Health Care Media Matters

And of course Digby is absolutely right to note that this matters very much.

Americans always get nervous when their leaders are perceived to be losers. In fact, they hate it. And when the media skews toward failure unfairly, it has an effect on public opinion.

Negative news will need to negative feelings and associations. It's not difficult to grasp. I'm not sure it's bias so much as the corrupt, commercialized nature of the mainstream media, but it has a terrible effect on our political discourse, and it certainly undercuts the persistent notion of a liberal media bias, a particularly disturbing myth, since it then leads to those actually on the left, mostly in the blogosphere, being decried and dismissed as "Far Left." It's a joke.

A Media Matters for America analysis of transcripts available in the Nexis database has found that broadcast and cable news featured almost twice as many segments mentioning the American Medical Association's (AMA's) reported opposition to a public insurance plan as segments mentioning the AMA's recent announcement that it supported the House Democrats' health care reform bill, which includes a public plan.