Healthcare, Journalism, And The Mad Dash For 'The Scoop'
from the getting-back-to-insights dept
As you may have heard, when the Supreme Court came out with its ruling on healthcare, CNN and Fox News jumped the gun and incorrectly reported that the Court had struck down the individual mandate. Fox News corrected the mistake pretty quickly. CNN took a bit longer (and spread the false "breaking news" story far and wide). The whole thing even had President Obama confused for a little while.It was, of course, also great for late night television. People are referring to this as cable news' "Dewey defeats Truman" moment, while others are arguing that "breaking news is broken." Of course, being a part of the "blogging" world which is often accused by "old media" types of publishing untrue things... there is some element of schadenfreude in being able to see it made clear that the mainstream media is often no better at publishing incorrect things. Of course, some tried to flip this around, and suggest that the problem actually came about because of "new media" thinking around things like "process journalism," though there's a strong argument that reporting before reading something isn't process journalism, it's just bad journalism (i.e., process journalism is about reporting things as additional news comes out -- but in this case, the news was out, the problem was people reporting it before reading it).
A few years ago, uber-blogger Mike Arrington said something that has quite a lot of truth to it: to get attention as an online media player, you generally have to be first, funny or insightful -- and being first is often the easiest, so lots of people concentrate on that. It's the chase for "the scoop." Being funny is powerful, but very, very difficult. And... being insightful takes a lot of time and effort, and is no guarantee of attention. Generally speaking, our goal here has never been to be first with news (in fact, we often wait for others to publish so that we can link to their reports in what we write up). Personally, I like that much better. Focusing just on "the scoop" may be good for traffic in the short term, but especially for big stories like this one, I'm not sure how much value it creates in the long term.
Of course, the realities of gaining traffic often support the quick "scoop" over deeper insight. For example, Reddit -- a potential major firehose of traffic these days -- has its algorithm designed to reward quick, early votes, meaning that longer, thoughtful, insightful pieces almost have no chance, because by the time people have read and thought through them, it's "too late" to have the votes really count.
Some will argue, of course, that this is just a sign of the "bad" side of the internet: valuing quick, dirty and sometimes wrong reporting over longer, more thoughtful work. But I'm not convinced that's true. Again, there are plenty of historical examples of this in pre-internet times as well -- with Dewey Beats Truman being just one of many such examples.
Instead of just mocking those who messed up, or using a bit of confirmation bias to insist that it shows how awful things are in this "real time era," I'd be much more interested to see if we could have a discussion on how to change the incentives. How do we better reward insight and thoughtful commentary over the quick hit-scoop? Is it possible? And, if so, what needs to be done?
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Filed Under: first, healthcare, hot news, scoop, scotus, traffic
Companies: cnn, fox news, reddit
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How about...
Pros: It's hilarious. And every time a news outlet screws up, it's a lawyers'-fees and statutory-damages lawsuit bonanza!
Cons: News outlets might actually pay the extortionate license fees rather than improve their reporting.
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Just to be meta about this post
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I'd say the "new rewards" are already in place. I suffer through CNN at work, and gave up on the local paper ages ago. I get my news from sites like this. Niche sites that talk about things that I care about. So the "reward" of my eyeballs goes to the sites that have thought provoking commentary on stories I care about, not sites that blast the 24 hr news cycle crammed full of puff pieces. The payoff on the internet comes from talking about things that people want to hear about, not releasing a mostly "truthy" blurb about any given celebrity's personal life .0325 seconds before the other guy.
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So called process journalism works when it understands the process it's reporting on and understands it. Judicial rulings aren't written in an inverted pyramid style but the reporters sure reacted as if it had been. Roberts was still into his description of the problem(s) and issue(s) the Court faced before he got to the ruling which was much further in. I guess you'd call it process judiciary though the style has been around for hundreds of years so you'd think a reporter would understand that. I guess not.
Rulings start with the legal issue(s) presented, the correction(s) requested and then makes its way to the ruling. And then they go on to repeat it in depth and detail so thick you'd think you were swimming in the Alberta Tar Sands.
The other problem that the misunderstanding(s) on FOX and CNN illustrated was that the reporters inside the court waiting for the verbal ruling were, from all appearances, not reporters who covered SCOTUS much, if at all. The reports indicate that Roberts has just gotten to the problems with the commerce take on Obamacare and that's where the untrained reporters jumped rather than waiting.
Back to taking TV news seriously if you're 21, 41, 61 or 101 and take TV news seriously you're in trouble. Most particularly in specialty areas like science, constitutional law, trade issues and a fair sized raft of other things. Or to revive the so called "breaking news" concept AP is so hot on even if we got to see the bug screen full of holes in that one on the reporting of this ruling.
As you hint at. They want to hide all this behind a paywall? They actually expect to be paid for monumental screwups? (Yup)
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This would be as big an endeavor as trying to reduce healthcare costs by shifting the incentive structure: rewarding providers based on the results they achieve, not on how many tests/procedures they do.
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The National Post is rabidly, droolingly right wing but it's exceptionally well written and actually gets its facts right. The Economist is also right wing, dedicated to caplitalism but is muted about that. Typically British that way. The Beeb tends to be leftish and also muted about it. For all that many in the USA seem to cast the NYT as leftish for those of us outside the States it's right wing and dedicated to the capitalist cause without the anger and bombast of FOX or the Tea Party.
The strange thing is that those brands are rewarded in the long term, I left out the Wall St Journal, but they don't reach a mass audience. Conflict, anger and bombast sell...even in crafts that are supposed to be above that like journalism.
The scoop has always sold. Even if, in this case, it's a manufactured scoop. The ruling was coming down, everyone knew that who was remotely interested. What was missing from the so-called process journalism was the education on just how these judical processes work. The final word on the ruling comes near the end, not at the beginning no matter how much journalists want judges to write in the same inverted pyramid that they write in.
As to results based rewards in a health care system...that does actually reduce costs and the thing that's supposed to matter the most there. Patient outcome.
In this story the patient outcome wasn't good.
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Heh.
And has been for many decades...
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Today, with multiple 24 hour news networks who continuously monitor each others' feeds, and the ubiquity of cameras and pro and amateur reporters in almost every corner of the country connected through a universal network, scoop time is measured in minutes.
And then when it is something that is widely anticipated and as firmly scheduled as a SCOTUS ruling, scoop means nothing. CNN "scooped" Fox News by a mere 24 seconds. Being able to blurt out a headline half a minute before your competitors doesn't really add any real value to your coverage.
If news networks want something that gives them an edge that lasts longer the times between gold and silver Olympic bobsled racers, I would suggest striving to compete on the accuracy of your reporting and providing context to the story.
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And both got it wrong.
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There's a reason I turn to sites like Techdirt and Ars Technica for news - insight, commentary, and discussion. The trolls add the humor.
Incidentally, I found out about the court's ruling from Facebook, like most people probably did.
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Chief Justice Roberts Wrote an Intentionally Tricky Decision.
"Okay this time, but don't do it again, and, please, gradually try to regularize the situation so that the controversial points are moot within ten or twenty years. In other words, gradually lower the Medicare age, and the delay in Medicare eligibility for people on Disability, removing the older and sicker people from the private insurance market, to the point that the Mandate no longer matters, and we can find against it, twenty years from now. Likewise, gradually try to move the funding of health care from employers to the progressive income tax, the same way National Defense is funded, and approximately the same way that primary and secondary education, and police and fire protection, are funded at the local level."
His language and legal reasoning are convoluted precisely because he could not say that in so many words.
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I will state though that CNN and Fox first opinion was correct. The left, Obama, and ObamaCare lost big time.
Not only did they loose big time but they have not even figured out yet, to this day, that they lost. Much less that much more than they would have lost with a decisive upfront defeat.
For a consider ObamaCare was declared to be a tax. If ObamaCare is a tax then it is a poll tax.
The question not decided and Roberts guaranteed that will appear before the court is:
Can the federal government mandate a poll tax for the purpose of supporting health care?
The 24th amendment says a state may not have a pole tax for the purpose of voting. Does this extend to paying a poll tax for health care?
What about the federal government? Does the federal government have the authority to mandate people pay a poll tax?
The only think that one who understands this issue can be assured of even without Roberts input is at the first opportunity someone, some group, or some state will file suit over this.
The court drove a stake through ObamaCare as a personal mandate fee under the Commerce Clause and then declared ObamaCare not to be a fee at all but a tax. As a pole tax the issue was not before the court. No arguments had been heard as to ObamaCare being constitutional or not as a poll tax. Thus as the issue was not before the court and ObamaCare could be viewed as a tax issue by default of bringing the issue before the court ObamaCare is legal.
No where in this is there any indication of ObamaCare as a tax issue constitutional or not.
But we can easily speculate that if there was at least a 5 to 4 voting on ObamaCare being unconstitutional as a fee under the commerce clause that there will be at minimum a 5 to 4 decision declaring ObamaCare unconstitutional as a poll tax issue.
Thinking in this light Obama, Reed, Pelosi, and the loony left lost big and are so ignorant hat not only do they not understand that they lost but that they have been set up for an even bigger loss all the time running around squawking their head off spouting ignorance out of how big they won.
This is back to Avita and the biggest show in town (Burnas Aries) being the live theater before the Casa Rosa and the idiots screaming Avita while all the while their very lives were being sucked out of them by the Peronists.
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A Pragmatic Court
The pseudonymous Votemaster of electoral-vote.com notes that Republicans hate the decision, Democrats love it, and Independents favor it by 45% to 42%. However, Republicans tend to live in Republican states, and Democrats tend to live in Democrat states. Independents tend to live in Swing States. The Republicans and Democrats in Swing States tend to be rather less militant than those in one-party states because they meet the other side regularly. It does not matter whether a Republican state is won by 70% or 75%, and the same for Democratic States. What matters is the Swing states, which is to say, the Independent voters. To win the election, you have to win the moderates.
http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2012/Pres/Maps/Jun30.html#item-1
To get a sense of perspective, look at the Selective Service Act as it existed in the 1960's and 1970's. Under the law, each young man had a theoretical military service obligation of eight years, in combat, in Vietnam. This was of course modified by a system of exemptions and deferments, but these were acts of official grace, and no one had any right to claim such exemptions and deferments. As the law was written, in the purely logical sense, it would have conscripted about two million men a year, and maintained an army of twenty million men, about as many men as were under arms during the Second World War. What it meant in practice was that more than ten million men had to submit their job or school plans to the draft board for clearance. See, for example, Gen. Lewis Hershey's notorious "channeling memorandum." The Selective Service Act was never found unconstitutional-- it was merely suspended in operation for a couple of years, and then restored for the limited purpose of merely registering young men.
Michael Harwood, _The Student's Guide to Military Service_, 1962
Col. George Walton, USA (Ret.), _The Tarnished Shield: A Report on Today's Army_, 1973
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_System
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I'd love to hear just how, in Reader's Digest form if you took up pages over at Groklaw, this tax somehow becomes a poll tax classically defined as a head tax based on census data. When I went to Groklaw I couldn't find it.
I understand that in the USA a poll tax is often thought of as a tax paid at a polling station so that the person can vote and was often used to discourage southern blacks from voting.
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Except, of course, that it was not declared to be a tax. It was declared to be what it was always presented to be: a penalty.
I think where you got confused is that the court ruled that the penalty was allowable under the taxing authority of the government. That doesn't however, make it a tax. If you file your taxes late and get a fine because of it, that fine is allowable because of the taxing authority of the government. Nonetheless, it is a penalty, not a tax. This is the same kind of deal.
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But the truly interesting part is that the anti CNN was quicker to fix the error.
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