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Health Reform Too Boring for Broadcast?
Not at KQED
Over the weekend, Politico published one of those juicy, inside-the-industry stories that media execs love to read. The story trashed health care reform as boring television and noted that MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan called health care “bad for ratings.” As proof of Ratigan’s assertion, Politico cited the comparatively low turnout for the president’s health care news conference last week—24.5 million viewers, the smallest prime time audience of the Obama presidency. And, said Politico, Fox was right for not airing the president’s words—its episode of So You Think You Can Dance won first place in the eight p.m. time slot.
Politico consulted Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post, who said that indeed health care was “bad for ratings, but not talking about it is bad for the American people.” OK, we agree. Then John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC, weighed in: “It’s not only not a cable TV-friendly story; it’s not a journalism-friendly story.” Harwood, who also writes for The New York Times, opined that reporters need to understand the intricacies and nuances of health policy before they inform their audiences. Well, yes. We’ve been offering suggestions of how to do that for nearly two years now.
NPR’s Julie Rovner added her two cents, saying that health care is “so big and so complicated that the public is never really going to understand all the moving parts of this.” That makes them vulnerable to the fear-mongering ads bought and paid for by special interest demagogues of all stripes, she explained. Jon Banner, Charlie Gibson’s executive producer over at ABC News, believes “there are too many bills with too many details, which are all different…. That’s confusing to people.”
So should we stop explaining to the public how they will be affected by whatever comes forth from Congress because, as Rovner suggests, they will never understand it anyway? Should we forget about the details, as Banner implies? For months, we at Campaign Desk have criticized the president and members of Congress for being too vague, and have urged them to explain—in detailed terms—how reform will affect their constituents. Failing to do so leaves the public susceptible to special interest propaganda. What exactly does a “public option” or “bundled payments” mean to an auto mechanic on Main Street?
We’re sorry Politico didn’t talk to us about good health care reporting. We would have pointed its reporter to KQED in San Francisco, which through its Health Dialogue series has done an excellent job all year of covering health topics, ranging from the use of emergency rooms by drug addicts to myths and misinformation about the Canadian health care system. On this one, details do matter, and health reporter Sarah Varney separated the facts from the fiction currently being spread by TV ads purchased by conservative interests who oppose single-payer systems.
Varney traveled to Vancouver to learn what health care is actually like in Canada. Contrary to popular belief, she found health care works pretty well. In a note to me, Varney said:
I would say as an American health reporter there is a lot of pressure inside news rooms to give the Canadian horror stories equal footing with what my reporting actually found—-which was that the Canadian system is by-and-large a functioning system that covers everyone for half the cost with enviable health outcomes.
Varney told a compelling and interesting story that directly contradicts the ads now running on U.S. television. She also conducted a roundtable conversation with some of the best Canadian health experts, including leading health economists Robert Evans and Morris Barer. They explained that their system is not socialized medicine—doctors don’t work for the state; they are independent and run their own practices. What is socialized is the insurance pool—every Canadian is in it—which powers the country’s lower cost, not-for-profit health insurance system.
As for the long waits Canadians supposedly endure, the number of people who do that is “vanishingly small.” The illusion has been created, said Evans, that there are lines of people near death wanting services in Canada. He called that “absolute nonsense.” The government has recently taken steps to alleviate whatever waits existed, by establishing national benchmarks and allocating more money for certain types of care.
Varney’s piece addressed the notion of rationing, often used as a scare tactic by right-wing groups. In Canada, the experts told KQED listeners, care is rationed according to need; in the U.S., it’s rationed by the ability to get insurance and pay the bills.
Granted, KQED is a public radio station, but we don’t see why some of the stories it has tackled can’t be replicated by enterprising TV producers and reporters—that is, if they are seriously interested in transcending health care’s image as a ratings buster. The story Varney did for radio I did in print for Consumer Reports in 1992. I, too, went to Vancouver to investigate the claims conservative interests were making, and, like Varney, I found them untruthful. I interviewed some of the same people she did—Evans and Barer—who told me the same things they told Varney. That was one of the best and most enlightening reporting experiences of my career. If we can do a story that worked well in print for its time and now works well in radio and on the Web, why can’t it be done on TV?
34 Comments so far
Show AllSo, the very physical health of our populace now depends upon the ratings of news programs.
This country has lost it's collective sanity. It needs surgery in the form of removing a worthless growth....the corporatocracy/pseudo people's representatives.
Do you not think it's time to hit the streets??
Never mind. I already know the reply.
I've done a hell of a lot of hitting the streets since 1998:
The Iraq starvation-and-disease blockade - with bombings when Willie felt like it;
Yugoslavia,
WTO, WB/IMF,
a living wage,
a rigged presidential election,
US aggression in Afghanistan,
a Nobel Peace prize-winning mass-murderer coming to towm,
a Zionist killer coming to town,
US aggresion in Iraq,
The 121 jailed for dissenting against US aggresson in Iraq,
racist killer-cops,
gutting public transit...
Results? Zero.
Try to find any news of the thousnds of citizens hitting the streets and their congresspersons offices for single payer yesterday.
You make an excellent point. The only purpose of street demonstrations is to draw attention to an issue. If the corporate media refuse to cover such an event then its impact is nil.
q
quickstepper July 31st, 2009 12:13 pm.............They can ignore thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, but not MILLIONS OR TENS OF MILLIONS...and that's what it will take if we truly want change. If not...frig it...let's just sit back and take whatever they throw. BUT, something tells me that when they start mandatory innoculation of our children with this untested deadly vaccine in the fall.....and the innocent start getting adverse and possibly deadly reactions.....something will snap.
Fine. Then start taking over broadcast centers, disrupting satellite feeds, land-lines and stopping printing presses. Take the war to the media. After all, at the root, THEY are the problem. They can't or won't do their jobs of holding these criminals accountable. Washington or Wall Street don't fear them, so, what good are they?
Shut 'em down.
moonpie July 31st, 2009 1:14 pm............The press makes little difference since most Americans do not read. Access to TV would be the main focus to reach tens of millions. How? Who the hell knows. BUT, short of massive marches, TV is a must. And now, since it's all digital, where do you start without the launch of a satellite that could easily be shot down? We need some super hackers.
Trudy Lieberman's appearance last week on the Bill Moyers Journal belies the claim that discussion of health care reform has to be "confusing" and "boring." Not meaning to sound conspiratorial, but conspiratorially he asked: is it the very intention of those who benefit from the health care status quo (the "industry") to have reform proposals so confusing that people, including members of Congress, will pronounce them as "boring," refuse to deal with the confusion and retreat into the "comfort" of the status quo, which is at least the "devil we know" rather than those we are pushed to fear? This "no result" outcome of the current health care debate may not be as politically harmful to Obama and the Democrats as their "urgency" for something that is better than nothing can be paraded before voters at the next election to assure them that we busted a gut trying to get a reform bill passed, but it was knocked down by those nasty Republicans and blue dogs. (On second thought lay off those dogs a bit, we have to have them in our kennel if we are to retain the Democratic majority in Congress---you know, that majority that's supposed to do just ever-so-much for the progress of our country.) It's a win-win situation: we get the votes of all those Americans who want better health care, and the money of those industry forces that are so adamant in selling insurance and letting "the market" determine health care costs.
Re Jerry D Rose July 31st, 2009 10:30 am,
who suggests that the health care debate has deliberately been made so arcane that the average citizen tunes out:
There's no earthly reason, other than that, that a bill has to be 1000 pages long. As John Conyers pointed out on Moyers's show a few years back, Congress doesn't even have the time to read the bills they vote on, much less the time to write them.
Being called a conspiracy theorist doesn't prove there are no conspiracies.
Jethro Tullamore: Thanks for seconding my "conspiracy" motion.
I'm wondering whether you (or any one else) would endorse as well my suggestion that the Democratic Party is in a win-win situation in which, even if they lose, they can get political advantage for trying so hard to win a battle which (they must have known all long) they could not have won. On second thought, I'm thinking they could "lose" but ironically only if the bill passes in a form that makes serious inroads on the inordinate profits within the health care industry. In that instance, they would no doubt be taken to the woodshed by the industry lobbyists, have their campaign contributions stripped away and otherwise be given the whuppin of their lives. Maybe they need to be careful what they push for, and pull back, as they seem to be doing, at the slightest sign of displeasure from those who hold the switches that can be used against their backsides.
Re Jerry D Rose July 31st, 2009 1:20 pm
In the eyes of the multinational corporate/gangster class which now sits uneasily astride the world, it's utterly meaningless whether the Ds win or lose any particular legislatve pissing match. The agenda is being moved forward, and neither the Ds nor Rs have any desire to obstruct it---far from it, in fact; they are, with lamentably few exceptions, its willing, even enthusiastic agents, no doubt expecting to raise their standard of living to Ozymandian heights.
Only the people in our righteously furious and non-cooperating tens of millions can prevent them from reaching their goal.
Jethro Tullamore: I agree that the duopolist powers that control the U.S. and the world are indifferent to whether the D or R crime family is running their operation in the U.S. I'm just trying for a spot of pre-emptive journalism in which I anticipate an election-time scenario in which the "righteously furious" tens of millions will once again be called on to select Democrats in the Congress and White House by demonizing the "good for nothing" (Harry Truman's term) members of Congress who voted against "people's" legislation. So, Charlie Brown America, are you going to let Ms. Corporate America's Lucy Van Pelt hold that football for you once again as you race down the field and fall flat on your ass?
Re Jerry D Rose July 31st, 2009 2:11 pm
If you're suggesting that the Ds will predominate in the 2010 midterm and 2012 presidential elections based on claims that "we tried, but darn it, it wasn't politically feasible," I reluctantly and resignedly concur.
But if enough Obamabots finally grow angry with his Clintonian triangulations, and vote Green rather than sitting it out in disgust, you and I could be proven wrong, and happily so.
"But if enough Obamabots finally grow angry with his Clintonian triangulations, and vote Green rather than sitting it out in disgust, you and I could be proven wrong, and happily so."
So far I don't see that happening and I was slaughtered by some of them today. Worst cretins they are ! They're already getting desperate even for the governor's race in VA and NJ and next year and 2012? Hang tight ! This is not gonna be pretty.
First of all, Jerry, I trust that you understand that the denegration of the term "conspiracy" into a pejorative is itself a squiddy cloud of ink-- the work of an Establishment dedicated to acting in collusive and conspiratorial ways, and determined to protect its self-serving and treacherous SOP.
So sounding "conspiratorial" requires no apology-- although the disclaimer may encourage those foolish enough to buy into the propagandistic meme that seeks to dismiss unorthodox views out of hand.
All that said, I have no doubt that modern legislation is deliberately designed to be opaque to the ordinary citizen, even an educated ordinary citizen. Here's another excerpt from my interminable Purple Period-- a recent comment elsewhere that expands on this point:
______________________________________
... [Y]our point touches upon one of those woolly convictions I've harbored for years, and vaguely mean to research and clarify.
The term "transparent" has been done to death, but it'll have to do. So: for the sake of discussion, let's say that the Founders sincerely intended to create as transparent a government as possible, and that they implicitly expected that elected representatives would, in general, honorably and soberly discharge their official duties in an open and straightforward manner.
Speaking broadly, that is. Obviously any government of humans will accommodate exceptions and harbor miscreants, and obviously there are extreme and isolated circumstances calling for subtlety and secrecy.
To connect big, lumpy dots: the USA arose in a time when rapid territorial expansion, technology and commerce combined to create increasingly diverse, complex, and specialized law and legislation.
Meanwhile, the partisan politics frowned upon by the Founders shifted democracy from populist direct participation to membership in a party; the essence of partisanship is ceding one's individual franchise to the authority and control of the party.
Thus, in my view, a creeping schism gradually arose in which a government ostensibly of, by, and for The People assumed total responsibility for, and control of, the literal Letter(s) of the Law(s). And the process and product of legislation perforce became an arcane technical process with a language and form unintelligible to a layperson.
It's as if the enacting of laws adopted an approach consistent with a standard expressed by pitching great Johnny Sain: "The world doesn't want to hear about the labor pains; the world only wants to see the baby."
And, as sometimes happens when concerned parties finally SEE a baby with uncertain parentage, the parties are reduced to desperately seeking features that bear even a faint resemblance to possible progenitors. When standing at the window of the legislation nursery, the hope is to find features that resemble the true and original intent and scope of the legislation.
So now we're stuck with a professionalized, specialized political elite that transacts business way over the heads of the ordinary citizen. There are wheels within wheels within wheels in infinite recession, and even citizens with time, training, and dedication can't reasonably be sufficiently informed on every important issue.
And ironically, the furtive and increasingly opaque modern organized crime syndicate of our government does not hesitate to adopt an adversarial posture toward the citizenry from which it ostensibly derives its authority!
The ultra-specialized elite of detached professionals, including the banksters and generals, are a Mandarin class that far more resemble courtiers in a monarchy than humble servants of the People.
They are sustained by a mystification that is toxic to a rational, enlightened system of government.
Simplify, simplify!
Indeed, the dance of Amerikan government is in a decadent phase, an arrhythmic blur of elaborate and ornate steps trampling the Constitution and We the People underfoot.
· Yr Obd't Servant
YOB: I think you need to change your posting moniker. You're nobody's "obedient servant" when it comes to expressing yourself about the malaise of our time. The post you reprinted is a brilliant evocation of this malaise. I'd like to know the nature of the material to which you were responding.
I half think and half don't think you have read Robert Michels' Political Parties, the work that established the "iron law of oligarchy," finding the recession from democracy an (almost) inevitable consequence of the growth in complexity of the tasks that government bureaucrats are called on to do, creating the very Mandarin class (as you put it) that government agencies have become. Michels was German and wrote in the 1920s before C. Wright Mills in the USA developed the concept of the "power elite" which we today know and love (?) as the military-industrial complex along with its class of government functionaries. One only need look at the "professionals" who dominate the Obama administration to see this complex in full cry. Oh my man (or woman, who knows on these posts?) you are forcing my old brain back into some of the forgotten precincts of my classical sociological theory training. Who'd have thunk that all these dead poets of human society would come back to haunt us and inspire us today?
(Re: conspiracy: As one who spent nearly 20 years of my life seeking to exhume the corpse of conspiracy in the JFK assassination and finding one---actually several of them---not because I was looking because it was there, I don't really mind being identified as a "conspiracist" just because I'm honest enough to tell the facts as I've found the facts to be. Like you say I probably use the disclaimer to avoid a reader jumping off the train of my thought at the very mention or suggestion of same.)
NPR - supporting the right wing for decades.
Why is it a no-go-zone for Media?
Sponsors.
Corporate media is doing its job for the ruling elites it is owned and controlled by. They are a central part of the most intensive and extensive propaganda operation the world has ever seen. Fearfully, to most US citizens, the propaganda system is invisible, just as the rulers intend. If Nazi Goebbels returned he would be stunned by what has been done here. Weapons of mass distraction and deception, that's the corporate media.
I'm re-posting my comment here because it falls in line with your comment:
Here's the real core of the issue that is not even whispered: the status quo wants to dismantle the health care system for at least 20% of the population.
This "rationing" is being done in the service of a man-made Malthusian scenario.
Why? Because, it has finally dawned on the ruling class that their survival depends on a drastic reduction of the earth's population because of unsustainability issues and projected scarcity of resources (forget oil, how about water?). Look around, and you will notice genocides happening (at present, mostly in Africa), Monsanto hording agricultural patents (for eventual political power and control), and a huge "flu" epidemic (whether swine or not) lurking in the near future.
So, denying health care access through exorbitant insurance premiums is just another "tool" of population control; of course, the social Darwinists will rejoice at the outcome of this sinister scenario that will reinforce their ideology of the survival of the ruling class over the downtrodden. Compound this with the financial catastrophes (both present and future) and you have a total picture. The arrogance and blatantly belligerent BEHAVIOR of the health, financial, and media industrial-complexes is the "canary in the mine."
The underbelly of any issue resides many "layers" under...requiring deep thinking and "step" thinking, beyond just reading between the lines or the small print. A society that has stripped pure analytical thinking from its educational curriculum is bound to perish under the tsunami of misinformation.
I happened to be in my car yesterday when the local right-wing talk radio “The Pat White Show” was on the air” (WOWO AM 1190, 3pm till 6pm).
Far from making the health care discussion boring he was able to supposedly quote, by page number, portions of the health care bill that scared the crap out of his right leaning audience.
Did you know that the health care bill gives Uncle Sam the right to examine every financial transaction of every citizen of the U. S.? Did you know that the health care bill requires that health care providers give treatment to illegal aliens at NO CHARGE? Did you know that the health care bill requires small businesses to pay the health care bills of their employees? Did you know that the health care bill will prevent the elderly from receiving treatments?
After a few minutes of this B.S. every caller was against changes to the system.
I'm surprised you survived. Use lightly, and only when absolutely needed (to gather ammunition of rightwing insanity).
The strategy to Kill Health Care reform is simple BAFFLE THEM WITH BULL SHIT. How else could u get some complete BOZO asking the President in a Town hall meeting last week to keep the Gov'ts hands off his Medicare!
Exactly. The same "complexity" argument was used to kill the Iran-Contra hearings, the S&L scandal hearings, etc. It's a lie. Short and simple.
Another name is 'divide and conquer'. Healthcare is as simple as looking at any of our major capitalist trading partners, checking the WHO rating of their healthcare versus ours, and checking their per capita spending (which is HALF what we spend). What makes it complicated is the need to confuse Americans into dropping out of the discussion. And knowing who is behind such confusion isn't complicated either: just look at who benefits: corporate healthcare.
Do not abandon hope on the health care bill. I just posted a blog on open.salon.com that takes the hide off of Congress, which is responsible for this mess. Look on the search slot under the name old new lefty.
I did not elaborate the fact that when Congress passes a health care bill, President Obama will have a secret weapon, which is the writing of the Federal Regulations. This gives him as much power as necessary to change parts of the legislation he does not like.
"Contrary to popular belief, she found [Canadian] health care works pretty well."
Unpatriotic nonsense. Don't listen to outrageous lies and fabrications from foreign souces -- nor to truth from foreign sources for that matter. The good ol' USA is the golden land of opportunity and has the best health care system in the world. If you can't afford it, that's your own problem.
Those Canadian commie-socialists are setting a very bad example much too close to the imperial center. And they force their women to wear heavy clothes, sometimes even including scarfs over their faces, in the winter time. They can expect to be "liberated" any day now. Their current Prime Minister has promised to greet the troops with candies and rose petals.
Those aren't women in heavy clothes, they're lumberjacks, it's right there in the Canadian national anthem, "I put on woman's clothing and hang around in bars. Oh I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK."
"If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
I think people are very interested in the discussion -- most of us have a very large vested interest in the outcome. I just think that the powers that be -- corporate-owned media -- have nothing to gain by a gigantic upheaval (that means reform and a public option, or, better yet, single payer) in the way medical services are currently (not) delivered. We are being told it's too boring, to justify the news not doing its job to inform the public about important issues.
Why don't they broadcast SiCKO uninterrupted by commercials? That would be quite informative. They could get PBS to grant permission to re-broadcast Bill Moyers Journal from a couple of weeks ago -- the segment with Wendell Potter. Neither of these two "shovel-ready" shows would cost them a penny to produce -- just the royalties. I didn't fall asleep during either of these documentaries. In fact they both made me so angry I wanted to ... well, I won't say what it made me want to do -- that might get me arrested.
It's boring if you leave out single payer. It's boring if you discuss the outrageously complicated health system Obama is trying to foist off on us. Why should people be interested in news which covers only which system we are going to get screwed by. I'd love to see a debate between single payer advocates and health insurance reps. THAT would be interesting.
Ed Shultz is in the process of ripping a new asshole for representative Tom Griffin - a punk ass from Arkansas.
He just blew Ben Nelson out of the water - Ed is for single payer and is not a liberal wimp.
Six PM is primetime for MSM - MSNBC is MSM.
Ed spends more than half his show on healthcare.
He may not speak the language of liberals - he speaks the language of average Americans who do no read the Columbia Journalism Review
And know he is having an adult discussion with Markos of Daily Kos.
Even on most progressive blogs, an article about healthcare gets little response yet an article about gun control, abortion, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Obama's birth certificate, and other celebrity trash gets hundreds and even thousands of responses. Better yet, go to youtube.com and see which videos get more viewers. Maybe even the Internet has its limitations though there might be a way more of us aware ones could turn the tables around on getting our cornfed electorate out of misdirected attention.
JenniferBedingfield, true that. And I really messed up on Alternet and accidentally generated a boat load of harebrained responses. On most of those blogs where there are hundreds and thousands of useless comments, I wonder who's really posting anyway. To me, those nut brains sound more like the already well to dos who benefited from Bush's 8 years and getting more out of Obama's 4 through luck but it could be just kids playing with their parents' computers. Thinking about you and Bliss Doubt made me want to go back to Alternet and take a stab even though I'd go bonkers showing my anger and shouting about God punishing America thanks to everything getting suckier. Then again, you seem to be calm and cool over there even when everyone's hitting you because they're scared. If last year's election results told us anything, it was that we're still in the minority despite the power of the Internet. I don't even know when we'll get health care reform passed. I'm already very angry after watching my sister struggling and her husband trying to help her pay her medical expenses because the company she was employed under didn't cover for her even where it appeared to and her husband is still looking for a job.
By and large, America is the land of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" rugged individualism. That's fine in some ways, but it also means that any proposal to take some of the country's massive wealth and redistribute it to the downtrodden masses faces an uphill battle, and the media gleefully help kill any such proposal. Social Security was instituted in 1935, at the bottom of the Great Depression, when the need was too great to ignore, corporations had been running amok for a long time without regulation, and the president was a tough, inspirational leader who wouldn't compromise on his agenda. Medicare was passed in 1964, in an idealistic age, just after Kennedy was killed, and when America was at its peak of wealth and power, and the president was a first-class arm-twister bent on getting his agenda passed. Other than these anomalies, America has always been very resistant to redistribution of wealth by the government. Both the financial aristocracy and the ignorant, gullible public participate in this. (Case in point: "Teabaggers")
As I've written before, there is a threat, in British Columbia at least, to health care. The right-wing government is underfunding the system in order to whet the appetite for privatization. The public is not buying it, because we as citizens are highly supportive of our health care system as it has been practised up until now. All this is to say that the battle is never won, the victory is not and will never be complete, at least in North America. Those who benefit from a private system will remain, trying their best to undermine what we have worked for. Individuals must constantly work to maintain what we achieve.