Excerpt
The debate over health care reform has dominated much of the media spotlight this year, and the conservative media have responded with a wide array of falsehoods and distortions aimed at twisting the debate and stopping progressive policies from being enacted. From Fox News host Sean Hannity's repeated cries that progressive plans are "socialized medicine" to The Wall Street Journal's falsehood-laden crusade against health reform, there has been no shortage of misinformation purveyors attempting to get in on the action.
But there has been one misinformer who outshines them all, relentlessly attacking health care reform by spreading falsehoods and distortions through opinion pieces and television appearances at nearly every stage of the debate. This individual is noteworthy not only for her prolificacy, but because of the broad extent to which her outlandish claims about health legislation have reverberated throughout the conservative media echo chamber.
As Media Matters for America senior fellow Jamison Foser pointed out, what is most problematic about this individual is not simply her false and misleading claims, but that despite her consistent pattern of promoting falsehoods, the media continue to provide her with a platform -- and a veneer of legitimacy. Most notably, Rupert Murdoch-owned papers The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post have repeatedly provided her space on their op-ed pages, and Murdoch's Fox News Channel has repeatedly hosted her and advanced her claims. As The Atlantic's James Fallows has noted, she is an example of someone for whom there "seems to be almost no extremity of being proven wrong which disqualifies" her from being given a platform in the media. Indeed, the media's willingness to treat her as if she were a legitimate policy expert has continued even after she has backtracked on many of her claims after they were debunked.
Moreover, media covering the 2009 health care reform debate should have been aware that she was not a reliable source, given that she spent the last major health care policy debate similarly advancing falsehoods aimed at obstructing reform. As Fallows noted, "[i]n the early 1990s [she] single-handedly did a phenomenal amount to distort discussion of health-care policy and derail the Clinton health bill ... through an entirely fictitious argument about what the bill would do." For these reasons, Media Matters' debunking of this serial health care misinformer's claims is equally an indictment of the media that enable her.
Without further ado, Media Matters presents its first-ever Health Care Misinformer of the Year award to Betsy McCaughey.
McCaughey Lies List (from full article):
- McCaughey cooks up falsehood that recovery act puts government bureaucrats between you and your doctor
- McCaughey ignites firestorm with false claim that House bill will promote euthanasia of seniors
- McCaughey launches false attacks against "Health Rationer-in-Chief" Ezekiel Emanuel
- False claims continue: McCaughey spreads misinformation about recent versions of House, Senate health bills
- Credibility further undermined: McCaughey has health-care conflicts of interest dating back to '90s
The details for each item on the list are in the full article.
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