Category: Teachable Moments



By George Merlis

The last post on this blog concerned the media training teachable moment arising from President Obama’s comment on the arrest by Cambridge police of Harvard Professor Henry Lewis Gates, Jr.

Who’d have thought the president and his allies would have supplied another teachable moment so soon? But along came the health care reform debate and it is a teachable moment because we have some media lessons to take away from it.


The Opposition Takes to the Street, Giving Us A Teachable Moment.

Lesson One: Seize the Initiative. It is always easier to attack something (anything!) than it is to defend it. If you are a proponent of a program or policy, you need to get out in front and frame the argument so that the other side is reacting to you, not visa versa. By permitting the opponents of the health reform policy to set the terms for the debate, the administration has been constantly on the defensive, telling the public what health care reform is NOT, rather than telling the public what health care reform IS.

Lesson Two: Understand the Media. Most people think they get most of their news from television, not realizing that 99 percent of Michael Jackson developments, all low speed car chases and the latest development in the non-celebrity reality “star” murder case are not news but the modern equivalent of the circuses the ancient Roman emperors mounted to distract the populace from acute food shortages and a constant state of war.

As I explain in my media training workshops, most of the media today -- especially TV -- is obsessed with five “F” words -- fear, fury, fame, fun and fascination. Any time you can whip up one or more of those F words, you command the attention of the media. If you combine two of them, you’re golden. Well, screaming constituents decrying death panels pulling the plug on grandma combine fury and fear, no question about it. By angrily deploying this charge the opponents of health care reform earned themselves substantial coverage and forced the proponents of health care reform on the defensive. (See Lesson One.) And, since doing their journalistic duty and explaining that there are no death panels dilutes the impact of the fear and fury, much of the media didn't bother introducing annoying facts like that into the debate.

Lesson Three: Intellect Cannot Overwhelm Emotion. Back in 1914, columnist H.L. Mencken wrote, “Any reflective newspaperman knows it is hard for the plain people to think about a thing, but easy for them to feel.” From the beginning the pro-reform side has been waging its arguments intellectually, rather than emotionally.

What might the administration have done? Well, it might have deployed a little fear and fury. Everyone is afraid of getting seriously sick and everyone has heard horror stories about insurance companies cutting off coverage when someone got sick. Dramatically playing the actual case histories of people in such dire straits would have been a highly effective emotional argument.

In the sorely missed opportunity department, a charity that normally conducts free clinics in third world countries mounted one in the Forum in the Los Angeles area and for two weeks doctors and dentists saw thousands of uninsured and underinsured Southern Californians. Not one member of Team Obama showed up for what was the single most compelling photo op dramatizing their side of the argument.

But what else should we expect from the team that named their effort coldly and intellectually: Health Care Reform. Health care reform? Sounds like a place you send a delinquent kid. Why not “Health Care Cure?” Or, taking a cue from T.R. Reid’s excellent new book, “The Healing of America,” why not call the reform initiative “Heal America?” (Reid’s book, by the way, is a nation-by-nation study of the health programs in a number of major industrialized countries and is exceptionally informative, journalistic and, most importantly, dispassionate.)



A Founding Father Impersonator Makes The Socialist Medicine Charge.


Reform opponents, by claiming that the initiative is “socialized medicine” make any alteration to the current system sound foreign. (The charge was first used by The American Medical Association to help sink President Harry S. Truman’s universal health care initiative in 1948.) Since the socialism charge was thrown at Obama by Sarah Palin and others during the 2008 campaign, it should have been anticipated that “socialized medicine” would reappear in the debate. Those words could have been countered (most effectively if done proactively, not reactively) by saying something like: “The founding fathers established our country on the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. If you’re arbitrarily denied health care by your HMO the moment you get sick, you’re being denied the three most basic American rights.”


Lesson For Reform Opponents: Don't Take Your Guns to Town


The President As Hitler: Questionable Taste and Effectiveness.

Lesson Four: Leave The Assault Rifles and the Obama-as-Hitler Posters at Home. Okay, this is a lesson for the anti-reform side, which is not doing everything right. If enough loaded gun-totting yahoos show up at health care reform events, you’re going to have fear working against you instead of for you. And images of a black man as Hitler -- the most vile racist of the 20th century, if not of all time -- well, that makes your side look like the lunatic fringe. Even if there are only one or two of these guys in an otherwise ordinary-looking crowd, the media won’t ignore the guns and the signs. Television loves that stuff almost as much as it loves Michael Jackson.


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