CNN
vs. SiCKO
By Fairness &
Accuracy In Reporting
16 July, 2007
FAIR
Filmmaker Michael Moore appeared
on CNN's Situation Room on July 9 to talk about his new film Sicko--but
ended up having an animated discussion with host Wolf Blitzer about
a CNN "fact check" of the film that made several embarrassing
errors.
The piece--dubbed a "Reality
Check" by senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta--claimed
that Moore "fudged the facts" when critiquing the U.S. health
care system (click
here to watch the clip). Gupta starts by acknowledging
that the U.S. healthcare system placed 37th in the World Health Organization's
rankings. The fact that Moore contrasts this with the Cuban system led
Gupta to "catch" him: "But hold on. That WHO list puts
Cuba's healthcare system even lower than the United States, coming in
at number 39."
The fact that the U.S.'s
healthcare system does about as well as a Third World island that's
been under economic sanctions for the past five decades isn't much of
a catch to begin with. But Cuba's WHO ranking actually appears in Moore's
film. (As Moore's website pointed out, when CNN aired the relevant clip
from his film, a CNN logo covered up Cuba on the list.)
Gupta's next fact check:
"Moore asserts that
the American healthcare system spends $7,000 per person on health, whereas
Cuba spends $25 per person. Not true, but not too far off. The United
States spends $6,096 a year per person versus $229 a year in Cuba."
Actually, Moore was much
closer than Gupta: according to the Department of Health & Human
Services, U.S. per capita healthcare spending was projected to reach
$7,092 in 2006, and $7,498 for this year.
On a July 10 debate with
Moore on CNN's Larry King Live, Gupta tried to claim that these projected
numbers were somehow invalid, as if the continuously rising costs of
healthcare should not be taken into account when discussing healthcare
expenditures. Ironically, during the same discussion, Gupta cited Medicare's
looming insolvency as a reason not to support expanding the program--a
financial crunch that of course is also based on projections of steadily
rising healthcare costs.
What's more--Gupta's "reality
check" got the film's claims wrong: Moore said Cuba spent $251
per person, not $25.
Gupta went on to claim that
Sicko portrays "medical utopia elsewhere," when in fact studies
show the U.S. system is better in some respects:
"The film is filled
with content Canadians and Brits sitting in waiting rooms, confident
care will come. In Canada, you can be waiting for a long time. A survey
of six industrialized nations found that only Canada was worse than
the United States when it came to waiting for a doctor's appointment
for a medical problem."
This is a grossly misleading
characterization of the Commonwealth Fund's survey; instead of stressing
that the study found that the United States did better than one country
with universal care in terms of waiting time, Gupta could more relevantly
have focused on the fact that four out of five of the universal healthcare
countries studied (including Britain) outperformed the U.S. on the very
measure that he singled out to show that you don't find "medical
utopia elsewhere."
It's worth noting that the
study that Gupta cited placed the U.S. as the worst overall of all the
healthcare system studied, placing it last or next to last in all but
one of eight criteria, while spending almost twice as much per capita
as the next most expensive system. Gupta's example was a clear case
of cherry-picking-- selecting only the data that fits your argument--
something he accused Moore of doing.
When Moore confronted CNN's
Blitzer about the inaccuracies in their "reality check" segment,
he responded: "Well, if we get that confirmed, obviously, we'll
correct the record." And CNN did correct one thing--Gupta acknowledged
his error about Cuba's per capita spending ($25 versus $251). On CNN's
Newsroom (7/10/07), Gupta seemed taken aback by the whole thing, saying,
"Yesterday there was a lot said by Michael, quite frankly, lots
of numbers thrown around, and it can get admittedly somewhat confusing."
He did not apologize for
criticizing Moore for using current healthcare figures rather than outdated
ones, or for implying that Moore concealed Cuba's healthcare ranking,
or for misleading viewers about the findings of the survey on waiting
times. "We're comfortable with what we presented," Gupta said,
aside from misrepresenting what Moore reported about Cuban healthcare
costs by a factor of 10, which Gupta attributed to "an error of
transcribing the number down incorrectly."
"As a journalist and
a doctor the facts are extremely important to me," Gupta claimed.
That priority is not at all evident from his report on Sicko, which
instead suggested that his chief goal was discrediting Moore's film.
In pursuit of that mission he ended up making more serious factual errors
than any he actually found in Moore's film. Gupta's failure to retract
the other falsehoods, beyond his "transcribing" error, suggests
that facts are actually of little importance to him compared to maintaining
the pretense that he is an expert and that activist/journalists like
Moore are not to be trusted.
The tendency for mainstream
journalists to resist criticism is not surprising. Gupta's CNN colleague
Kyra Phillips perhaps said it best when she referred to the second part
of Moore's interview with Blitzer: "You can tune in to the Situation
Room at 4:00 Eastern for a little more unedited Moore interview, if
you can stomach it."
The implication couldn't
be clearer: If we make false claims about your work, it's downright
rude of you to say something about it.
ACTION: Contact CNN's Situation
Room and demand that they correct the other mistakes in Gupta's "fact
check" on Michael Moore's film.
CONTACT:
CNN
Situation Room [email protected]
Comment page:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?65
CNN President Jonathan Klein
Phone: (212) 275-7800
For more background, go to:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/news/article_10017.php
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