Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / AP

By Rich Noyes, Apr. 18, 2014, Newsbuster.org

Both ABC and CBS carved out a few seconds on their Thursday evening and Friday morning newscasts to boost President Obama’s claims of success for his ObamaCare program. Filling in for Diane Sawyer, ABC World News anchor David Muir cheered the “major milestone” of an alleged eight million enrollees, while CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley said the enrollment figures were a “recent success” for the health care law.

Gone was the skepticism that some reporters, like ABC’s Jon Karl, showed at the end of March when ObamaCare was nearing seven million sign-ups, as he threw cold water on the official White House stat: “How many of those have signed up were previously uninsured....We don’t know how many people signed up here were simply – had their previous plans cancelled. Also, we don’t know how many have actually paid their premiums.”

Those questions remain crucial to evaluating the new claim of eight million sign-ups, but neither ABC nor CBS reminded viewers of the potential problems with taking Obama’s figures at face value. (NBC, which joined the other broadcast networks in providing live coverage of the President’s Thursday afternoon press conference, actually skipped ObamaCare on both that night’s Nightly News and Friday morning’s Today.)

And both networks relayed Obama’s claim — accurate, but misleading — that, as ABC’s Amy Robach put it on Friday’s Good Morning America, “35 percent of the new enrollees are under age 35.”

That’s true, but one-fifth of those are young children included in family plans, leaving just 28 percent of those signing up are in the targeted group between ages 18 and 34. As a front-page story in this morning’s New York Times admitted, “some analysts said the optimum level would be 40 percent. ‘In an ideal world, you’d want to get as close to that number as possible,’ said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.”

On CBS This Morning, substitute co-host Sharon Alfonsi narrated the only report to cite an Obama critic (just one sentence): “In a statement, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says he remains committed to repealing and replacing ObamaCare.” But CBS also illustrated their 40-second report with a montage of favorable news headlines: “Enrollments Exceed Obama’s Target for Health Care Act” (New York Times); “Obamacare Is On a Winning Streak” (National Journal); “Obama spikes the football” (Politico); “Obama on health care law: ‘This thing is working’” (USA Today).

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