Blitzer can backpedal like no other
Watching him try to stand against the flood that is Michael Moore is rather satisfying. Again, I'm not a diehard Moore supporter, but he took the talking heads to task better than anyone has since Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire. He gets close to hysterics a couple times, but for the most part everything he says is pretty valid.
What struck me as one of the most ridiculous segments of the piece was the part when Moore was directly accusing Wolf of not performing his job by refusing to ask difficult questions of politicians. Sure, that's not really what he's on the program to discuss, but Wolf breezes right by all of it. Moreover, when he actually returns to the topic of Sicko, Wolf has him comment not on the movie, but on which presidential candidate would do the best job with the healthcare system. Think about this: Moore is on your program, accusing you of using smokescreen tactics to obscure issues, push biases, and generally mislead the public. He accused the media of failing in their mission, and the personalities of outright lying. So in this wasteland of obscurantism and fearmongering, Wolf completely misses the point of the Sicko interview. It's not about which politician will help the system and which won't, because virtually all of them seem to be complicit. Moore did not appear on the program to plug a candidate, he came to discuss the issue he raised in his movie. But it's an issue that CNN, apparently, finds distasteful. They attempt to discredit him by not only airing a propaganda piece about all the "mistakes" in the movie (quickly and efficiently refuted by Moore first on CNN, and then in a longer dissection on his website), but then by trying to move the debate onto more familiar grounds. To whit, the upcoming presidential elections.
It's a typical CNN tactic: regardless of what the guest is here to talk about, and regardless of whatever issue might be pertinent to discuss, any discussion on CNN must be somehow linked to whatever they decide are the "big stories." You could have written a dissertation on the Middle East issue, and how the conflict that exists there is only exacerbated by Western presence in the region, and Wolf would ask you which presidential candidate you would trust to pacify the region. It's not a two-way debate, it's CNN telling people what they want to hear, or what they think people want to hear. The guests are incidental, because they all fill one of two roles: (a) Strawman for whatever issue/trend/opinion CNN wants to ascribe to them and then immediately discredit or (b) Vocal "underdog" supporter of an issue that CNN quietly supports. The guests exist to be knocked down or propped up according to whether CNN thinks their opinion is too controversial for America or just controversial enough to garner some better ratings.
In light of all that, the very fact that they have these guests on the air is just another step in their construction of what is news and what is not. Moore's condemnation of the health-care system isn't really newsworthy because hey, at least we're still a few points ahead of those dirty Cubans, right?
A quick update:
I was just in the process of making sure that I hadn't made any egregiously fictional or unsupported claims in the above post, when I came across Moore's very similar exercise: Facts in Mike's Movies. It's my opinion that what Michael Moore has learned from his previous efforts is twofold.
(1) Don't touch the facts. It might seem tempting to say "almost a million" instead of 625 000. It might seem tempting to say "half the country," but only be referring to geographic size and not population density. It might seem tempting to splice together footage of congressmen so that they appear to be voicing a callow and unpopular opinion on an important subject. But today, people will find out. And they will not be impressed. And they also don't usually require more than one mistake like that to form their entire opinion. They're very fickle. The rewards are just not worth it, because odds are you can do some more researching and find something even more shocking that's completely true.
(2) Use scaremongering smarter, not harder. Don't hit audiences in the face with an opinion. It's like the old writer's adage of "show, don't tell."If you provide the audience with compelling pieces cast in a sympathetic light, but without the anvil, they'll follow your train of thought. But in the end, it's still a manipulation. It's still a selection of, at best, human interest stories equivalent to what you'd see on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition or some of the more poignant Oprah episodes. In short, human tragedy. The trick is learning how to cast it in the right light. You can't just tell people "this is terribly sad, and we should all be outraged!" People, especially Americans, don't like being told what to think by anyone other than the government. But if you can first portray one situation (say, the American health care system) as abysmal and abhorrent, then provide examples of other similar situations (say, Britain or French universal health care) as exuberantly greener pastures, then the audience will come around to your point of view. After all, it's about as easy as listening to the government, but this way it feels like you're making your own decisions. You could even call it "freedom of speech."
This, in the end, is why I'm still not on Moore's side. For all his preaching about "the media's responsibility to the people," he's still a propagandist. I enjoyed his movie, and I think he's dealing with an important issue, but he's still trying to manipulate the American people. This isn't a call for social reform, or an outlet for change, or even a suggestion for the future. It's an encouragement for people to realize NOW the importance of the issue, and work out on their own what to do. Which is fine and dandy, because health care in the States does appear to be in jeopardy. It's just that the approach follows the same general structure as a PSA. And those are biased, too.
What struck me as one of the most ridiculous segments of the piece was the part when Moore was directly accusing Wolf of not performing his job by refusing to ask difficult questions of politicians. Sure, that's not really what he's on the program to discuss, but Wolf breezes right by all of it. Moreover, when he actually returns to the topic of Sicko, Wolf has him comment not on the movie, but on which presidential candidate would do the best job with the healthcare system. Think about this: Moore is on your program, accusing you of using smokescreen tactics to obscure issues, push biases, and generally mislead the public. He accused the media of failing in their mission, and the personalities of outright lying. So in this wasteland of obscurantism and fearmongering, Wolf completely misses the point of the Sicko interview. It's not about which politician will help the system and which won't, because virtually all of them seem to be complicit. Moore did not appear on the program to plug a candidate, he came to discuss the issue he raised in his movie. But it's an issue that CNN, apparently, finds distasteful. They attempt to discredit him by not only airing a propaganda piece about all the "mistakes" in the movie (quickly and efficiently refuted by Moore first on CNN, and then in a longer dissection on his website), but then by trying to move the debate onto more familiar grounds. To whit, the upcoming presidential elections.
It's a typical CNN tactic: regardless of what the guest is here to talk about, and regardless of whatever issue might be pertinent to discuss, any discussion on CNN must be somehow linked to whatever they decide are the "big stories." You could have written a dissertation on the Middle East issue, and how the conflict that exists there is only exacerbated by Western presence in the region, and Wolf would ask you which presidential candidate you would trust to pacify the region. It's not a two-way debate, it's CNN telling people what they want to hear, or what they think people want to hear. The guests are incidental, because they all fill one of two roles: (a) Strawman for whatever issue/trend/opinion CNN wants to ascribe to them and then immediately discredit or (b) Vocal "underdog" supporter of an issue that CNN quietly supports. The guests exist to be knocked down or propped up according to whether CNN thinks their opinion is too controversial for America or just controversial enough to garner some better ratings.
In light of all that, the very fact that they have these guests on the air is just another step in their construction of what is news and what is not. Moore's condemnation of the health-care system isn't really newsworthy because hey, at least we're still a few points ahead of those dirty Cubans, right?
A quick update:
I was just in the process of making sure that I hadn't made any egregiously fictional or unsupported claims in the above post, when I came across Moore's very similar exercise: Facts in Mike's Movies. It's my opinion that what Michael Moore has learned from his previous efforts is twofold.
(1) Don't touch the facts. It might seem tempting to say "almost a million" instead of 625 000. It might seem tempting to say "half the country," but only be referring to geographic size and not population density. It might seem tempting to splice together footage of congressmen so that they appear to be voicing a callow and unpopular opinion on an important subject. But today, people will find out. And they will not be impressed. And they also don't usually require more than one mistake like that to form their entire opinion. They're very fickle. The rewards are just not worth it, because odds are you can do some more researching and find something even more shocking that's completely true.
(2) Use scaremongering smarter, not harder. Don't hit audiences in the face with an opinion. It's like the old writer's adage of "show, don't tell."If you provide the audience with compelling pieces cast in a sympathetic light, but without the anvil, they'll follow your train of thought. But in the end, it's still a manipulation. It's still a selection of, at best, human interest stories equivalent to what you'd see on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition or some of the more poignant Oprah episodes. In short, human tragedy. The trick is learning how to cast it in the right light. You can't just tell people "this is terribly sad, and we should all be outraged!" People, especially Americans, don't like being told what to think by anyone other than the government. But if you can first portray one situation (say, the American health care system) as abysmal and abhorrent, then provide examples of other similar situations (say, Britain or French universal health care) as exuberantly greener pastures, then the audience will come around to your point of view. After all, it's about as easy as listening to the government, but this way it feels like you're making your own decisions. You could even call it "freedom of speech."
This, in the end, is why I'm still not on Moore's side. For all his preaching about "the media's responsibility to the people," he's still a propagandist. I enjoyed his movie, and I think he's dealing with an important issue, but he's still trying to manipulate the American people. This isn't a call for social reform, or an outlet for change, or even a suggestion for the future. It's an encouragement for people to realize NOW the importance of the issue, and work out on their own what to do. Which is fine and dandy, because health care in the States does appear to be in jeopardy. It's just that the approach follows the same general structure as a PSA. And those are biased, too.