When Michael Moore makes a movie, you know he’s going to piss people off. In 2002, it was Bowling for Columbine, where he enraged everyone from the National Rifle Association to Lockheed Martin. In 2004, it was Fahrenheit 9/11,which etched him into the bad books of the entire US government. So it comes as no surprise that his new movie Sicko - which deals with the (lack of) health care in the USA - brings out the very worst in lobbyists and politicians.

But instead of putting the spotlight on a serious political issue, the curfuffle surrounding the movie serves as a perfect example of how the political debate in the Divided United States of America is polluted by systematic diversion tactics.

Only days after Sicko’s release, CNN aired a report where renowned Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta highlighted flaws in Moores’ film. The report also featured a political strategist who claimed that the so-called “free” health care Moore asserted was available in other countries was in fact not free but paid for by taxes.

Moore and even Gupta’s fans were infuriated. This led to the filmmaker’s first appearance on CNN since 2004, an appearance which consisted mostly of Moore accusing the news network, Sanjay Gupta and host Wolf Blitzer of being paid by health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to cover up the truth. Moore pointed out that the purported “facts” Gupta had used to poke holes in the movie’s premise were in fact not actual facts, and that it was CNN that was in the wrong. Over two nights, Moore managed to bring CNN to its knees and the network released an unheard of apology admitting its erroneous reporting.

But all this was a diversion: The debate which the film was meant to stir up was drowned out by Moore and Gupta’s squabbling over details and irrelevant numbers. Instead of discussing the core problem - that the USA is the only industrial country in the world without universal health care - they were arguing over exactly how much money Cuba spent per patient and what the average life span of an American is. Although interesting debates in and of themselves, they were completely irrelevant to the main issue and I must say I’m surprised Moore let himself be distracted from his cause by such a blatant diversion tactic.

This isn’t the first time diversion has been used to trivialize or bury a complicated political topic, and it is not going to be the last. The Sicko debate is a text book example of how and why debates over important political issues become loud-mouthed rants over technicalities, forcing the focus away from the policies and toward the people that question them. It has taken over 30 years to lift the debate over Global Warming from squabbling over numbers and models to the core of the problem, and it looks like the lessons learned by lobbyists, politicians and newscasters are now being applied to other political hot potatoes to keep the public from asking the important questions. It’s easier to discredit those that pose a challenge than admit a failed political platform.

This is hardly a revelation but merely serves as a reminder: In the US, free and impartial media is an illusion. The bottom line is that media outlets, even CNN, are corporations that put profit above everything else. Yes, even the truth.