FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The New York Times reports that in the last few years, several elite U.S. universities have begun to cover sex reassignment surgery and/or hormones for transgender students. On the one hand, it’s great that they’re reporting news like this, and after years of extremely disrespectful coverage of transgender issues, it feels like a victory that […]
I saw a press release yesterday announcing that Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-Wash) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I.-Vt.) were introducing a single-payer healthcare bill in both houses of Congress. Unless there was a drastic change in the corporate media, this news wasn’t going to be, well, news. And it hasn’t been so far. There were mentions […]
When I saw the headline (1/19/11), “Vocal Physicians Group Renews Health Law Fight,” I thought maybe–just maybe–the New York Times might be talking about Physicians for a National Health Program, the group comprised of “18,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance.” But no. The Times story is about the […]
FAIR’s latest Action Alert (4/23/10) concerns the Frontline program Obama’s Deal, which not only didn’t mention the single-payer proposal, but misrepresented single-payer advocates as proponents of a public option. You can leave copies of your messages to Frontline, or comments on the alert, in the comments thread of this post.
The PBS program Frontline on April 13 offered a look at the White House drive for healthcare reform titled Obama’s Deal. Like a previous Frontline special about the U.S. healthcare system, the program failed to adequately include single-payer. But the way the show did it this time was remarkable. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a […]
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 […]
Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt writes today (10/26/09) on the fear that the public option is a backdoor effort to bring a single-payer system to the United States: Private companies would have to raise their rates, so more people would choose the public plan, so private rates would rise further—and we could end […]
FAIR associate Sam Husseini has blogged his reaction (Husseini.org, 7/4/09) to a Barack “Obama Photo Op with Helen Thomas” in which the president “came with cupcakes to wish Helen Thomas a happy birthday”: “Now, if only he’d take her questions.” Obama claimed they have a “common birthday wish”–for a “real healthcare reform bill”–but Thomas is […]
Noticing that “days ago, buried in a chart under the headline “How the Health Care Bills Compare,” the New York Times provided some cogent yet cryptic information,” Norman Solomon (Guernica, 7/23/09) has done some valuable decoding of a Senate committee bill’s “public plan that would ‘compete with private insurers,’” as “the Times chart explained on […]
David Swanson (OpEd News, 7/22/09) has “another name for ‘what’s called a single-payer system’”–namely: “healthcare as a human right, not a commodity to be purchased. Many humans have this right. They just aren’t Americans.” Of Barack Obama’s July 22 news conference “mention of single-payer in passing, as something that would be better than anything else, […]
Former PR agent Wendell Potter’s stories of how he helped the health insurance’s industry’s campaign “to discredit Michael Moore and his film Sicko” calls to mind just how successful that campaign was. Corporate media coverage of the debate raised by the film’s expose of the for-profit insurance system went out of its way to demonize […]
“The lack of single-payer support by top politicians and elite media is striking” to veteran independent journalist Roger Bybee (Z Magazine, 7/09), who reminds us that “numerous surveys have shown the popularity of the single-payer approach.” Bybee points out, for example, that “a January CBS/NY Times poll showed 59 percent for a single-payer system described […]
Critiquing some more of National Public Radio‘s healthcare reportage, blogger Mytwords (NPR Check, 6/29/09) highlights Julie Rovner of Morning Edition “reporting this morning for the private health insurance lobby”: “The healthcare cost debate pretty much comes down to this: ‘You can’t cut costs without hurting someone.’” Rovner then backs up her “analysis” with “a little […]
ABC‘s Diane Sawyer claimed (CNN, 6/22/09) the network’s June 24 forum on President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan would feature “questions from every single vantage point.” Yet, ignoring calls from FAIR (Action Alert, 6/22/09) and advocacy groups such as Health Care Now!, the special did not include a single question from an advocate of single-payer national […]
Linking to a Felice Pace piece of June 14 that connects the near-absence of single-payer-focused NPR reportage to millions of dollars in underwriting the broadcaster has received from insurance industry heavies, NPR Check‘s Mytwords (6/17/09) includes his own comment left under Weekend Edition Saturday‘s “Health Care Reform From The Insurer’s Perspective” segment: Congratulations NPR—as a […]
In today’s New York Times (6/19/09), Kevin Sack’s article about the prospects for healthcare reform devotes all of a paragraph to single-payer: Seeking broad popular support, the president and congressional leaders have played between the 40-yard lines of the health policy spectrum. Those who favor a single-payer, government-run insurance system have been marginalized, along with […]
In his June 11 Washington Post column about a Capitol Hill hearing featuring single-payer advocates (imagine that!), Dana Milbank sheds no light on the policy debate, but manages to reveal just how deeply enveloped he is inside the Beltway bubble. “Socialism is not dead,” smirks Milbank. “It has, however, been confined to a House subcommittee.” […]
Advocates of a single-payer health plan in the United States aren’t exactly accustomed to seeing their efforts covered in the corporate media–or in the headline of a major newspaper story, no less. The Washington Post reminded us on June 6 what happens when media finally get around to taking a look at the issue. Under […]
The Wall Street Journal‘s Gerald Seib wrote a piece today (5/20/09–subscription required) that offers California as a model for understanding the difficulties in overhauling the healthcare system: California’s experience, in fact, represented a kind of trial run for the healthcare overhaul the president and Congress are about to attempt on the national level, offering useful […]
It is quite telling that, even considering how in Ed Schultz’s May 7 MSNBC interview of Physician for a National Health Program Margaret Flowers and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, he “slaps a gratuitous insult on the heroines of Code Pink” and “says he’s against protesting and “getting arrested” as a rule but thinks it’s OK if […]
