• When Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck compare Democrats to Nazis, they know it is beyond the pale. They know that it is beyond the boundaries of political discourse. And they are absolutely counting on the fact that you know it's beyond the pale. They are relying on you to think, "No, that's out of bounds, that can't really be what they're saying. They must have meant something different." They are absolutely depending on you to try to excuse their behavior so they can keep pushing the most vile and obnoxious smears possible without facing the consequences.

• Some of the people showing up at town hall meetings held by members of congress are not affiliated with right-wing or healthcare industry groups. Some of them are genuinely expressing opposition to "the health care bill," even though "the bill" does not exist yet, and most of what they're opposing isn't in any of the six or so bills currently being considered (or written).

  Nonetheless, some of the people are there to disrupt the meetings. And some of the people who aren't being disruptive are still professional political operatives, not "ordinary folks" or "regular concerned citizens" as they claim to be. Finding people at these meetings who are neither disruptive nor political operatives does not mean that no people at the meeting are either disruptive, professional operatives, or both.

• Whether professionally organized or otherwise, people who threaten health care proponents with gun violence are not "health care reform opponents." They are attempting to intimidate others out of participating in the democratic process or out of voting their conscience on critical issues of national importance by implying they'll get hurt or killed if they show up. That is not "opposition." That is terrorism by any definition of the word. Calling such people anything other than terrorists is objectively supporting terrorism.

  At the same time, not all health care opponents are terrorists, just as not all people opposed to whatever they think is "reform" are political operatives or thugs attempting to shut down the process. It's equally wrong to describe all opponents of health care with just one of these labels.

• If you are reporting on opposition to health care and you hear people saying that they don't like it because it will lead to government euthanasia or rationing or other charges that simply are not true, it is not your job to simply report what these people believe and describe it as a political problem for reform advocates. It is your job to find out if these beliefs are widely held and, if so, to report that they are not true. (This applies across the board: if you discover that health care reform advocates believe something false, it is your job to report this and explain that it is false.)

  When you repeat false memes just because "the idea is out there" and say nothing more than "of course, we all know that's not true, but…" and spend the other two minutes of your report repeating what we "all know" not to be true, you are not committing journalism. You're strengthening a false perception. Again, by any definition, that's the exact opposite of "journalism."

• Even worse, when national political figures say outrageously false things solely to install fear, it is your obligation to convey outrage in your reports proportional to the outrageousness of the lies. Sarah Palin and her cohort get national media time to say false things because you and your colleagues give it to her. Someone with Palin's casual relationship to objective reality and the truth should be treated no more seriously than Lyndon LaRouche. "Journalists" who treat obvious falsehoods as valid political remarks are teaching politicians to lie to the press.

  Remember just a few weeks ago when every Republican in the world was demanding Nancy Pelosi's head because she had the nerve to suggest that the CIA lied to Congress—which turned out to be true? That she had to be purged from public life for "lying?" If you gave any ink or air time to those claims, and do not devote just as much air time to calls for Palin to be pulled off the national stage with an old-style vaudeville hook, you are objectively stating that Republicans may lie about Democrats with impunity but Democrats may not even suggest anything that Republicans dislike.

  That is certainly your right under the First Amendment, but it is not journalism. It is Republican advocacy.

You can't assume people aren't lying. You can't assume that accusations of lying mean the accused is lying. You can't assume that someone meant to say something less horrible than what he said. You can't assume that people know what is true and what is not true.

Your job is to find out the truth and report it, especially when lots of people are heatedly expressing an opinion based on falsehoods. The story is not that people disagree. The story is that in an attempt to fix the most broken healthcare system in the developed world, we have people who want to completely overhaul it, people who don't want many changes at all, and people who are willing to use violence to prevent any changes in the broken system.

And even that's full of assumptions: is the system broken? Why does the United States pay twice as much per capita for health care as any other first-world country and yet gets only half as much coverage? How many health insurance jobs would be lost with universal coverage, and would the growth in the economy from people not stuck in bad jobs or bad places make up for it? Do Americans really believe it's more important to protect insurance companies from losses or layoffs than to break the chains between crappy jobs and available health care?

I know the biggest media outlets love "these guys said blah, but these other guys said not blah" stories—they're incredibly easy and no one yells at the reporters since they just "reported" what everyone said, like a good stenographer would. That's not journalism. The stories are out there.

Go find them.