Hannity Obamacare Attack Non-factual

 

Lies, Damned Lies, and Fox News – NYTimes.com

 

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/19/lies-damned-lies-and-fox-news/?_r=0

 

The other day Sean Hannity featured some Real Americans telling tales of how they have been hurt by Obamacare. So Eric Stern, who used to work for Brian Schweitzer, had a bright idea: he actually called Hannity’s guests, to get the details.

 

Sure enough, the businessman who claimed that Obamacare was driving up his costs, forcing him to lay off workers, only has four employees — meaning that Obamacare has no effect whatsoever on his business. The two families complaining about soaring premiums haven’t actually checked out what’s on offer, and Stern estimates that they would in fact see major savings.

 

You have to wonder about the mindset of people who go on national TV to complain about how they’re suffering from a program based on nothing but what they think they heard somewhere. You might also wonder about what kind of alleged news show features such people without any check on their bona fides. But then again, consider the network.

 

via Lies, Damned Lies, and Fox News – NYTimes.com.

 

I’m kinda’ in the same boat here with Paul Krugman. A major television network does three interviews with couples explaining that Obamacare costs more than what they had before without any actual knowledge of what their costs would be. An analysis of what they said and later interviews convincingly suggests that all of them would save money under the program. Someone is falling down on the job here.

 

Doesn’t the concept of a “news” imply knowledge? .. at least a little knowledge?

 

As a matter of business ethics, it’s very similar to skipping interviewing actual participants in an event because you don’t want to drive that far. Why do your job when it’s hard? Why work up intelligent news coverage when half-done and half-baked with do?

 

In short, this is a spectacular ethics failure. Interviewing people who don’t know anything about an important subject and acting as if what they are saying is factual is unethical unless your intent is to purely mislead.

 

James Pilant

 

From around the web.

 

From the web site, The Secular Jurist.

 

http://thesecularjurist.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/fox-news-obamacare-victims-werent-at-all-victimized-by-obamacare/

 

A recent Obamacare special on Fox News’ Hannity illuminated the
network’s political bias, pattern of misinformation, and questionable
use of anecdotal evidence, brought to light when a former adviser to
Montana’s governor fact-checked the special and found that not one of
the show’s guests–who lamented the horrors of the Affordable Care Act
(ACA) on air–had directly suffered from the law or even visited the
insurance exchange. Hannity’s reliance on guests who condemned Obamacare
due to existing political bias demonstrates Fox News’ habit of
misinforming on the ACA and raises serious questions about the
credibility of other guests that have recounted the “consequences” of
the law.