Broder Column-Generator Strikes Again
Washington Post columnist David Broder has made a career out of advocating a certain type of corporate centrism–earning him the honorary (?) title of the Dean of the D.C. Press Corps. The formula is...
View ArticleInside Dana Milbank's Bubble
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...
View ArticleMedia Men Debate Women's Rights
Columnist Katha Pollitt (Nation, 6/10/09) has examined the extent to which, "in the immediate aftermath of Dr. Tiller's murder, it was astonishing how many men were called upon to weigh in on abortion...
View ArticleSingle-Payer and False Football Analogies
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...
View ArticleNPR Airs 'All Important [Underwritten] Views'
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...
View ArticleConservative Media Confused by Obama Doctor Story
After the conservative site Forbes.com published a story headlined "Obama's Doctor Knocks ObamaCare," it was quickly picked up by the right-wing Drudge Report, where, presumably because of its...
View Article'Ardently Protectionist' WaPo Ignores Entire World
Economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 6/20/09) has requested you try to "imagine a front-page Washington Post article that talked about how the United States had a shortage of small cars." He...
View ArticleHealthcare Deficit: Bad; War Deficit: Good
Activist David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet.org, 6/24/09) has some problems with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's and Congressmember Tom Perriello's recent visit "generating a story and big color...
View ArticlePolicing the Debate on Health Reform
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...
View ArticleNPR's Single-Payer-Free Healthcare Reportage
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...
View ArticleBig Media Love Health Industry Loopholes, Deceptions
"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...
View ArticleWhen Corporate Media Report on Corporate Medicine
Writing at his regular Beat the Press blog (7/8/09), economist Dean Baker says that the New York Times' David Leonhardt "rightly complains that President Obama's healthcare plan does nothing to change...
View ArticleMedia Check Insurance Co. Abuse… Occasionally
Longtime health insurance company bigwig and former holder of "the ultimate PR job," Wendell Potter recently told PBS' Bill Moyers (Bill Moyers Journal, 7/10/09) how he had been "involved in the...
View ArticlePR Successfully Sicced on 'Sicko'
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....
View ArticleSwine Flu 'a Case Study in Reckless Journalism'
Writing that "the swine flu outbreak that wrecked Mexico's economy this spring, and that the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic last month, may become a case study in reckless...
View ArticleAP Adds $500 Billion to Healthcare Costs
Washington Monthly's Political Animal blogger Steve Benen (7/16/09) has observed that on July 15, "the Associated Press reported that the House Democratic healthcare plan cost '$1.5 trillion,'" and "by...
View Article'Strength in Bargaining' Still, When Deals 'Done Fairly'
Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher (7/21/09) is reporting that newspaper union representatives claim a victory of sorts in the Boston Newspaper Guild's refusal to accept a deal that "called for...
View ArticleBig Media 'Worth More Than a Warm Bucket of Spit?'
Having recently "published a report on 1,200 photos of U.S. torture that I have examined but the public at large has not seen," activist David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet.org, 7/21/09) now relates how...
View ArticleHealthcare One of 'Two Human Rights We Lack'
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...
View ArticleSands of Healthcare Truth Beneath 'Oceans of Media'
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)...
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