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 Moore. USA Today ran an editorial tied to the film against a single-payer healthcare plan, which was paired with an “Opposing View” from an insurance executive that denounced single-payer even more harshly. CBS News‘ Jeff Greenfield distinguished himself with his (inaccurate) claim that the U.S. doesn’t have public funding for healthcare because “Americans are just different.” And reviewing CNN‘s report on Sicko can only make one relieved that Sanjay Gupta turned down the job of surgeon general.
If you’d like to see an end to this kind of insurance industry PR masquerading as journalism, you can sign FAIR’s petition calling for the inclusion of the single-payer option in coverage of the healthcare reform debate.
Dear Sirs,
I expect a fair delivery of the news when I watch network television. Maybe I am naive to expect the corporations to allow that even though they are suppose to operate in the public interest.
The vast majority of US citizens are fed up with the insurance companies and want some form of public health care. Your programs should have reflected that information.
The untruths perpetrated about SiCKO by the mainstream media and the virtual blackout about HR676 Medicare-for-All (which has 85 cosponsors in the House) will all come back to bite the corporate “powers that be” and their handmaidens in Congress. You would think those folks might be watching what is happening in Iran, for instance, but no, not OUR CEO’s and political leaders.
Dear Liars and Thieves,
Thanks for your ongoing onslaught against truth. I really do appreciate it. Who needs health insurance anyway? This morning I held the door open for a young man who had torn something in his right leg. He was clearly in pain, and he thanked me and told me that fixing the torn “whatever” would cost a mere TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS.
Good thing he has no money, right?
Goes to show you what a terrible thing it is you waste a mind on television…
I am an advocate for people with cancer. When we relocate to many states – maybe we need to live closer to family when ill, maybe we lose our jobs, etc., we have pre-existing conditions. Our insurance, if we can even get it, costs a fortune and for what?
This system is making the country bankrupt and its people. Single payer works all over the world! Congress has it too.
MEANSTREAM MEDIA is the lost 4th estate…it has become the ghost of the repupblic that our founding fathers gave us and as Ben Franklin said…”if we could keep it”.
It’s been scared out of our bodies and souls by Bill Moyers “Secret Government”..i.e..THE HAVES.
The False Flag Event of 9-11 stikes a mortal blow to the very foundation stone the FreeMasonory Forefathers laid with great care, ceremony, and charity for humanity.
We have failed the world. We have failed ourselves.
To Lola, yes I agree television is more BAD than good.
Why even send your children to college or university to earn a degree in journalism, when you can pull any joe smoe off the street place him in front of the telepromter and have him or her repeat. No need to waste thousands upon thousands of dollars on this type of profession. It is just as bad as watching TV.
The health insurance industry in the US is a classic example of RE-DISTRIBUTION of wealth, that the RIGHT doesn’t want to talk about !
Members of congress had better listen to what 60-70% of the public voiced loudly and clearly in the last two elections. The public clearly wants a single-payer plan like HR676. 60% of physicians want it too. Too many people are suffering and dying due to the corporate greed of the HMOs and other insurance companies.We’ve all seen the statistics, I’m sure. They(the insurance companies) ARE the cancer in health care and they all need to go.
Health care is a right just as police and fire protection are in any civilized society.Corporate greed is depriving us of this right.
Congress had better stop making choices based on the election monies they’re receiving from these corporations which, incidentally, are, at least, into the many millions of dollars, and listen to their constituents. Congressional members can be voted out of office. A revolution is already going on and will worsen if congress doesn’t ‘clean up its act’.
Patti Walters