7/11/07 
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) Action Alert 
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3135

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 
<http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=22&media_view_id=9041>). 
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 situationroom@cnn.com

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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www.iaciners.org