The White House is still harumphing today over media coverage of health care reform — along with Republicans, the administration’s designated culprits in stirring up dissent. Among other things, presenting more than one side of a story is under fire, and today we heard the (actually, true) accusation that reporters were hoping the reliably contrarian good citizens of New Hampshire had mixed it up a little more with President Obama yesterday.
Jake Tapper from ABC News had this exchange with press secretary Robert Gibbs:
QUESTION: A couple questions. I don’t know if you think it’s unfair to say, but it occurs to me that if the president finds himself at a town hall meeting telling the American people that he does not want to set up a panel to kill their grandparents that perhaps, at some point, the president has lost control of the message.
And I’m wondering if you — if — if what you’ve seen in the last few weeks is one of the reasons why it was so important to the president earlier this year to pass health care reform in the House and Senate before the August recess. Is everything that’s going on right now what you feared would happen?
GIBBS: No, I — a lot of ways to take this question. I’m trying to figure out which avenue to drive down. Do you just say “yes” and go to the next? That’s certainly one way of doing it.
(LAUGHTER)
The — let me sort of — let me split these up a little bit. I think there’s a tremendous amount of disinformation that’s out there. We — we’ve — we’ve seen it.
And, look, let’s be honest. You all, the media, tend to cover, “X said this, Y said this,” but some of you — but not everyone — does an investigation about whether what X said is actually true. Now, that’s not — I’m not — that’s not a blanket statement. Not every one of you is that.
QUESTION: We’ve called the death panels false. I don’t know what more you want from us.
GIBBS: Well, I don’t think everybody’s called them false. I think a lot of people have done stories about — again, it’s he said/she said, no pun intended, because actually she said it.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that in some ways — look, I — I think some of you were disappointed yesterday that the president didn’t get yelled at, sure. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.
