NPR program on the health care law and the Supreme Court is so detached, like most media coverage...
Most media coverage of our major issues are detached from reality.
The experts and those that interview them speak of the health care law, often abstractly, with detachment.
So, on Talk of The Nation a day ago, a host (who has health care), interviewed two court experts (who have health care), about what the Supreme Court is deciding (all of whom have "government" health care). I'm making an assumption that the interviewer, guests and the Supreme Court members are all in the 1%, if not 2% in terms of income.
The voice of anybody who lacks health care, missing really. And yet, a huge amount of our population goes without proper access to health care each year.
So the problem with our media and its coverage is that even when it's discussing real issues, the detachment from reality is so strong. It's often those who, are often wealthy, but even if not, are comfortably middle class.
And the result is that this "objective" coverage of the health care system, you will almost never see a guest or interviewer on a show say something like, "I can't see a doctor because I'm uninsurable."
And likewise, when all the same sorts of people get together to talk about cuts to Social Security, none of them say, "well my rent in my studio apartment goes up about 10% per year and if they cut Social Security, I face homelessness and I can't move in with my children, because the four of them rent a single room in a 3 bedroom house."
We have so many people who lack the basics in this country or are really, truly on the edge, and almost all of our policy shows don't include those voices. It's as if these people don't exist in the conversation. oh, there are wonderful people who are great advocates (rarely chosen for such shows, by the way). But the reality of our pundit class having to talk to people and mix with the have-nots? Not a reality to them.
So it's no wonder that for them the winners and losers are the members of the political class, but not the winners and losers in society. Because their society is the winners.
It reminds me of when I was in college and they were cutting my classes at my state university and trying to raise tuition by $1000/year and my dentist said, "well, that's not very much money." To whom? So much of our coverage is just like that. Clueless and detached.
