Political Soothsaying
Photo by Flickr User KVIS
What I do here is offer my opinion on issues and events. I seldom cover actual news, and on the rare occasion that I do, I still do it from a particular point of view, and will ultimately tell you what I think about it – and what I think you should think about it.
What the Buffalo News does is report the news, except in clearly defined columns, and on the op-ed pages, where the author’s own opinion is proferred.
What nobody does is enter psychic mode and extrapolate what an interviewee actually meant to say, and then offer up an amended version of a quote.
The Batavian is a website that mostly reports the news. It has occasionally delved into opinion writing, but for the most part it reports on goings-on in the courts, sports news, development, entertainment, who got arrested at Darien Lake, and what happens on the scanners. It’s small-town reporting at its purest, and it’s a great resource for Batavians who until recently had only a single local paper. It also covers local, state, and federal political races that are relevant to its readership. It’s a straight news outlet.
Earlier this week, I highlighted an interview that the Batavian’s Howard Owens conducted with congressional candidate Chris Collins, where he made some outrageous statements about the survivability of breast and prostate cancers. The quote was as follows:
The healthcare reforms Collins said he would push would be tort reform and open up competition in insurance by allowing policies across state lines.
Collins also argued that modern healthcare is expensive for a reason.
“People now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things,” Collins said. “The fact of the matter is, our healthcare today is so much better, we’re living so much longer, because of innovations in drug development, surgical procedures, stents, implantable cardiac defibrillators, neural stimulators — they didn’t exist 10 years ago. The increase in cost is not because doctors are making a lot more money. It’s what you can get for healthcare, extending your life and curing diseases.” [Emphasis added].
Later that day, the Erie County Health Commissioner issued a statement challenging Collins’ assertion, and urging people to get tested and to be vigilant for breast and prostate cancers. Almost at the same time, Collins’ opponent, incumbent Congresswoman Kathy Hochul released this:
“Chris Collins has demonstrated a stunning lack of sensitivity by saying, ‘people now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer, and some of the other things.’ Tragically, nearly 70,000 people will die this year from these two types of cancer alone. We can disagree about public policy without making these kinds of outrageous and offensive statements.”
That’s the statement, with no reference to the source nor the full quote so people could judge the context for themselves.
The original source is The Batavian (both as a courtesy to The Batavian and as a matter of complete transparency, the Hochul campaign should have included this fact in its release).
I’ll be the first to admit that I get pissy when I don’t get proper credit for something, but is this more a fit of pique than anything else? After all, Collins’ statement about cancer survivability stands on its own, and speaks for itself. If there exists any doubt about the pure meaning of Collins’ words, then it’s up to Collins to explain them and expand upon them, no? But here, Owens goes on to reproduce the entire paragraph in which Collins’ cancer quip is contained, and continues:
On its face, the opening part of the quote from Collins sounds outrageous, but in context, clearly, Collins misspoke. More likely, he meant to say. “Fewer people die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things.” [emphasis added].
First, Owens supposes that Collins simply misspoke. Well, what Collins said seems outrageous because it is outrageous. Context? The context about which Owens is so concerned is open to interpretation, I suppose. But isn’t that conclusion solely within the province of the utterer of the words, or the reader of the article?
Is Collins grossly misinformed about cancer survivability, or is he just a clumsy politician who was trying to embellish a point about how Obamacare is horrible and health care is expensive, and should be? That’s my call – not Owens’.
Propriety aside, I don’t see any evidence that Collins “misspoke”. There was no follow-up, and he didn’t correct his statement. Collins didn’t go on to further explain or expand upon what he said about breast and prostate cancers. He just went on to assert that some 40 year-old medical technologies like TENS machines and implanted defibrillators “didn’t exist 10 years ago”.
The whole paragraph is a load of semi-informed nonsense. The whole paragraph is Collins’ politicization of health care to persuade readers to maintain the status quo. Yet Owens argues that it’s important for voters to consider Collins’ BS about cancer within the context of all the other falsehoods and lies he excreted during that portion of the interview.
The real outrage, though, is Owens’ second assertion – suggesting what Collins must have meant to say, and completely re-stating what Collins said, in quotation marks. That’s not how journalism works. What else exists in that paragraph to help reach the conclusion that Collins really meant something different from what he actually said? After that first ridiculous sentence, Collins utters not another word about cancer.
If Owens thought Collins “misspoke”, he could have asked a follow-up; for example, “wait, you just said no one dies from breast cancer or prostate cancer, you didn’t really mean that, did you?” But there was no such follow-up. There was no explanation; there is no relevant context to further explain what Collins meant. Owens is playing psychic and ex-post-facto trying to repair a Collins gaffe. Hey, Howard, what did Collins “mean” when he repeatedly called Shelly Silver the “anti-Christ”? What did Collins “mean” when he invited a female Republican bigwig to give him a “lapdance”?
Allow me to divert from the underlying point by asking, why?
Why do WNY media and their personalities and writers bend over backwards so regularly and consistently for Chris Collins? Is it because Collins demands that kind of treatment in exchange for access? Is it because they’re enamored of his money and success? Is it because of campaign ads? I’m asking seriously. This guy gets away with so many lies, so often, and he gets a routine uncritical pass.
Think I’m kidding? Just this past Sunday, Bob McCarthy wrote the same bunch of brown-nosing BS about Chris Collins that he’s written at least twice before. “[Collins] had done everything he said he would do. His administration was scandal-free. And he lost.” In November 2011, McCarthy wrote, “How did a county executive who fulfilled all his promises with minimal effects on taxes and no scandals manage to lose?” Then again in December 2011, McCarthy wrote, “This time, the defeat seems to genuinely hurt. Collins struggles to grasp how he lost after keeping all his campaign promises of 2007 while running Erie County without a hint of scandal.” I addressed the blatant inaccuracy of the “scandal-free” / “promises kept” assertions here.
That’s a lot of identical puffery of one guy, multiple times in one year. The same reporter did a story on this Collins cancer kerfuffle , and Collins basically said he knows people with cancer. Having politicized cancer by suggesting that, thanks to America’s unsustainably expensive health care system, “no one dies from” certain types of the disease, Collins issued this:
As the brother of a breast cancer survivor, I am grateful for the medical advances that saved my sister’s life, which would not have been possible a generation ago,” he said. “I find it troubling that Kathy Hochul would politicize the seriousness of cancer.
Hey, Chris and Howard – where in that extended Batavian quote did Collins mention a single, solitary medical advance, treatment, or medication that has anything to do with improved breast and prostate cancer survivability over the past generation? I’ll answer for you: nowhere. Perhaps reporters shouldn’t try to play soothsayer and, weeks later, divine what their interviewees “mean” to say, and then create phony “amended” statements, complete with improper quotation marks.
Owens concludes,
That’s not what he said (I taped the interview and the original quote as published is accurate), but the rest of the quote clearly explains the larger point he is trying to make, which is that medical advances have driven up the cost of healthcare.
To rip this quote out of context and try to use it to paint Collins as some sort of insensitive boob is the kind of below-the-belt, negative campaign tactic that keeps people from being engaged in the process and casting intelligent votes. Frankly, I think of Kathy Hochul as somebody who is more dignified than this sort of mudslinging.
4. Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans all pledge to repeal Obamacare. 
It’s astonishing to me that David Bellavia challenged Chris Collins to a series of 8 debates over 90 days ago, and not a single one took place. The best Collins could do was to get some supporters of his to stage a set-up in Clarence, so he wouldn’t have to go far and he’d have an exceedingly friendly audience and sponsoring organization. 
