ObamaCare: Does the media matter?

posted at 10:27 am on September 15, 2009 by Karl

Last week, ObamaCare dominated the American mediascape:

For the week of September 7-13, the battle over health care reform accounted for 32% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That equals the previous high-water mark in PEJ’s News Coverage Index, which monitors the agenda of the mainstream media. That occurred during the week of August 10-16, when angry town hall confrontations were driving the press narrative.

Last week, the event fueling media attention was President Obama’s September 9 prime time address to Congress. In much of the coverage, the speech was depicted as a crucial attempt to regain momentum after a month when Obama opponents seemed to assume the upper hand in the message/political wars. But as it turned out, Obama had to share the media’s post-speech post-mortems with Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, who heckled the President with the now famous “you lie” shout.

That is as favorable a media position as Pres. Obama is likely to have on the issue: the telegenic orator’s made-for-TV joint session of Congress, with the made-to-order villain who called the president a liar (or so the establishment media would report). In contrast, the prior peak week of August 10-16 featured heavy coverage of “death panels” and town hall confrontations.

Nevertheless, the weekend polling (usually favorable to Democrats) from Rasmussen, the Washington Post/ABC News, CNN and USA TODAY/Gallup failed to show support for ObamaCare more than a point or two outside the margin of error. Rasmussen, which had one of the larger pro-Obama bounces, now shows support for ObamaCare is already back to its tepid pre-speech levels.

In this context, the news that Pres. Obama is going to appear on five Sunday talk shows takes on an “I’m dancing as fast as I can” quality. The NYT’s Adam Nagourney writes, “If there’s one thing this White House doesn’t seem worried about, it is that Americans will get tired of seeing President Obama.” Maybe they should be. Pres. Obama has done roughly three times as many interviews as George W. Bush or Bill Clinton did in their first seven months as president — a period during which Pres. Obama’s approval ratings have fallen further than most presidents since World War II. Or maybe Obama’s omnipresence in the media simply does not matter, and people are simply tuning him out like a dog food commercial.

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