Media Matters is at it again. They tried yet again to drum up a faux Fox News controversy and this one fell so flat that even Time Magazine leapt to the conservative cable news network’s defense.
An internal Fox memo told its anchors to stop using the phrase “public option” when discussing ObamaCare and to begin using the phrase “government option.” Media Matters got its hands on that memo and was shocked – shocked, we tell you – by that supposedly blatant manipulation of the truth.
Hard as this may be to believe, Time magazine – liberal Time magazine – offered up this defense of Fox:
Here’s what Kurtz and Media Matters fail to note: Most Americans did not understand what the “public option” was. The term, in fact, seemed almost intentionally non-descriptive. Scores of journalists asked me during the health care debate to explain to them what the public option was – and these were folks interested in the news and paying attention to the issue.
The public option would have been a government-run insurance plan some Americans could have purchased. It would have been supported by premiums with no government subsidization and would be been purely voluntary. Like Medicare, the reimbursements paid by the public option would have been set by the government. Also like Medicare, the plan would not have needed to turn a profit, making it cost less than private insurance. It would have therefore provided tough competition for private insurers and pushed down premiums throughout the marketplace.
There’s a reason they call themselves Media Matters and not Truth Matters.
H/T: National Review
