FAIR Blog » CNN http://www.fair.org/blog The national media watch group Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:08:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 Health Reform and the Imaginary Conservative Majority http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/03/26/health-reform-and-the-imaginary-conservative-majority/ http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/03/26/health-reform-and-the-imaginary-conservative-majority/#comments Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:48:40 +0000 Peter Hart http://www.fair.org/blog/?p=14090 One of the main assumptions of the final weeks of coverage of the congressional debate over healthcare reform was that the public was opposed to the White House plan. But some polling analysis shows that this wasn't the case. Barry Sussman noted this at the Nieman Watchdog on March 5. A McClatchy/Ipsos poll from late February told the usual tale: 41 percent supported the plan, 47 opposed. Sussman wrote:

But the pollsters went a step further, asking those opposed--509 people in all--if they were against the proposals because they "don't go far enough to reform healthcare" or because they go too far. Thirty-seven percent said it was because the proposals don't go far enough.

So a good number of those who answered in the negative were actually saying that they thought the White House was too timid. A subsequent CNN poll asked the same type of follow-up question, and found a similar result--as noted by the blogger Digby (3/24/10), Wolf Blitzer explained it to his CNN colleague Rick Sanchez like this:

Well, you know, when people are asked, we did that poll, CNN Opinion Research Poll, that said, "You like this healthcare bill, or not like it"; we just assumed, a lot of us, that the people who said they didn't like it didn't like it because it was too much interference, or too much taxes or whatever.

But if you take a closer look at people who didn't like it, about 12 percent of those people who said they didn't like it they didn't like it because they didn't think it went far enough. They wanted a single-payer option, they wanted the so-called public option, they didn't like not from the right, they didn't like it because it wasn't left or liberal enough.

That's how you got 50 percent of the American people who said, "we don't like this plan." But only about 40 or 38 percent were the ones who said it was too much government interference.

If reporters had understood and/0r explained this earlier, we could have had a very different debate. Then again, a corporate media that dismissed single-payer and derided the public option as out of the mainstream would be unlikely to do much better.

]]> http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/03/26/health-reform-and-the-imaginary-conservative-majority/feed/ 18 Action Alert: CNN Hires Erick Erickson http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/03/16/action-alert-cnn-hires-erick-erickson/ http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/03/16/action-alert-cnn-hires-erick-erickson/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:56:01 +0000 Jim Naureckas http://www.fair.org/blog/?p=13977 FAIR has a new Action Alert out on CNN's newest political commentator: Red State's Erick Erickson. For some indication of why this is perhaps the creepiest move by a cable network since MSNBC hired Michael Savage--and for an email address to communicate your feelings--click here.  Please leave copies of your messages to CNN, or comments on the alert, in the comments thread here.

]]> http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/03/16/action-alert-cnn-hires-erick-erickson/feed/ 172 CNN and the $250K Middle Class http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/02/01/cnn-and-the-250k-middle-class/ http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/02/01/cnn-and-the-250k-middle-class/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:22:14 +0000 Peter Hart http://www.fair.org/blog/?p=13613 From CNN's American Morning (2/1/10), an interview by anchor Kiran Chetry with White House OMB director Peter Orszag:

CHETRY: You also talk about letting taxes expire for families that make over $250,000. Some would argue that in some parts of the country that is middle class.

ORSZAG: Well, I guess it's not the parts of the country where I've been.

Households that make $250,000 or more a year make up 1.5 percent of the U.S. public.

]]> http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/02/01/cnn-and-the-250k-middle-class/feed/ 23 Dobbs: Muslims Finally Condemn Terror http://www.fair.org/blog/2009/11/11/dobbs-muslims-finally-condemn-terror/ http://www.fair.org/blog/2009/11/11/dobbs-muslims-finally-condemn-terror/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:02:37 +0000 Peter Hart http://www.fair.org/blog/?p=13292 CNN's Lou Dobbs (11/9/09) on the Fort Hood shootings:

I think we should point out, too, for the first time in my memory in eight years, we have seen quickly CAIR step up on the day of the shootings, the largest representative of the Islamic faith step up, and condemn the shootings instantly.

CAIR is the Council on American-Islamic Relations--a group that has, by its own count, issued dozens of statements condemning terrorist acts over the years, and coordinated an anti-terrorism fatwa endorsed by 340 U.S. Muslim organizations. As CAIR put it:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has a clear record of consistently and persistently condemning terrorism. Yet American Muslim groups like CAIR get repeatedly asked the question why have Muslims not spoken out against terrorism? The fact is they have, but who is listening?

Not Lou Dobbs, apparently.

]]> http://www.fair.org/blog/2009/11/11/dobbs-muslims-finally-condemn-terror/feed/ 10