Michael Moore Vs. CNN, Sanjay Gupta, Iraq, Mainstream Media...
Everyone's talking this morning about this crazy segment on CNN last night. Wolf Blitzer ran a pre-recorded segment, produced by their medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, questioning some of the facts about international health care in Sicko. Michael Moore then went on a ten-minute rant, accusing CNN of treating him unfairly, producing biased reporting to please their sponsors, and lying to the American people.
Gupta isn't exactly saying that Sicko is a ball of lies; he's mostly focused on the facts the film fails to reveal. The basic crux of his argument is this: "It's true, the United States is the only country in the Western world without free, universal access to health care. But, you won't find medical utopia elsewhere." Gupta even closes his segment with something resembling an olive branch: "No matter how much Moore fudged the facts--and he did fudge some facts--there's one everyone agrees on: the system here should be far better."
This just seems like common sense to me--as in, anyone with a brain who watches Sicko understands that there is a give-and-take in other countries, a not-so-swell side of universal health care that Moore declines to show in order to bolster his argument.
But Moore, apparently on a mission to become a parody of himself, is no longer willing to accept even a shred of criticism. When in doubt, he always pulls the "poor little Mike versus the big bad mainstream media companies" card. He criticizes CNN for running pharmaceutical ads, but as Blitzer points out, you don't see him demanding that Harvey Weinstein pull all Sicko ads from CNN.
The clip embedded above closes with Lou Dobbs laughing off Moore as "more of a left-wing promoter than Hugo Chavez", but oddly, Moore actually spends the majority of his CNN screen time deflecting attention away from his film. I guess he figures there's more long-term value in turning the appearance into a stunt, demanding that Blitzer and CNN "apologize to the American people" for their failure to ask the proper questions about the war in Iraq, and even slamming Gupta in particular for embedding with the troops and not coming back with a scathing report (according to Blitzer, Gupta was too busy performing neurosurgery on injured soldiers to do much negative reporting).
Moore has a point-by-point rebuttal of Gupta's piece posted on his own site. It's not exactly a gleeful "smackdown"--the general tone is, "Gupta's truth is sort of true, but it's not the whole truth." Nonetheless, he's still demanding an apology from CNN, and, according to BoingBoing, asking that his fans do the same.
UPDATE: According to FishbowlNY, Michael Moore will be back on CNN tonight, "debating" Sanjay Gupta face-to-face. Fishbowl also confirms that I'm not crazy, and that Moore did seem to put a very strange spin on his enunciation of Gupta's last name--they refer to it as "the Kwik-E-Mart pronunciation."
Originally posted on:
SpoutBlog
Posted
Tuesday, July 17, 2007 11:23 PM
>but oddly, Moore actually spends the majority of his CNN screen time deflecting attention away from his film.
Oh, you mean redirecting to the issue of health care instead. Yes, how terrible.
>But Moore, apparently on a mission to become a parody of himself, is no longer willing to accept even a shred of criticism.
Ummmm, hate to break your bubble, but Gupta's report was demonstrably incorrect. How is Moore "on a mission to become a parody of himself" when he is simply trying to correct Gupta's mistakes?
In case you're wondering, I'm not a big fan of Michael Moore. I think that he can be a bit sanctimonious and a self-appointed spokesperson of the left. All of that said, Michael Moore's response on CNN was wholly appropriate. Consider that Wolf Blitzer said that he would stack up Sanjay Gupta's reporting on health issues against anyone in the business--when Gupta himself made several factual errors for which CNN later issued a correction. Interesting that Moore's understandable outburst correcting Gupta makes the blog, while CNN is apparently willing to stand beside Gupta's shodding reporting that, in at least one case, misquoted a statistic by a factor of ten.
Moore's website page, reubtting Sanjay's report, which is cited in the above post, is a level-headed analysis--no fire-breathing there, just point by point corrections. And I think that Moore can be forgiven for his animated appearance on on Blitzer. I would be animated too, if I was called to talk about a documentary and a report on the film grossly distorted the facts right before the interview. At best it's irresponsible, substandard, amateur reporting by CNN, and at worse it's designed to set the playing field such that Moore has to spend more time correcting CNN's mistakes than talking about the issue itself.
You know, there are some blogs that genuinely offer insightful critique and inspired analysis informed by the author's own personal experience on political issues of the day. (And believe me, there's no shortage of criticism to be made of Moore.)
And then there are blogs that try to stamp their hipster political individuality--the ideological equivalent of "Urban Outfitters," unique like everyone else--by taking pot shots at left-wing lightening rods.
Guess which the above post falls under.
Next time, get the facts straight, formulate some kind of believable, credible case, and THEN write your critique. I'll look forward to it. But until then, please stick to movie reviews.
Posted
Friday, July 13, 2007 11:19 PM
I am a physician and tried to leave a comment on Dr. Gupta’s CNN Blog regarding his exchange with Michael Moore – unfortunately it did not make it into the published comments:
Dear Dr. Gupta,
I have seen both Michael Moore's recent interview with Wolf Blitzer and later with Larry King and yourself and I feel that your review on CNN was quite unfair and it would serve you well to admit its shortcomings. You have nowhere made a convincing argument that Michael Moore indeed "fudged the facts" as you claim. If your presentation about mildly different health care cost estimates in the USA or CUBA that you and Moore have found should justify "fudged facts", it would only be one more of the trivial nit pickings that hardly matter in comparison to your own distortions (like calling universal health care as it exists elsewhere a "Utopia" and "not truly free") and omissions (Not to talk about the humane and financial benefits of Universal Health Care ) . Instead, your "fact check" parades a conservative hit man for the health for profit industry as an "expert - only associated with Vanderbilt University" and allows him to make unreferenced claims against the film that are hilariously misleading or plain false. I have grown up in Germany under the universal health care system there and worked and studied medicine in Great Britain for many years and can well confirm that Michael Moore's film presents no "utopia" and that indeed basic health care is unrestricted and rapidly available for everyone. Your "fact check" again repeats the false litany preached to the public by greedy insurers and uninformed doctors about the "long waiting times" in Canada, England, Germany etc. without mentioning that waiting time for emergency access is shorter than in the USA and longer mainly for non urgent (elective) procedures - and this is quite acceptable. In the USA on the other hand, 47 million uninsured Americans cannot get other than emergency medical care no matter how long they wait! The insured rest may also not get it because of a ruthless denial by some HMO cubicle clerk, no matter how long they wait! You even challenged Michael Moore to decide whether he would rather be seen in the USA or elsewhere for cardiac emergency care. As the National Institute of Health has recently concluded, an enormous number of cardiac interventions are done in the USA without proper need and benefit for the patients, possibly because of the wrong kind of incentives. I found the interview with Tony Benn in Michael Moores SICKO the most significant contribution: The British NHS Universal Health Care system was born during and despite the economic hardship of the postwar years because people understood that to take care of each other in such a vital matter as health care should be a human right in an industrialized country - and even Margaret Thatcher never tried to do away with the NHS. I can tell you from my personal experience in Germany and Britain that there are few if any citizens who would want to exchange their Universal Health Care system for some for profit or individualized health care system instead as it is glorified in the USA. America's Health system needs an aggressive overhaul, bold vision and infusion from good examples elsewhere.
I hope you will join the wave for universal health care for all Americans !
Sincerely
Dr. Walter Rohloff, Renal Medicine, Albuquerque