CNN And Michael Moore Go At It Over Health Care

I’m having a bad day.

I just watched an interview with Michael Moore on CNN and find myself almost agreeing with him, if not on all of the facts raised by CNN, certainly on Mr. Moore's response to Wolf Bliitzer's presentation and questions. Finding myself to actuallly be 'sort of', 'almost', 'kind of',  'possibly' in agreement with Michael Moore is threatening to make my head explode.  Here's the interview on video.

I consider Michael Moore to be just one more cynical opportunist making a great living off criticizing things with anything but an objective and balanced view of everything from gun control to health care. He has accused middle-class Americans of being racist while sidling up to the young in attempt to present himself as hip and aware to help promote his movies.

He sided with Occupy in their protests against the so-called 1% and when it was revealed that Mr. Moore is actually a member of the 1%, he quickly altered his stance to try and redefine the 1% as an attitude rather than an economic issue.

Now it’s health care and while I have no doubt that many of his statistics are probably accurate or close to accurate, the simple fact is that they do not prove what he thinks he is trying to prove. First and foremost, despite his oft-repeated  statement about 'free' health care in countries like Canada (my country) the fact is that it is not free or even close.

In Canada free health care is  paid for by every Canadian who pays taxes through those taxes. In some provinces, like Ontario, there is an additional health tax added on and when it’s all added up, almost 50% of every tax dollar goes to funding ‘free’ health care.

The result?

Longer wait times in emergency rooms, a shortage of hospital beds, increasing administrative costs, ridiculously long wait times for surgeries, a shortage of facilities like MRI clinics and of family physicians and the delisting (privatizing) of various medical procedures that were once included, like chiropractic and optometry in some jurisdictions.

Even more disturbing, Canada ranks below the United States when it comes to wait times for medical treatment.

I support universal access to health care and I don’t mind seeing it funded by taxes but I resent the way the current mess of the Canadian health care system is constantly held up by the uniformed like Mr. Moore as being something to which other countries, including his, should aspire. Indeed, the debate in Canada about how to improve health care is anything but. The mere suggestion of looking at new and different ways to deliver health care, which might include a blend of private and public delivery, is immediately blocked by the hysterical screams of those who would rather defend an increasingly unaffordable system, with declining efficiency, than do anything to improve it.

But, as Arlo Guthry said after a 20 minute disertation on his experience one Thanksgiving at Alice's Restaurant, this isn't what I came to talk about. I came to talk about the mainstream media and the CNN interview with Michael Moore is just one more example of the problem.

It isn’t CNN per se, it’s the mainstream media in general with their biased and slanted opinion- based approach to journalism that is as demeaning to democracy as the cynical lack of morality demonstrated daily by our politicians and the political parties they represent. The mainstream media are the fourth estate and are protected by the right of freedom of the press. With great freedom comes great responsibility but the mainstream media are failing in meeting that responsibility.

Their coverage of major news events is more about presenting their ‘take’ on the event than actually presenting facts and letting the public decide for themselves what it all means. Indeed, the media now spend more time interviewing each other about the news than they actually do interviewing the newsmakers themselves.

I don’t deny Mr. Moore his right to make his movies even if I don’t agree with the content of them nor do I begrudge him his financial success. I think his movies are one-sided and that Mr. Moore himself needs to become more objective but that is just my opinion.

I am less forgiving with the mainstream media.

When I watch a debate of presidential candidates and one of the key questions asked is about ridiculous things like the allegations of infidelity made by the ex-wife of a candidate, I just shake my head in disbelief. When a national television news network prefers to show talking heads rather than the event, as the CBC did during the ‘televized’ coverage of the last federal budget, I sit in wonderment at how little televised coverage the presentation of the budget actually received.

There is a place in journalism for comment and opinion but here’s a big 10-4 for the mainstream media. Your opinions are not news and are not as important to us as you think they are. We want to know what is going on, not simply what you think about it. Most of us actually have brains and are more than capable of using them. Give us the facts and let us decide for ourselves rather than spoon feeding us your opinions as if every bit of commentary was part of the Sermon on the Mount.

The relationship between the media and politicians is becoming incestuous and that is worrisome. In Britain, the phone hacking scandal by various newspaper tabloids is no less disgraceful than the Robocon scandal in Canada over potential electoral fraud during the last election.

There was a time when the news media was above all of that, a time when the news media could be trusted to uncover the truth and get it into the hands of the people. Now, the mainstream media are a biased, opinionated entertainment medium complete with super-graphics and theme music for every major event from political debates to wars.

And worst of all for me, the behavior of many in the mainstream media have put me on the same side of the fence as Michael Moore and that has seriously ruined my day.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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