On Sunday's Reliable Sources, BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray predicted that the "media is going to lose interest" in the problems with Healthcare.gov.
"I think the media is going to lose interest, probably in the next few weeks, or even sooner than that," she claimed. "I mean, a crisis situation like the shutdown, that's going to get a lot of intense media coverage. This is sort of, as the Web site problems continue, eventually the interest in the media is going to peter out." [Video below the break. Audio here.]
The host of Sunday's show, The Daily Beast's John Avlon, had admitted that media is not good at "covering sustained stories," and since "this is going to be a months' long process to fix" he asked Gray if the press would continue holding "the administration's feet to the fire." She answered in the negative.
"Well, and, Joe, that doesn't necessarily serve the citizens very well," Avlon turned to Mediaite's Joe Concha, who insisted that the media should pressure the administration over the ObamaCare enrollment numbers.
"So when November 15th comes, I guess that's mid-November, if we don't see a number there, the media has to hold the Obama administration accountable," Concha insisted.
Below is a transcript of the segment, which aired on October 28 on Reliable Sources at 11:05 a.m. EDT:
JOHN AVLON: And yet, Rosie, I don't want to be the cynic here. But we don't do such a good job of covering sustained stories. Crises, we cover very well. We don't cover governing so well. So, given the fact that this is going to be a months' long process to fix, what do you think the media is realistically going to do in terms of keeping the focus and the administration's feet to the fire?
ROSIE GRAY, BuzzFeed: I think the media is going to lose interest, probably in the next few weeks, or even sooner than that. I mean, a crisis situation like the shutdown, that's going to get a lot of intense media coverage. This is sort of, as the Web site problems continue, eventually the interest in the media is going to peter out.
AVLON: Well, and, Joe, that doesn't necessarily serve the citizens very well. What do you think the media needs to do to step up to keep the focus where it should be, covering governing and the solutions to this scandal?
CONCHA: Well, holding people accountable, like a Jay Carney, for instance, who said – he's been asked since day one, since this launch, when are the numbers going to come in for who signed up for Obamacare. I don't want to know about page hits and 20 million. I want to know about how many people created accounts. I want to know about how many people have signed up.
This is very important – 7 million people need to sign up, and 2.7 million young healthy people need to sign up to sustain the loss. So, it actually can feed itself. And that's been stonewalled time and again. And the White House press corps asked, and Carney is asked in every kind of forum.
Finally he said, in mid-November, I will get you a number. Okay. So when November 15th comes, I guess that's mid-November, if we don't see a number there, the media has to hold the Obama administration accountable, because if you know page hits, right, and you know accounts, you probably know the number right now. It's probably because it's so low, is because they don't want to reveal it at this time.
AVLON: Well, and, you know, false metrics is a classic way to weasel out of accountability, but that D-Day is out there, November 15th. We'll be watching.
