Page 149 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Media Studies 133

construction site. All of this is really meant to take this debate out of
Washington, out of the food fight between Democrats and Democrats, and

Democrats and Republicans, and simply say: look, this is a situation that
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involves real people. I get it, therefore push forward this stimulus package.

The report describes a speaking engagement by President Obama in Fort
Myers, a community that lost a large number of jobs in the construction
trades as a result of the economic recession the stimulus plan was designed
to address. Notice how it speaks to the reality that Obama is himself
addressing – people in trouble because of the recession. The report stays
close to the “ facts ” that are the real subject of the story.
Now consider Fox on the same day about the same issue – Congress ’
consideration of the President ’ s economic stimulus bill:

Someone slipped some interesting language into the healthcare system, into
that massive bill that will change the way you are taken care of. … [T]his is
a no exit system. You can choose a different insurance company. You can
go to a doctor and not have it covered. Under this system, all your medical
treatments will be in that database. And furthermore, physicians should be
very concerned about the vagueness of this language because it empowers
the – the, ah, head of HHS, Health and Human Services, ah, to decide who
is a meaningful user of the system and then to impose, quote, “ ever stringent
measures, ” increasingly stringent measures to enforce compliance. That ’ s
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not the kind of vague laws we use in a democracy.

The last remark is a breach of the normal rules of news reporting. It
introduces an explicit opinion into the report and breaks down the stand-
ard barrier between editorializing and news reporting. But notice as well
that the “ report ” focuses on a hot - button conservative issue – the use of
government power to protect people from powerful, usually conservative
economic agents such as health insurance companies that routinely deny
care to people who need it and ration care to those who can afford to pay
large amounts of money for it. The stimulus bill would restrain them and
monitor them to make sure they are providing care. Fox, a conservative
mouthpiece, would object to such a move by people acting through their
government to protect themselves because it levels the playing fi eld in
the economic warfare between large private corporations and the larger
population.