Begin with this: Michael Moore makes journalists lose their mind. They have an almost compulsive need to prove him wrong. And it's true, as Paul Krugman states, that when Gupta gave it a shot, he came out looking poorly. But if my inbox is anything to judge by, their confrontation has taken on an outsized role in the liberal understanding of Gupta. There were three main points of contention in their debate. First, how much does Cuba spend? Moore said $251. Gupta quoted him as saying $25. Gupta got his transcription wrong, and apologized for the error. In later arguments between Gupta and Moore, everyone agreed that the number was actually $229. Second, how much does America spend? In the film, Moore says the US spends $7,000 per person as opposed to Cuba's $251. Gupta said we spend $6,000. This is a methodological dispute. Moore was using HHS projections for 2007. But the actual number for 2007 actually only came out, well, this week (the total was $7,421). Gupta was using the latest WHO numbers, which came from their 2007 report and offered data from 2005. Meanwhile, the Cuba number Moore used in the comparison was from 2005, so CNN held that their comparison was apples-to-apples, while Moore's comparison, which put Cuba's 2005 number against America's 2007 projection, wasn't. There's a methodological argument over whether it's fair to use projections or not. But neither side is technically incorrect here. The third real argument came in the aftermath. And this is where Gupta looked the worst. His original report used Paul Keckley, a former researcher at Vanderbilt, as a source. On the air, Moore attacked Keckley as tied to Republicans and the drug industry. Gupta replied, "His only affiliation is with Vanderbilt University. We checked it, Michael. We checked his conflict of interest. We do ask those questions." Gupta was simply wrong. In late-2006, Keckley had left Vanderbilt to assume the directorship of the Deloitte Institution, a Republican-affiliated think tank. This was how CNN identified him on-screen. Either Gupta didn't know of Keckley's change or he was lying. And that's basically it. A transcription error, a methodological dispute, and Keckley. It was clear he was fact checking Moore to find mistakes, not to judge accuracy. This is common in journalism, and Gupta's original segment led me to try to explore its roots. But it's not, as some of the e-mail has suggested, evidence that Gupa is either conservative or an opponent of universal health care. He's read Obama's plan. He's coming on in a largely communications capacity. And that'll be his role. Krugman says that the problem with Gupta's performance was that it was another example of elites engaging in "Village" behavior. He's right about that. But at the end of the day, if the villagers support Obama's heath reform plan, it has a far better shot than if they don't. That's why Gupta's hire is good for health reform, even if it's not good for pundit accountability.
