Michael Moore-CNN Smackdown

Yesterday, Michael Moore slapped CNN silly.

CNN's The Situation Room ran a piece taking inaccurate shots at Moore's SiCKO right before having Moore on to be interviewed. Moore proceeded to rip CNN's credbility, and later, posted a point-by-point rebuttal on his website.

Economist Dean Baker piled on at his blog Beat The Press. Noting that CNN's Sanjay Gupta misreported how much the U.S. spends on health care, Baker writes:

[I] eagerly await[] the apology for getting such a simple fact completely wrong ... the point was to show that Moore was sloppy with his numbers. What exactly does CNN's health care expert get paid for if he can't read a simple table before presenting his stories to the country?

Though credit CNN for this, they know good TV when they see it. They're having Moore back on The Situation Room at 7 PM ET tonight, then back again on Larry King Live at 9 PM ET, with Gupta no less.

But that only shows what this is all about, from CNN's perspective, good TV. Not necessarily importing truthful information.

In fact, CNN had earlier run two other pieces, one online and one on-air about SiCKO that were more accurate, though not flawless, and not as gratituously critical of Moore.

Why not just re-run the the earlier work? Presumably, it would be better TV to play up criticisms, even if they are weak or baseless, in advance of a live interview.

The upside is all this manufactured controversary keeps a serious issue on the media's front-burner, and that's what SiCKO was designed to do. As World Health Care Blog says, Moore has us talking, and the media should take note:

To CNN and to other American news organizations, the attention given “SICKO” should be a wakeup call. American consumers don’t find health policy issues too boring, too dry, too hard to grasp. They are anxious for a chance to learn about and discuss these issues. They want more than headlines. Health policy topics could be the fodder for front-page and first-block coverage in print and broadcast every day – if journalists responded to their agenda-setting responsibilities.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future