Washington Post media critic thinks complaints about health care coverage are a “bum rap” because if people “bothered to look,” they could find “endless reams of data and analysis.”

But for someone who thinks the media did a good job of covering health care reform, Kurtz sure stipulates to a lot of failings:

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

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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.

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When the polls turned against the president's push, journalists did what they usually do in campaigns: beat up on those whose numbers are sagging. Stories shifted from preexisting conditions and individual mandates to whether Obama had staked his presidency on an overly ambitious scheme that Congress was unlikely to accept (and, inevitably, how much was Emanuel's fault). From there it was a short jog to the rise of political polarization, the death of bipartisanship and the erosion of Obama's influence -- legitimate undertakings that again shoved the health-care arguments to the back of the bus.

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Too many stories quoted dueling experts without making a concerted, serious effort to sort out the facts. ... It was sooo much easier to write another story about the latest Tiger mistress to go public.

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The press did a good job of highlighting backroom deals -- the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase -- that polluted the process. But the larger narrative came to resemble a long-running soap opera in which the plot made sense only if you had been following all the previous twists and turns.

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In the end, the subject may simply have been too dense for the media to fully digest. If you're a high-information person who routinely plows through 2,000-word newspaper articles, you had a reasonably good grasp of the arguments. For a busy electrician who plugs in and out of the news, the jousting and the jargon may have seemed bewildering.

But, remember: the media did a good job covering health care, according to Kurtz. To say otherwise is a “bum rap.” Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations!

Note, by the way, that Kurtz pretends the media's focus on politics and process was a recent development that was inevitable once reform reached the legislative endgame:

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.

In reality, focus on politics and process drowned out serious policy analysis long ago. Last August, Washington Post Ombudsman reviewed “roughly 80 A-section stories on health-care reform since July 1” and found “all but about a dozen focused on political maneuvering or protests.” Alexander also noted “The Pew Foundation's Project for Excellence in Journalism had a similar finding. Its recent month-long review of Post front pages found 72 percent of health-care stories were about politics, process or protests.”