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Censored by ABC, Obama's Doc Speaks Out
In the wake of Republican charges that ABC was attempting to "exclude opposing viewpoints" from its June 24 forum on healthcare reform, the media was awash in concerns that the "town hall" would not allow for challenging questions to President Barack Obama.
Conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity proclaimed that "Journalism in America is dead." Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz expressed concern that the forum would marginalize "stakeholders" such as private insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations.
As it turned out, Republican talking points and corporate interests were really very well represented at the forum.
The same cannot be said of the 59 percent of the public, and equal percentage of physicians, who, according to recent polls, support single-payer national health insurance. Not a single question about single-payer was posed by either ABC's hand-selected forum guests or by hosts Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson. (Watch FAIR's video on ABC's single-payer blackout.)
And now it has emerged that Barack Obama's own longtime personal physician -- a single-payer advocate -- was censored by ABC.
Dr. David Scheiner, who served as Obama's personal physician for 22 years, speaks out in a new FAIR video about how he was disinvited from the town-hall just two days before the prime-time forum.
He believes ABC was "afraid" because the question he was planning to ask the president -- a question about single-payer -- was "more troublesome" than ABC wanted.
There have been no single-payer advocates on ABC all year. And a recent FAIR study found single-payer was equally shut out on CBS and NBC.
Dr. Scheiner is one of thousands of signatories of a FAIR petition demanding that the networks include single-payer in the health care debate, along with Harvard medical professors Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, Dr. Quentin Young of Physicians for a National Health Program, Donna Smith of the California Nurses Association, filmmaker Michael Moore, former MSNBC host Phil Donahue and actor Mike Farrell.
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11 Comments so far
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Censorship of political ideas disturbing to the status quo of the powerful and rich don't seem to disturb Americans too much.
Censorship of a commercial entertainment venue, however, creates a howl.
Why is that?
Shameful!
It is apparent to all that Maiinstream Media works for the "Power Elite" and the American People are meant to pay the way.....
There is no hurry to pass a Healthcare Bill.....Yet Obama wants to hurry the process and make sure it is done before August 31...........Why? So he can tell the American People, "This is the best we can do! We will try to make adjustments!"
Joe Biden challenged Republicans to come up with a better idea:
1. End U.S. Involvement in Irag and Afghanistan and turn the job over to the UN.........The United States has dumped over 6 TRILLION DOLLARS, 5,000 American lives, 1.5 Million Iragis and Afghan dead,and 4 million people living in refugee camps to takeover control of the oil fields and oil pipeline.
2. Go back to the pre Reagan tax tables for the next five years. Let's be patriotic and get rid of the national debt and get americans jobs......You want a tax credit, build a factory and hire 5000 employees at a fair wage and run it at cost for five years.....
I guess you have to know why Chase Bank and Goldman Sachs are so profitable......It pays to start a war, but only for a few.....It pays to get free money from the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Government !!!!
It is amazing how they censored out Single Pay.....But then, they censored out and marginalized anyone who questioned the "Official Version of 9/11" and that there was no independent investigation of the murder of almost 3,000 people is incredible to me.
For the millionth time...
Whoever controls the media controls the country. Period.
Cygnus-X1-isaHole July 17th, 2009 6:14 pm
"Whoever controls the media controls the country. Period."
And it's always interesting to take note of who is on the "Board of Directors" of all mega-corporations.
"The Board of Directors of Murdoch’s News Corp. holding company, owners of the Times of London, is also interesting. It includes, in addition to Murdoch as Chairman and CEO, also former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, the very conservative and very controversial friend of Britain’s Tony Blair, who split EU opposition to the 2003 Iraq War by backing Blair and Bush. Murdoch’s board also includes Andrew Knight of J. Rothschild Capital Management, the financial holding of Jacob Lord Rothschild, the head of the British branch of the legendary financial family. It also includes Viet D. Dinh who served as an Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003, under George W. Bush, and who was the chief architect of the USA PATRIOT Act."
Excellent article by F. William Engdahl:
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2009/0708.html
Cygnus is right on there.
"The media are as liberal as the corporations that own them."
- bumpersticker I once saw.
Why does America want to go down a very similar road to the former Soviet Union? Why is it emulating Pravda? (Pravda ironically means "truth" in the Russian language)
THere's a saying, "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged. A Liberal is a conservative who got outsourced, or who had to deal with the HMOs." The insurance companies need to clean up their act. This isn't emulating the USSR.
The stats are in. A lot more people want single payer health care than wanted Obama to be President.
"Conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity proclaimed that "Journalism in America is dead." "
Talk about irony!!
I strongly suspect that Obama had a bar on handling single payer questions as a condition of appearing. Do we really think that ABC didn't share who the speakers would be with Obama's handlers?