Health Care For America Now

This probably isn't surprising, but worth noting anyway:

In their health care reform coverage, media have repeatedly given considerably more attention to perceived setbacks to progressive reform efforts than to events that signal progress for those efforts. A Media Matters for America analysis of transcripts available in the Nexis database has found that broadcast and cable news featured almost twice as many segments mentioning the American Medical Association's (AMA's) reported opposition to a public insurance plan as segments mentioning the AMA's recent announcement that it supported the House Democrats' health care reform bill, which includes a public plan.

That finding is consistent with an earlier Media Matters study showing that the number of cable news segments in Nexis mentioning an initial Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of an incomplete version of a Senate health committee draft bill was far greater than the number of segments mentioning a later CBO analysis. That later analysis showed that an updated version of the bill would cover more people for less than the earlier scoring had suggested. Media Matters has also documented a pattern in which media suggest that President Obama's reform effort is in serious jeopardy, despite events — including the AMA endorsement and revised CBO score — that indicate reform efforts have made substantial progress.

That's twice now that the media has failed to cover the upsides of health reform, preferring the downside. Of course, they're all out for ratings, so reporting the drama is probably better for the bottom line than reporting the progress. It just happens to be unbalanced.