Frontline Responds to 'Something Is Rotten At PBS'
Thom Hartman interviews Russell Mokhiber about the Frontline controversy.
In response to my earlier post quoting Russell Mokhiber from Corporate Crime Reporter on the dispute over Frontline's "Sick in America" (which in turn quoted T.R. Reid, the journalist who worked on the story), Frontline sent this letter (you'll have to read all the way through to see Reid's response):
FRONTLINE takes a strongly different view of the characterization of its editorial disagreement with T.R. Reid as presented by Mr. Reid and Russell Mokhiber in the recent blog entry, “Something is Rotten at PBS” (Counter Punch, April 2, 2009).
That blog entry describes the dispute about FRONTLINE’s “Sick Around America” as a disagreement about the correct health care policy for the United States and says that FRONTLINE “had a point of view — they wanted to keep the for-profit health insurance companies in the game.” Those claims are not true and falsely characterize the reporting in the film.
“Sick Around America,” in fact, made no assertions about the path health care reform should take, but simply reported on the current state of health insurance in the country, focusing primarily on how inadequacies in the current private health insurance system, both for-profit and non-profit companies, were negatively impacting many Americans. Our reporting revealed that both non-profit and for-profit insurance companies were concerned with keeping costs down and maximizing their market share. As a result, both write policies that can be changed yearly based on the experience of the particular business in the case of employer-based coverage and both use medical underwriting (in all but five states) to reduce the number of sick or potentially sick individuals they cover. Both employ the practice of rescission, as we reported.
In his blog entry, Mr. Mokhiber makes this erroneous critique of one portion of the film:
During that segment, about halfway through Sick Around America, the moderator introduces Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the lead health insurance lobby in the United States.
Moderator: Other developed countries guarantee coverage for everyone. We asked Karen Ignagni why it can’t work here.
Karen Ignagni: Well, it would work if we did what other countries do, which is have a mandate that everybody participate. And if everybody is in, it's quite reasonable to ask our industry to do guarantee issue, to get everybody in. So, the answer to your question is we can, and the public here will have to agree to do what the public in other countries have done, which is a consensus that everybody should be in.
Moderator: That's what other developed countries do. They make insurers cover everyone, and they make all citizens buy insurance. And the poor are subsidized.
But the hard reality, as presented by Reid in Sick Around the World, is quite different than Ignagni and the moderator claim.
Other countries do not require citizens buy health insurance from for-profit health insurance companies – the kind that Karen Ignagni represents.
But Mr. Mokhiber made a factual error that seriously undercuts this critique. His argument rests on the assumption that Ms. Ignagni represents only for profit health insurance companies. In fact, her organization, America’s Health Insurance Plans, represents both for-profit and non-profit companies. FRONTLINE rejects Mr. Mokhiber’s assertion that we were misleading viewers in this section of the film.
I normally wouldn't butt into a response letter, but since Frontline's editors say this factual error "seriously undercuts" Reid's critique, I'll point out a few things. The first is, AHIP was the result of a merger between the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) and American Association of Health Plans (AAHP) - in other words, it's the lobbying arm of the health insurance industry. The HIAA ran the "Harry and Louise" advertisements that helped kill the Clinton health care reform.
It's also disingenuous (while an accurate legal distinction, it's misleading) to identify health insurance companies as non-profit when it's industry-wide practice for the non-profits to form for-profit subsidiaries - with which the non-profit then contract to provide its profitable services. (My local Blue Cross has at least nine for-profit subsidiaries.)
In fact, in a later section of the film the narrator explicitly says that other developed [countries] require health insurance companies operate on a non-profit basis:
Narrator: Other developed countries bar health insurance companies from making profits on basic care and cap their administrative costs.
FRONTLINE sees the dispute with Mr. Reid as one not about for-profit vs. non-profit health insurance or health care policy, but instead about journalism. The dispute with Mr. Reid centered on a decision to include a section on the recent attempts by Massachusetts to reform its health care system. Mr. Reid objected to the inclusion of Massachusetts, the only state to require its citizens to purchase health insurance, and to require insurance companies to sell them policies with an adequate standard of coverage.
Reid repeatedly told FRONTLINE that including Massachusetts in the program at all, was to advocate for that kind of reform as opposed to Reid’s preference of a “Medicare for all,” one-payer system for the entire country. FRONTLINE’s position was that simply reporting on the state’s plan was not advocacy and, in fact, our reporting would focus not only on the benefits, but also on the problems with the Massachusetts plan. We think any objective viewing of that sequence in “Sick around America” will confirm FRONTLINE’s view that it was a piece of reporting not advocacy.
Editorial disagreements are common in the making of documentary films, but for more than twenty five years, FRONTLINE has been able to find a way to resolve those differences with a wide variety of producing and reporting teams. We were surprised to be unable to find consensus with Mr. Reid and found him resistant to working through the problems with us. He refused to travel to Boston conduct a critical interview with the Massachusetts Secretary of Health or to have requested face-to-face meetings on his editorial differences with the FRONTLINE team. Instead, Mr. Reid demanded that he be completely removed from the film and FRONTLINE reluctantly honored his request.
We would also note that on March 17, just three weeks after he asked to be removed from the film, a Denver magazine reported that T.R. Reid said he was interested in being appointed to a vacant seat in the Colorado House of Representatives, citing that his concerns about health care reform in the U.S. were “enough to push him from the reporting side over to the policy-making side. And he thinks Colorado would be a perfect testing ground.” FRONTLINE’s editorial guidelines explicitly state that “when working on any politically controversial programs the producer [or correspondent] should engage in no personal political activities…and should not lobby for or against any specific piece of legislation.”
In the end, FRONTLINE believes the dispute centered on a conflict between FRONTLINE’s journalistic commitment to fair and nuanced reporting and its aversion to policy advocacy and Mr. Reid’s commitment to advocacy for specific health care policy reforms, for positions he apparently advocates in his forthcoming book.
One last point: Mr. Mokhiber writes that Mr. Reid “did the reporting for the film.” In fact, as is true in most FRONTLINE films, virtually all of the detailed reporting for “Sick Around America” was conducted by the film’s producer, Jon Palfreman, and his co-producer Kate McMahon. Mr. Reid consulted with Mr. Palfreman and conducted some of the interviews. However, Mr. Palfreman conducted many of the other interviews in the film. As is always the case, this was a collaborative journalistic effort. We regret that the collaboration had such an unfortunate conclusion.
Reid responded via email:
I've had the highest regard for FRONTLINE and its producer, Jon Palfreman. We made some good films together. We've had some honest differences over health policy, but that shouldn't lead us into ugly personal attacks.
So I won't try to correct all the errors in your "extended comment." But I should point out that I do not see "Medicare for all" as the solution to our health care mess. I'm searching for --and I think I've found -- a more politically viable route to the goal of universal coverage at reasonable cost.
I appreciate your mention of my forthcoming book, "The Healing of America. A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care." (Penguin Press, 2009). I bet FRONTLINE viewers will find it more informative, and more engaging, than the nasty, defensive tone of your extended comment.
Best,
Tom Reid
[deleted--off topic. Take it to an open thread.]
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Barack Obama: Change we can only imagine
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Barack Obama: Change we can only imagine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dL7v3A2uKk
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Was to make PBS into a partison, right wing propaganda shop. These days, it is nothing more than an arm of the GOP. For example: I remember last year, the local PBS radio station did a segment they called a, "Week of conservative thought", with the likes of Newt and Grover et al. I wrote to ask when they were going to do a "Week of liberal thought". Eventually after much writing back and forth, I got an email from their ombudsman which read like a letter from either of my Senators, (both Republican), which essentially said "thank you for listening. We always present both sides, blah, blah, blah", but never addressed my question, nor have they ever done a Week of liberal thought.
I know President Obama has a lot on his plate but I will be much happier when he finds the time to purge PBS of all of the Bush lackeys and Liberty University grads that the chimp put in.
Barack Obama: Change we can only imagine
that drooling shitwhistle Ronnie Raygun.
I'm thinking of getting this t-shirt.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http:/...
And have it libeled, "Hitler Gave Great Speeches Too."
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
for the left is the internet.
Probably not for long though.
unfortunately I have to agree with you.
don't try to split hairs. ronnie barely did anything. the booshrovian minions did the most damage.
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
...that's hardly true of the good former-President Ronald Reagan. And a bit unfair on your part, too. He provided jobs in the third world for thousands of anti-Communist Contras.
I had to post this link I just saw. I simply cannot believe what this damned GOP is saying and doing. This woman wants Asian Americans to simplify their names to make it "easier for Americans to deal with."
JFC...what the heck is wrong with these people?
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Asians_should_s...
[Nicole: We have this story up now, it was scheduled for 9:00/12:00. In the future, please mail tips to the site team. Please don't take content threads off topic.]
Back in the bad old days at Ellis Island, "good Murkins" at the immigration desks arbitrarily changed the name of those whose names they found too difficult to pronounce, or just randomly assigned names to immigrants with awkward names.
You might say that, for Vietnamese, anyway, it sounds like a "no Nguyen" situation...
Yeah, and they changed the Smythes to the Smiths
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U5HpeA_WSo
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Did you see that woman's name? "Betty Brown." No wonder she wants Asians to simplify their names.
I can just imagine her scratching her head and asking, "what does that mean, 'no Nguyen'"? She's probably thinking, "Why did he say 'no (Ray) Nagin?'"
More proof of the GOP wanting to dumb down America.
Sorry!
But his legacy lives on. And I used to be a regular donor to PBS. THAT hasn't happened in years, nor will it ever happen again unless and until they remove the Bushies and the partisan slant.
Barack Obama: Change we can only imagine
We must never compromise on taking health insurers out of the health care equation. Even not-for-profit Blue Cross and Blue Shield's rates are astronomical. We're already being fleeced by docs, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. Let's put the health insurance companies into the claims administration business.
And while we're at it, let's do away with the Medicare deductibles and co-payments that are so high the elderly dare not go without "supplemental" insurance to avoid being impoverished by racking up a mountain of debts from out-of-pocket non-covered expenses. Medicare supplemental insurance, the bread and butter of the big-time lobbyists AARP costs a stinking fortune too.
Comprehensive government-sponsored health care for all.
have been consumed by the borg.
Assimilated as surely as Loqutus. Like him, maybe when can recover PBS. I hope so. I wanna see O'Reilly try to sandbag and stalk Bill Moyers again.
Barack Obama: Change we can only imagine
with Kieth Olberman alongside?
I've blasted PBS on three monumental occasions worth adding to this post.
The most recent was over a pure health industry show/infomercial aired by the anti-Obama namesake of the McLaughlin Group as if it were a regular show. McLaughlin's own home page back then was infested with health industry propaganda when I went to post a comment. It has since been cleaned up.
The second was over an outrageous pro-Iraqi war infomercial, written by a British filmmaker already known for pushing misleading information, that manged to get aired on an ironically titled show called Wide Angle under the headline "Sadaams Ultimate Solution", The show's editor? Richard Perle.You have to see it to believe it.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/sa...
Someone needs to account for how Richard Perle and Co. got this on national television.
The two above add to the impact of my third complaint. I'm tired of McLaughlin's and PBS's incessant pro-Israeli commentary. Everything good has an Israeli stamp on it while anything Arab is linked to third world, backward thinking or dangerous visions.
Israel is in an all out image war, now hoping to be a key cultural and tourist destination since there's nothing left of the previous jewel of the mediterranean -Lebanon.
Congress needs a new oversight Committee -a religiously neutral one that can oversee all the others who fell to Wall Street and the neo-cons.
The McLaughlin Group because I like Eleanor Clift and Lawrence O'Donnell. Yes, McLaughlin thinks that it's only right and natural that our entire foreign policy is being dictated to us from Israel but that is almost ubiquitous among news producers. What made me stop watching was the addition of Monica Crowley. Even Pat Buchanan looks sane by comparison. What reason could there possibly be for adding a reality denying, hyperventilating wingnut to that group? I hope many, many more people stopped watching then.
Even Washington Week in Review has become hyper Republican. I never would have thought Gwen Ifil would seel out.
Barack Obama: Change we can only imagine
I haven't watched PBS foy years .
It was my favorite many yrs. ago
But something changed (probably during the bush years).
Repugnantguns entered a previous fair format.
...whole thing with the Israel lobby and how they "run" America. I've read a whole lot of literature on it and tried as best I could to sift pass the truly obscene conspiracy theories. Maybe that's the beauty of the lobby, it's influence and organization is so nebulous it's natural to lean in the direction of underestimating its influence.
Shrug.
I watched the show with interest. The interest of one who is part of the "uninsurable" caste. I too have always had a high regard for Frontline. But as I watched and saw multiple inserts of Ingagri as a balanced voice on healthcare, I knew something had gone very wrong at PBS. The "message" of the hour was her declaration that American healthcare can be delivered fairly by the for-profit insurers.
I believe there is NO reasonable plan that involves any for-profit anything that pertains to our health. Think about it. Bean counters weighing cost vs your life.
With big pharma spending billions to find ways to extend patents and assholes like Bill Frist as CEOs of hospital groups, you may understand my anger at one of the few honest voices crossing to the dark side. Fuck you PBS, fuck you Frontline.
The major problem with American for-profit health insurers is that they're too good at the profit part (mostly because of greed), and fail miserably at the health part.
Over the course of years, insurance companies have learned to manipulate the insured pools, play games with the coverage, and overuse the favorite profit building term "DENIED".
Profit broke the system.
and since that is all that it was to them, there has never been an issue.
The "problem" stems from the fact that we, as a society, decided that having a for-profit health care was a "good idea" to begin with. This country must be one of the largest concentration of greedy morons in the history of mankind. "Oh, sure... it makes perfect sense to put my health care interests in the hands of a corporation whose economic interest may be diametrically opposite to my own well being"
I mean, at the end of the day... I think we need to come to grasps with the fact that the HMO's are just the tip of the iceberg for some structural problems that run through our society. Until we address those, nothing will really change.
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They took My $100 donation for "The Red Green Show" and then cancled the show. If that wasn't bad enough they played the same tellation over and over and over again for 4 weeks and at the end of it each time they say "we saved the show" Bullshit.
Forgot that, so that's my #4 complaint against PBS.
over @ eschaton, someone commeneted on why npr had on a flack from aei to talk about the economy and such
the husband of the chairperson of PBS is the T.M. Friedman Professor of Economics and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow at Stanford University, Tully Friedman is treasurer, trustee, and executive committee member at AEI
food for thought
a mandate for healthCare insurance may be the compromise obama has to make. organizations/some healthCare management professionals say it's the only COST will reduce enough to work. obama would like to do it without a mandate but somewhat like auto insurance people won't do it but they will go to the emergency room for care. for those that can't pay their healthCare bill that cost is shiftef to the paying pool. essentially this is a TAX. something has to give. for-profit will stand in the way.
We here in the US are screwed period. It is evident that Obama and all the powers that be are in the pocket of all the free marketeers, and that leaves the public as the losers 100% of the time.
Instead of following tried and true working models from France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Canada ... American politicians already have made it perfectly clear they intend on re-inventing the wheel. So, rather than start out with something that works and has been proven to work, they are going to build a for profit system that will not work and leave those of us they are supposed to represent in the shitter like the refuse they view us to be.
The rich will get richer, and the poor, well again ... screwed without even getting kissed!
You must hate our freedom.
Freedom for the parasites in this country to feast on the lifeblood of EVERY other citizen so they can live in opulence? I hate that "freedom".
I call BS !!
"Other countries" do NOT "mandate" that everybody participate.
"Other countries" provide basic health care for ALL their citizens (AND any travellers visiting). Jamaica, France, the Netherlands. And China is working on it !!
PURE BS Karen Ignagni.
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
So misleading.
And it makes it obvious that the facts were manipulated.
OMFG, a public Faux Gnu's LMAO
so i posted a comment about the fact that everything america does is about money(like health care) and how blogs like this never push truly progressive ideas like publicly financed elections and what happens, it gets censored. but the comments(4) about the typical ignoramus who wants people to change thier names remain, along with the two link comments from ysbaddaden.those are off topic
dark and sinister forces gather to quash your o/t, while letting others o/t's remain. the injustice!!
Jebus Tapdancing Christmas!
Get out the tin-foil hats! PBS is out to hoodwink everyone.
I watched this episode of Frontline, and at no time did I believe that PBS was in the pocket of a private insurance corporation. I was left with the same opinion of the USA's health care industry, which is that it is totally screwed up and we need reform.
In fact, this episode had an interview with one of the insurance CEO's that really showed that those people are heartless, soul-less, greedy bastards. That guy pissed me off so much that I wished he would get terminal disease, lose his job and insurance, and then try to acquire health coverage.
Whinny postings like these are no better than the right wing loons. There is no mass conspiracy at PBS to push a right wing agenda.
I also saw that Kennedy episode that someone else mentioned in some posting on this site. That was a documentary by someone who had a misguided romantic viewpoint of Oswald. Most of it was good until the end, but it was the viewpoint of the documentary writer/director.
What about the time Frontline showed the Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story documentary? That was not a Republican love fest. It exposed Atwater for the bastard he was, right up to his fake deathbed confessions. Right now Lee Atwater is dancing the tango with Satan: The Other Boogie Man.
There have been so many recent episodes of Frontline that have made the Republicans and the right wings look foolish. This should be proof enough that there is no right wing conspiracy at PBS. Did you even see the Frontline episode on Cheney's War? Another fine episode that exposed the corruption of Dick Cheney. Try and spin that as some type of PBS right wing conspiracy.
FOOLS!
or a profiteer.
conspiracy. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy, when the corporations funding the show can manipulate the information.
THERE WAS A LOT OF MISINFORMATION. I mean, they agreed with INSURANCE COMPANY REPRESENTATIVES who said that in other countries, EVERYONE IS FORCED TO PARTICIPATE IN A PLAN.
Dead wrong. Everyone being automatically covered doesn't equate to everyone being "forced to participate."
I've got automatic coverage under the national health care system. I can choose to take out additional coverage (for a nominal cost from a not-for-profit insurance company), but nobody's forcing anybody to join any plan.
Certainly, the show made a great case that the U.S. system is messed up. But they also made a terribly industry-biased case for how it could be fixed.
it's an infection. Untreated it will spread and kill the patient - like ebola.
I worked for a health insurance company for 3 years (sorry, I had kids to feed). HIAA is an extremely powerful and influential - they lobby to keep insurance rules within states, not national, they strong arm companies to get on board their programs and they have a series of classes they use to indoctrinate everyone in the biz. They are NOT an agent for change in any way. They will undermine health care reform in any way they can - reform is NOT in their interest.
It seems to me it would be UN-AMERICAN to steal the billions in profit health care insureres get from working stiffs that need to see a doctor. (snark) If you can profit from someone else's illness... why isn't that Communism, or Islamofascism?? Or something??
"If the US government enforced its banking laws like it did its park regulations, we wouldn't be
in this damn park in the first place." OCCUPY.!!
with the corporate and political influence, it's just getting worse. but at least they're getting called out on it ... bill moyers is still doing good stuff-- but with propaganda by npr and pbs it's an ongoing downhill slide.
presenting pgms through the corporate and power elite filter. as yet another example, healthcare is critically important and we get this fog to divert progress and maintain status quo. imho
Go to http://action.democratz.org and see how a concerted boycott against Rite Aid Pharmacies, who gave money to Dennis Hastert and the GOP, can help us get single payer universal health care.
It was either in The New Yorker or Harpers magazine a few weeks ago...
PBS actually bought a SECOND front cover of the magazine so they could place an ad for the Healthcare program on the opposite page. It must have cost them a bloody fortune.
I've never seen an ad like that before for ANYTHING!! Not even a big blockbuster film!
Now that I've read this thread I'm realizing that PBS has just become another propaganda arm for the plutocracy we are now living under.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
Look, paying for PBS is a little tiny speck in the massive US budget.
How is it that England, Australia, France, Canada, these countries with a fraction of the population of the U.S. and a fraction of the GDP can afford EXCELLENT PUBLIC TV AND RADIO?
I mean, BBC programs, ABC programs, CBC programs, CANAL 1, these air AROUND THE WORLD. The programs are purchased by massive media companies.
A small investment in PBS would not only prevent corporate manipulation, but could actually end up paying for itself.
THE NATION
Fighting for our health http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090427/feder
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