consumers didn't even bother. Moreover, the computer blockage was to the federal website. Computer marketplaces operated by several states worked quite well, and while there was a flood of applicants, the systems were not overwhelmed.
But as an editor we once knew would put it, "The system is clogged. That's a great story."
Reporter's reply: "There are three other ways to get information, telephone, in person and by mail. We should report that."
Editor: "I know, but that's not a story. A story is that the system's broken, not how to work around it."
Now, three weeks after the health care marketplace opened, news media are finally reporting alternate ways to cope with a troubled but legal and obligatory system. That should have been done in the beginning. Instead, television news shows became megaphones for the opposition.
Political activists are very good at manipulating the media system, so that whoever shouts loudest gets the most exposure for their views, no matter how far out they are.
Too often, in the name of providing "balanced" coverage, news editors and reporters give equal time and space to every side of an issue, even to those holding discredited views whose only qualification is a loud mouth.
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