Dr. Sanjay Gupta offered a “SiCKO” reality check for CNN viewers, and CNN brought Michael Moore on “The Situation Room” to rebut the segment.
“That report was so biased, I can’t imagine what pharmaceutical company ads coming up right after our break here,” Moore lashed out against Wolf Blitzer on July 9.
Apparently in Moore’s vocabulary, biased means it doesn’t agree with Moore’s views.
Video (1:33): Real (2.54 MB) or Windows (2.87 MB), plus MP3 audio (702 kB).
Moore’s rant continued for more than 10 minutes – and at some points he was practically shouting at Blitzer:
“For me to have to sit here and listen again to more crap about socialized medicine or how the Canadians have it—you know—worse than us. All the statistics show that we have it far worse health care than these other industrialized countries. We’re the only ones that don’t have it free and universal.”
Gupta’s report pointed out several flaws in Moore’s movie, but wasn’t exactly harsh because he arrived at the same conclusion.
“But no matter how much Moore fudged the facts, and he did fudge some facts there’s one everyone agrees on. The system here should be far better,” Gupta said.
In the live interview, Moore attacked Gupta’s journalistic credibility (Wolf defended Gupta), accused CNN of not telling the truth and demanded an apology from the network. On his website, Moore wrote “This is libel. There is not a single fact that is ‘fudged’ in the film.”
“I mean, I wish CNN and the other mainstream media would just for once tell the truth about what is going on in this country – whether it is with health care, I don’t care what it is. I mean, you guys have such a poor track record,” Moore told CNN viewers.
Moore’s hostile comments regarding corporate control of the mainstream media and CNN were particularly ironic, considering CNN’s cheerleading for the “SiCKO” movie. Review after review, many in the mainstream media praised the film.
“I just wonder when the American people are going to turn off their TV sets and stop listening to this stuff,” quipped Moore.
Good thing for Moore they didn’t or his movie might not have held on to the ninth place position in the box office standings, bringing in $11.5 million in the last two week.
