Reporting What They Say, Not What They Think

An NYT article does a nice job of simply reporting what politicians say as their reason for opposing a public option, instead of doing the mind-reading exercise of telling readers what they think: "Senator Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware, said he was trying to devise such an alternative to meet 'centrist concerns about the public option.' Over and over, Mr. Carper said, the centrists have made clear that they do not want to create an insurance plan that is 'government-run or government-funded.'" The point is that these politicians may oppose a public plan because they have done a careful assessment of its merits and decided that it requires too much government involvement in health care or they may oppose it because they get lots of campaign contributions from the insurance industry (other explanations exist as well). The reporter does not know their true motives, he/she can only know what the politician claims as their motives. This is what they should pass on to readers.

--Dean Baker