Some could rightly argue there was too much coverage of the horse race as the health care debate went down to the wire Sunday night, and less coverage of what was actually in the plan.

Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post opines today that coverage was proper, but notes several critics who pounced on the news outlets for failing to explain the comprehensive and controversial package properly:

The conventional wisdom is that the press failed to educate the public about the bill's sweeping changes, leaving much of America confused about just what it contained. That is largely a bum rap, for the media churned out endless reams of data and analysis that were available to anyone who bothered to look.

As time went on, though, journalists became consumed by political process and Beltway politics, to the point that the substance of health care reform was overwhelmed. Here the plea is guilty-with-an-explanation: The battle came down to whether the Senate could adopt changes by majority vote (reconciliation) and, until late Saturday, whether the House could approve the Senate measure without a recorded vote (deem and pass). With the bill's fate hanging by these procedural threads, there was no way to avoid making that the overriding story. (And yes, the Senate reconciliation vote is still to come.)

He later added:

And there was no lack of journalistic shortcomings. When anger erupted at those town hall meetings last summer, much of the media wrote them off as a spectacle. Reporters were slow to recognize the growing public anger at Obamacare and what “tea party” enthusiasts viewed as out-of-control federal spending.

Journalists struggled to say exactly what was in health-care reform because as Obama allowed congressional leaders to take the lead, there were multiple versions floating around the Hill at any one time. Remember the months and column inches we wasted on Max Baucus and the Gang of Six, the Senate group that was going to hammer out a bipartisan compromise? That collapsed after many forests were sacrificed on its behalf.