Adventures in media filtering, 9/16
Alec MacGillis of the Washington Post attended the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh yesterday, and wrote this about President Obama’s speech there:
In a fiery speech to the nation’s largest labor federation, Obama urged members to get behind his proposal to overhaul the health-care system, which he vowed would pass in the next few months. To his audience’s satisfaction, he reiterated his support for including a government-run insurance plan, or public option, among the choices for consumers — a top priority for AFL-CIO leaders. And he dropped some of the language he used in last week’s health-care address to Congress in which he seemed to play down the importance of the public option.
But Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times was also there, apparently in the same convention hall but a different world:
A week after he asked Democrats in Congress to support the outlines of his health care plan, Mr. Obama made a similar but broader case to union audiences here and earlier Tuesday in Ohio. . . .
Yet despite the thunderous applause he received, his mentioning the term “public option” only once during a 35-minute speech at the convention did not go unnoticed. Many delegates carried signs and wore T-shirts declaring that a government-run insurance program was a nonnegotiable piece of health care legislation.
I suppose this is better than MacGillis and Zeleny getting together and deciding among themselves what the approved spin should be. But still…
Stumble it!
Tags: AFL-CIO, Healthcare reform, Media criticisms, President Obama