Gingrich '06 Memo Expresses Grave Concerns Over Romney Health Care

By Susan Duclos

After reading the top headline on Memeorandum which states, "Gingrich ’06 Memo: “Agree Entirely With Gov. Romney” on Health Care," one would think that Newt Gingrich actually agreed, in fact, "entirely" agreed, with Mitt Romney and Massachusetts legislators on Romney's proposed and passed health care laws.

Noel Sheppard over at NewsBusters reads the full memo and notices how the ABC News headline and article misrepresent Gingrich's words by referring to areas of disagreement as "some criticisms."

Inside the actual document uncovered by BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, the former Speaker didn't "agree entirely with Gov. Romney" at all (emphasis added):

While in theory the plan should be affordable if the whole state contributes to the cost, the reality is that Massachusetts has an exhaustive list of health coverage regulations prohibiting insurers from offering more basic, pared-down policies with higher deductibles. (This is yet another reminder that America must establish a cross-state insurance market that gives individuals the freedom to shop for insurance plans in states other than their own.)

In our estimation, Massachusetts residents earning little more than $30,000 a year are in jeopardy of being priced out of the system. In the event that this occurs, Governor Romney will be in grave danger of repeating the mistakes of his predecessor, Mike Dukakis, whose 1988 health plan was hailed as a save-all but eventually collapsed when poorly-devised payment structures created a malaise of unfulfilled promises. We propose that a more realistic approach might be to limit the mandate to those individuals earning upwards of $54,000 per year.

Does that sound like Gingrich "agree[d] entirely with Gov. Romney?"

No, it doesn't.

What it does sound like is ABC News' deliberately misleading and false headline using only specific quotes that make it appear their headline is factual, is another attempt by the mainstream media to influence politics by pushing their readers to false conclusions and towards the GOP candidate the media themselves are trying to make inevitable.

With examples of journalistic incompetence like this, is it any wonder that Pew Research in September found that 66 percent of Americans believe news stories are often "inaccurate" and do not get the facts straight?

Americans also believe that news stories are often inaccurate - with 66 percent thinking that, compared with 34 percent in 1985. Only 25 percent of those surveyed think news organizations “get the facts straight.”

And when reporters get the facts wrong, 72 percent of Americans said that they “try to cover up their mistakes” rather than admitting them, yet another record high, according to Pew. Only 18 percent said that reporters were willing to admit their mistakes.

While majorities of Americans said that the news media remained highly professional (57 percent) and care about the quality of their work (68 percent), a historically large percentage of respondents thought that reporters were “not professional (32 percent) and “don’t care about how good a job they do” (31 percent).

By a large margin, respondents said that reporters were “politically biased in their reporting,” with a record high 63 percent agreeing with this view and only 25 percent disagreeing.

More:

Meanwhile, another new poll out this week reaffirmed the continuing American perception of liberal bias in the news media, and showed deep mistrust in the accuracy of their reporting.

Americans were asked if they how much trust and confidence in the mass media, and a majority - 55 percent - responded “not very much” or “none at all,” according to a new Gallup poll. A majority of Americans have remained distrustful of the media since 2007.

A significant majority of Americans, 60 percent, also perceive bias in the media. 47 percent said that the media is too liberal, and 13 percent said that that it was too conservative.

Americans have perceived more liberal bias in the media than conservative bias by a large margin since at least 2002, according to Gallup.

Headlines like ABC's, shown above, with only half of the information given to support their false conclusions within the article, is one of the main reasons for the high level of distrust Americans have come to associate with the mainstream media.

Sidenote- No candidate is inevitable, remember in 2007 Hillary Clinton was also hailed by the media as the inevitable Democratic nominee for president, and look what happened there.