Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: There's a lot of controversy around new mammogram guidelines—but it's not coming from the research community. We'll talk to Maryann Napoli of the Center for Medical Consumers about that evolving story. Also on the show: Ten years ago a seemingly obscure meeting of a relatively unknown international trade body made headlines around the world. The so-called Battle of Seattle galvanized anti-globalization protesters who shut down the World Trade Organization meetings and pushed criticism of the WTO's unchecked power into the corporate media. So, a decade on, how do those corporate media remember—or misremember—Seattle? And [...]
Nov
17
2009
On Healthcare, Don't Follow the Money
WaPo's new rule of journalism?
The Washington Post's Shailagh Murray (11/17/09) wrote a profile of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D.-Ark.) as one of the Democratic senators most likely to break with the rest of the party on healthcare reform. The article seemed to invert the advice Deep Throat once gave to the Post's Woodward and Bernstein into a new rule: Don't follow the money. Headlined "A Centrist in Healthcare Debate, Lincoln Hears It From All Sides," the piece presented Lincoln's stance as something of a puzzle: "Hundreds of thousands of Lincoln's constituents are low-income and lack insurance, the very kind of voters expected to benefit under [...]
Nov
13
2009
Trudy Lieberman on healthcare, Laurie Williams & Allan Zabel on cap & trade
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin : a source from a senior citizens group quoted in the Washington Post said the group’s main challenge today is simply to try to keep the record straight about what's actually in the health care reform bill, as opposed to what’s being claimed about it. That would seem to be the basic challenge facing reporters, too, but have they been too caught up with coverage of congressional politicking to do justice to it? We’ll hear from journalist Trudy Lieberman on the health care reform story. Also on the show: Two EPA lawyers have been [...]
Nov
01
2009
The Money Taboo in Health Reform Coverage
Industry donations to powerful players often go unmentioned
By Daniel Ward
As powerful lawmakers debate healthcare legislation of enormous potential impact, corporate media have largely failed to explore the problem of health and insurance industries attempting to influence many of these legislators with a flood of campaign contributions. Despite Deep Throat’s urging journalists to “follow the money,” there’s a longstanding media taboo against discussing the role of campaign contributions in healthcare initiatives (Extra!, 1-2/04). This reluctance is particularly striking this year, when health industry spending on lobbying efforts and political contributions is unprecedented. In what the Washington Post (7/6/09) referred to as “a record-breaking influence campaign by the healthcare industry,” $1.4 [...]
Oct
30
2009
David Swanson on healthcare debate, Bruce Dixon on the 'public option'
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Making sense of the health care debate. In the past week we've supposedly seen the comeback of public and political support for the public option, in some form or another. We're also told that Democratic majority leader Harry Reid must gather 60 votes to pass any bill. Is any of that true or is media coverage of political possibilities off base? Author and activist David Swanson will join us to try and untangle these story lines. Also, Progressives and others interested in truly universal healthcare, as in healthcare that would cover everyone, have been [...]
Oct
13
2009
NYT: 'FAIR Had a Point'
Paper's public editor agrees with activists
In response to FAIR's September 22 action alert, New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt agreed (10/11/09) that the paper's September 20 article about Medicare for all excluded supporters of a single-payer healthcare system. FAIR pointed out that the article, written by Katharine Seelye, laid out many arguments against single-payer--it would mean a big tax increase, it would hurt doctors, and so on--without including balancing responses from supporters. Hoyt agreed: The Times has focused its coverage on proposals that editors and reporters judge to be politically feasible, which means that tort reform, popular with conservatives, and single-payer health coverage, popular [...]
Oct
01
2009
Ex-Flak Sees Industry Script in Town Hall Attacks
Interview with Wendell Potter
Where has the investigative reporting been on the organizing behind attacks on healthcare reform at the “town halls” members of Congress have been holding? Wendell Potter sees private health insurance industry as involved in the situation—and he should know. Until last year, Potter was head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest for-profit health insurance companies. Before that, he headed communications at Humana, another huge for-profit health insurer. Potter started as a reporter for the Memphis Press-Scimitar and worked for the Scripps-Howard bureau in Washington before going into PR. In doing PR for Humana and CIGNA, he [...]
Oct
01
2009
Healthcare Reform Minus the Public Option--or the Public
Waving the white flag and kicking the left
By Peter Hart
It was probably a given that the corporate press would mangle the debate over this year’s healthcare reform legislation, considering their poor showing in the healthcare debate of the early ’90s (Extra!, 7-8/93). The only questions were when and how. One answer came immediately, as the media shut off discussion of a popular single-payer plan before it even started (Extra!, 6/09). But in the debate the media did allow, the answer came in late summer, when “town hall” protests and the media’s fetish for bipartisanship pushed the discourse well to the right. In some ways the media’s malpractice was typical. [...]
