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For coverage of our delivery of FAIR's ongoing petition demanding that the TV networks cover proposals for a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system to ABC News' NYC studio, you can tune into Democracy Now!--a
media outlet that could teach the networks a thing or two about how to
contribute to, rather than interfere with, the public debate on
healthcare reform.
For coverage of our delivery of FAIR's ongoing petition demanding that the TV networks cover proposals for a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system to ABC News' NYC studio, you can tune into Democracy Now!--a
media outlet that could teach the networks a thing or two about how to
contribute to, rather than interfere with, the public debate on
healthcare reform.
If the public has managed to get any TV news at all about
single-payer, or to hear the perspectives of the large numbers of
physicians and citizens who support this proposal, it is thanks to
outlets like DN! and shows like the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.
Given that 59 percent of the public, and an equal percentage of
physicians, support single-payer, according to recent polls, one would
think that the inclusion of this proposal in the media debate would be
a no-brainer for any self-respecting journalist.
After all, we hear so much about the soaring costs of U.S.
healthcare and the tens of millions of uninsured Americans, and we know
that single-payer systems have been successful in keeping healthcare
costs down, while providing broad universal coverage, in other
industrialized countries.
There is a word for what Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman and PBS' Bill Moyers are
doing when they interview some of the many prominent medical
professionals who favor single-payer--people like doctors Quentin Young
and David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Journalism is what many people would call it.
Yet the practice stands in marked contrast to what's been going on at ABC,
where FAIR, Healthcare Now!, Physicians for a National Health Program,
the Private Health Insurance Must Go coalition, and the Raging
Grannnies delivered our petition on Tuesday, signed by over 12,500
people including filmmaker Michael Moore, former MSNBC host Phil Donohue, and actors Mike Farrell, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon.
As we pointed outto the ABC representative sent to receive the petitions, ABC has not had one single-payer advocate on air all year.
I recently had the chance to ask ABC's Senior VP of
Communications Jeffrey Schneider about why the network had disinvited
Obama's longtime physician Dr. David Scheiner from its recent
healthcare forum, where Dr. Scheiner was planning to ask the president
a question about healthcare reform.
(Watch FAIR's video in which Scheiner stated that he believed that he'd been disinvited from the forum because ABC was "afraid" he would ask a question that was more "challenging" than what ABC wanted here, and Democracy Now's interview with Scheiner here)
ABC's VP Schneider took offense at my question:
"To draw some kind of nefarious conclusion is simply ridiculous," he
told me in a phone interview.
Of course, there is a far more accurate term than a "nefarious" plot
to explain the systematic exclusion of a popular proposal that major
insurance companies and the politicians they back would rather not talk
about.
FAIR has always called it "corporate journalism"--the product of a
media system in which much of our news is produced by powerful
for-profit corporations, whose interests, through interlocking boards
of directors and lucrative advertizing contracts, often closely overlap
with those of other powerful corporations--including the insurance and
pharmaceutical companies that have the most to gain from keeping
single-payer off the table.
Now more than ever--as single-payer activists march in DC today to
commemorate the anniversary of Medicare--it is essential that we oppose
the corporate media's interference in the public debate that is so
urgently needed if we are to really address America's broken healthcare
system.
It is not too late to sign onto FAIR's petition, and help us spread the word about it, before we deliver it to the other TV networks, which a FAIR study found have a similarly dismal record when it comes to stonewalling discussion of single-payer.
Already, we've managed to create quite a buzz about the media's sick healthcare coverage, and yesterday, the LA Times
wrote about out petition delivery, and acknowledged that single-payer
represents a "gaping hole" in the media's healthcare coverage.
We now have over 13,000 signatures on the petition. Let's step up
the pressure and see what can be acheived with 20,000 on board.
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For coverage of our delivery of FAIR's ongoing petition demanding that the TV networks cover proposals for a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system to ABC News' NYC studio, you can tune into Democracy Now!--a
media outlet that could teach the networks a thing or two about how to
contribute to, rather than interfere with, the public debate on
healthcare reform.
If the public has managed to get any TV news at all about
single-payer, or to hear the perspectives of the large numbers of
physicians and citizens who support this proposal, it is thanks to
outlets like DN! and shows like the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.
Given that 59 percent of the public, and an equal percentage of
physicians, support single-payer, according to recent polls, one would
think that the inclusion of this proposal in the media debate would be
a no-brainer for any self-respecting journalist.
After all, we hear so much about the soaring costs of U.S.
healthcare and the tens of millions of uninsured Americans, and we know
that single-payer systems have been successful in keeping healthcare
costs down, while providing broad universal coverage, in other
industrialized countries.
There is a word for what Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman and PBS' Bill Moyers are
doing when they interview some of the many prominent medical
professionals who favor single-payer--people like doctors Quentin Young
and David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Journalism is what many people would call it.
Yet the practice stands in marked contrast to what's been going on at ABC,
where FAIR, Healthcare Now!, Physicians for a National Health Program,
the Private Health Insurance Must Go coalition, and the Raging
Grannnies delivered our petition on Tuesday, signed by over 12,500
people including filmmaker Michael Moore, former MSNBC host Phil Donohue, and actors Mike Farrell, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon.
As we pointed outto the ABC representative sent to receive the petitions, ABC has not had one single-payer advocate on air all year.
I recently had the chance to ask ABC's Senior VP of
Communications Jeffrey Schneider about why the network had disinvited
Obama's longtime physician Dr. David Scheiner from its recent
healthcare forum, where Dr. Scheiner was planning to ask the president
a question about healthcare reform.
(Watch FAIR's video in which Scheiner stated that he believed that he'd been disinvited from the forum because ABC was "afraid" he would ask a question that was more "challenging" than what ABC wanted here, and Democracy Now's interview with Scheiner here)
ABC's VP Schneider took offense at my question:
"To draw some kind of nefarious conclusion is simply ridiculous," he
told me in a phone interview.
Of course, there is a far more accurate term than a "nefarious" plot
to explain the systematic exclusion of a popular proposal that major
insurance companies and the politicians they back would rather not talk
about.
FAIR has always called it "corporate journalism"--the product of a
media system in which much of our news is produced by powerful
for-profit corporations, whose interests, through interlocking boards
of directors and lucrative advertizing contracts, often closely overlap
with those of other powerful corporations--including the insurance and
pharmaceutical companies that have the most to gain from keeping
single-payer off the table.
Now more than ever--as single-payer activists march in DC today to
commemorate the anniversary of Medicare--it is essential that we oppose
the corporate media's interference in the public debate that is so
urgently needed if we are to really address America's broken healthcare
system.
It is not too late to sign onto FAIR's petition, and help us spread the word about it, before we deliver it to the other TV networks, which a FAIR study found have a similarly dismal record when it comes to stonewalling discussion of single-payer.
Already, we've managed to create quite a buzz about the media's sick healthcare coverage, and yesterday, the LA Times
wrote about out petition delivery, and acknowledged that single-payer
represents a "gaping hole" in the media's healthcare coverage.
We now have over 13,000 signatures on the petition. Let's step up
the pressure and see what can be acheived with 20,000 on board.
For coverage of our delivery of FAIR's ongoing petition demanding that the TV networks cover proposals for a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system to ABC News' NYC studio, you can tune into Democracy Now!--a
media outlet that could teach the networks a thing or two about how to
contribute to, rather than interfere with, the public debate on
healthcare reform.
If the public has managed to get any TV news at all about
single-payer, or to hear the perspectives of the large numbers of
physicians and citizens who support this proposal, it is thanks to
outlets like DN! and shows like the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.
Given that 59 percent of the public, and an equal percentage of
physicians, support single-payer, according to recent polls, one would
think that the inclusion of this proposal in the media debate would be
a no-brainer for any self-respecting journalist.
After all, we hear so much about the soaring costs of U.S.
healthcare and the tens of millions of uninsured Americans, and we know
that single-payer systems have been successful in keeping healthcare
costs down, while providing broad universal coverage, in other
industrialized countries.
There is a word for what Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman and PBS' Bill Moyers are
doing when they interview some of the many prominent medical
professionals who favor single-payer--people like doctors Quentin Young
and David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Journalism is what many people would call it.
Yet the practice stands in marked contrast to what's been going on at ABC,
where FAIR, Healthcare Now!, Physicians for a National Health Program,
the Private Health Insurance Must Go coalition, and the Raging
Grannnies delivered our petition on Tuesday, signed by over 12,500
people including filmmaker Michael Moore, former MSNBC host Phil Donohue, and actors Mike Farrell, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon.
As we pointed outto the ABC representative sent to receive the petitions, ABC has not had one single-payer advocate on air all year.
I recently had the chance to ask ABC's Senior VP of
Communications Jeffrey Schneider about why the network had disinvited
Obama's longtime physician Dr. David Scheiner from its recent
healthcare forum, where Dr. Scheiner was planning to ask the president
a question about healthcare reform.
(Watch FAIR's video in which Scheiner stated that he believed that he'd been disinvited from the forum because ABC was "afraid" he would ask a question that was more "challenging" than what ABC wanted here, and Democracy Now's interview with Scheiner here)
ABC's VP Schneider took offense at my question:
"To draw some kind of nefarious conclusion is simply ridiculous," he
told me in a phone interview.
Of course, there is a far more accurate term than a "nefarious" plot
to explain the systematic exclusion of a popular proposal that major
insurance companies and the politicians they back would rather not talk
about.
FAIR has always called it "corporate journalism"--the product of a
media system in which much of our news is produced by powerful
for-profit corporations, whose interests, through interlocking boards
of directors and lucrative advertizing contracts, often closely overlap
with those of other powerful corporations--including the insurance and
pharmaceutical companies that have the most to gain from keeping
single-payer off the table.
Now more than ever--as single-payer activists march in DC today to
commemorate the anniversary of Medicare--it is essential that we oppose
the corporate media's interference in the public debate that is so
urgently needed if we are to really address America's broken healthcare
system.
It is not too late to sign onto FAIR's petition, and help us spread the word about it, before we deliver it to the other TV networks, which a FAIR study found have a similarly dismal record when it comes to stonewalling discussion of single-payer.
Already, we've managed to create quite a buzz about the media's sick healthcare coverage, and yesterday, the LA Times
wrote about out petition delivery, and acknowledged that single-payer
represents a "gaping hole" in the media's healthcare coverage.
We now have over 13,000 signatures on the petition. Let's step up
the pressure and see what can be acheived with 20,000 on board.