Mission Accomplished

It's Wednesday. Here's something to think about while we're waiting for the nine Supreme beings to come down from the mountaintop tomorrow and hand us the tablet that will mean life or death for thousands of Americans.

By now, you probably know the recent history of health care reform. The individual mandate—the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance—originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, was the cornerstone of Republican health care plans for two decades. They preferred it because it encouraged “individual responsibility.” President Obama opposed the individual mandate during the 2008 campaign, but he and the Jackasses eventually conceded in the hope of gaining conservative support. (Flip!) Then, in 2009, in an even more remarkable turnaround, the Elephants in Congress unanimously decided that the individual mandate was unconstitutional. (Flop!)

As Ezra Klein reports, in 2010, when 14 Republican state attorneys general filed their suit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), “it was hard to find a law professor in the country who took them seriously.” (Here's an analysis of why the ACA is constitutional.)

How did the corporate media report on the constitutionality of the law? First of all, here's what they were reporting on. There were nine court cases related to the constitutionality of the act. Four of these courts overturned the law and five upheld it. There were also several cases in which courts dismissed complaints without ruling on the constitutionality of the law.

Media Matters looked at all the reports devoted to these courts cases on the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC—a total of 31 segments. Of these 31 segments, 26 (84%) reported decisions that the act was unconstitutional, 3 (10%) reported rulings that it was constitutional, and the remaining 2 (6%) dealt with dismissals. If instead of counting segments, you get out your stopwatch, you find that a remarkable 97% of air time was spent discussing cases that overturned the law.

Unfortunately, the researchers do not report the number of minutes these newscasts devoted to advertisements paid for by pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and health care providers.

Newspapers were only marginally better. There were 59 articles about these court cases in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Thirty-five of them (59%) dealt with rulings that the ACA was unconstitutional, 17 (29%) dealt with decisions that it was constitutional, and 8 dealt with dismissals. Rulings of unconstitutionality were far more likely to make the front page.

It's possible that, initially, the greater attention given to rulings that the ACA was unconstitutional was due to the fact that journalists were surprised by these decisions, given the near-unanimity of their legal experts. However, that does not account for the consistency and longevity of these findings.

The bottom line is that this unbalanced coverage appears to have had its intended effect. A Gallup poll released earlier this month found that 72% of Americans think the ACA is unconstitutional. Several polls have found that the majority favor repeal of the law. For example, Rasmussen reported that, as of June 23-24, 54% of likely voters favor repeal and 39% oppose it. Although, as my colleague Paul Ricci reports, a majority of those folks favor starting work on a new health care reform bill, it's hard to imagine that any new health care legislation could get through Congress in the foreseeable future.