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When Reid responded by saying "my caucus believes strongly there should be health-care reform," Bash chastised Reid for not answering "particularly on this idea of a public option."
After Reid turned to another questioner, Bash interrupted, "Senator Reid, with all due respect, is it possible to answer the question on whether or not you have the votes?"
Reid answered, "I believe we clearly will have the support of my caucus to move to this bill and start legislating."
In his column, Milbank claimed that Reid's additional response "also didn't answer the question."
But what Reid was saying should have been clear to anyone who has followed this important issue. His answer indicated that he believes the Democrats will vote together to stop a Republican filibuster -- "to move to this bill and start legislating" -- even though some conservative Democrats may vote against portions of the bill when amendments are considered on an up-or-down basis.
As Reid's news conference was ending, CNN's Bash was still miffed. "How much of this is about making liberals happy?" she called out as Reid was leaving the podium.
You could read through all of George W. Bush's press conferences to look for a similarly insulting remark from a mainstream journalist, demanding to know, for instance, whether Bush was invading Iraq to "make the neocons happy." But you surely wouldn't find it.
Over the past three decades, the Washington mainstream news media has increasingly tilted right either out of fear of career retribution from right-wing, anti-journalism attack groups or out of shared conservative and neocon ideology. Generally speaking, those journalists, who have played ball with the Right and the neocons, have done well, and those who went against the grain have lost jobs.
Washington's relatively small journalistic community remembers well the fates of honest journalists who produced stories that upset the Republicans and especially the Bush family.
Think, for instance, of the firings of star CBS "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes and three other producers (and the pushing out of anchor Dan Rather) for alleged imprecision in vetting documents used in an otherwise accurate story about George W. Bush ducking his National Guard duty.
Meanwhile, there are almost no career risks in showing disdain for "liberals," even when that prejudice appears to have contributed to inaccurate reporting on the shape of health reform, one of the biggest legislative battles in recent U.S. history. [For more on the media's imbalance, see Robert Parry's Lost History and/or Secrecy & Privilege.]
Loony Idea?
For months now, the MSM has treated the public option as some loony left-wing idea, when actually the concept had a lot going for it, including the Congressional Budget Office's conclusion that it was the only approach that achieved substantial savings. It also tested well in most opinion polls.
Yet, it still made career sense for congressional correspondents to treat the public option dismissively and side with the so-called moderates in seeking a health-reform law that would compel Americans to buy insurance from private insurers, without a public option -- exactly the position favored by the insurance industry. [See Consortiumnews.com's "US Health Insurers Up the Ante."]
As CNN's Bash and other correspondents transformed their "public option is dead" thinking into the media's conventional wisdom, the voices of actual Democratic lawmakers were largely tuned out when they kept insisting that the public option wasn't dead.
It wasn't until this past weekend when the mainstream news media began to make an about-face. On Saturday, Oct. 24, the Washington Post's lead story was entitled "Prognosis improves for public insurance," noting that its prospects "have gone in a few short weeks from bleak to bright."
