Media Matters Daily Summary

Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story. Time for media to clarify the health care debate Depending on how you look at it, we're roughly six months or 60 years into the debate over whether and how the government should ensure universal health care for all Americans. And yet if there's one thing polling on the public's opinions about health care makes clear, it's that people are confused, holding a disparate mix of often contradictory views and frequently clinging to incorrect beliefs. Read More Goldberg, Coulter latest to compare Dems to birthers using flawed poll Following Chris Matthews' misrepresentation of a flawed Rasmussen poll to claim that most Democrats believed that President Bush had or might have "gotten the inside word" that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were about to happen and that therefore "both parties" are equally at fault for promoting conspiracy theories, Bernie Goldberg and Ann Coulter cited the poll to suggest Democrats are similar to birthers. However, the poll question -- "Did Bush know about the 9/11 attacks in advance?" -- was ambiguous and likely provoked "yes" answers from people who simply believed that Bush failed to heed intelligence information that could have led to the attacks being thwarted. Read More Three days after warning against violence, Beck tells "Pelosi" he poisoned her wine Just three days after imploring his viewers to refrain from "violence," warning them that "just one lunatic, like Timothy McVeigh, could ruin everything," and saying that "it is your patriotic duty to stop" someone who is thinking or talking about turning violent, Glenn Beck staged a scene in which he gave a glass of wine to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then said, "I put poison in your -- no, I -- I look forward to all the policy discussions that we're supposed to have." Read More Dobbs pushes debunked Cars.gov claim to accuse admin. of being "authoritarian regime in waiting" Claiming that the Obama administration is an "authoritarian regime in waiting," Lou Dobbs advanced the debunked claim that the computers of "consumers" who went to Cars.gov would have been taken over by the government and claimed that government statements to the contrary were false. In fact, PolitiFact.com and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have debunked the claim that would-be car consumers who go to the Cars.gov website would have their computers taken over by the government. Read More You can help support our work; become a volunteer media monitor, or donate to Media Matters for America.