Cokie Roberts Repeats the Republican Lie

NPR is required listening for liberals, right? In fact, it's nothing but a liberal sounding board, right?

Maybe it's time to rethink that. Here's an example. Every Monday morning on Morning Edition they call Cokie Roberts and she gets to blather on about her view of what's happening in the news. She actually does it from her house, and she can pretty much say anything she wants.

Today one of her key topics was health care, and Cokie's disquisition included the following statement:

ROBERTS: . . . The Democrats will shift, think they have something the Republicans will go for, and then the Republicans shift further. And they make a big deal about something that distracts and frightens the voters like those so-called death panels, then the Democrats drop that and Republicans find something else to object to.

Let me just repeat that:

And they make a big deal about something that distracts and frightens the voters like those so-called death panels, then the Democrats drop that . . .

I'm sure she thinks she's being fair and balanced because she said "so-called", thus imparting a note of skepticism. But this is inadequate. What she said was that the death panels were in the bill until the Republicans made a big deal about them, and then the Democrats dropped them. In other words, the Democrats' plan was to kill your grandmother and Sarah Palin's baby.

How about telling the truth: the Republicans made it all up. There are no death panels, so-called or not. It's all a big lie by the Republicans.

I don't know about you, but I think the job of journalists goes beyond parroting what the various sides say, and extends to actually reporting the facts. Of course, Roberts didn't even do that. She didn't resort to the old reliable, "he said, she said" formulation. If you listened to her commentary, not only would you get no idea of what the truth is you would get no idea of what the Democrats say about the Republican claim about death panels.

And this is what passes for a respected journalist in this country?