The Disease of Right-wing Framing

Here is a recent New York Times headline of an article describing a George Bush stump speech in Michigan: Bush describes Kerry's health care plan as a 'government takeover.' The San Francisco Chronicle republished the very same piece, except its headline read: Bush blasts Kerry's 'enormous price tag' for health care.

What's wrong with this picture?

To begin with, an unsuspecting reader might be led to think – mistakenly, at that – that John Kerry's health care proposals amount to nothing less than the creation of a socialized national health care system.

Then there is the more alarming fact that both of these headlines help further President Bush's partisan slams against John Kerry. These influential media outlets lent credibility to George Bush's false claims by using the same language – or to be more accurate, 'frames' – of the White House spin machine.

By repeating, verbatim, these frames in the context of objective news reporting, big media ends up serving the agenda of those it claims to cover without bias.

The end result is a further degradation of journalistic standards of fairness and an increasingly misinformed public – and therefore, the erosion of the informed choices required to ensure a healthy democracy.

The phenomenon of the media assimilating right-wing language within their own reporting often goes unnoticed by the average reader, making its effects all the more insidious. And this appropriation isn't limited to large-circulation publications, but can be found across the spectrum of local and regional press outlets.

During the recent Republican National Convention, a leading Northern Michigan newspaper headlined Bush's nomination address thus: 'Bush Pledges Safer World, Hope.' The subtitle in smaller print beneath read: 'Acceptance Speech Draws Kerry's Fire.' The message conveyed to the reader is that the incumbent promises to fulfill the cherished dreams of all Americans – over the objections of his opponent. In other words, Kerry is challenging not just Bush's speech, but also the ideals of a 'safer world' and 'hope.'

That most news outlets have also failed to hold Bush adequately accountable for his dangerous and reckless foreign policy or domestic policies that have favored the privileged makes such framing all the more damaging.

This veil of doublespeak has been draped over the realities of the candidates‚ respective health care plans time and again. In the most recent of his many visits to swing state Michigan, Bush charged that Kerry proposes "a massive, complicated blueprint to have our government take over the decision-making in health care." In fact, two of the core elements in Kerry's plan are simply to give small businesses a tax credit to buy health insurance for their employees, and to expand state coverage for the under and uninsured. This is a far cry from nationalized health care.

As for big government meddling in the health-care choices of the individual? It was Bush administration lawyers who backed the HMOs before the Supreme Court when they wanted to effectively limit patient's choices, including the freedom to see specialists of their own choosing.

The White House has also steadfastly worked to deny American citizens the right to buy cheaper imported drugs from Canada. In contrast, Kerry's plan would require the government to negotiate better prices with pharmaceutical companies and restore the right of Americans to import affordable prescription medications.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney further inflated the price of Kerry's plan – putting it at a whopping $1.5 trillion – at a recent town hall meeting in Iowa. Here is a measure of just how wildly exaggerated that figure is: even the report Cheney cited for this figure, by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (where Lynn Cheney once worked) says Kerry's "spending could exceed $1 trillion over ten years." To paraphrase an old robber baron's expression, "A half a trillion here, a half a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." But half a trillion is real money, and to tack it on falsely onto an already misleading figure arrived at by one's own ideological allies is outrageous.