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 out to 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.

An LA Times column today cited FAIR's petition demanding that the TV networks include single-payer in their coverage of the healthcare reform debate,  acknowledging that there is a "gaping hole in much of the media coverage--caused by the failure to investigate practices around the rest of the world, particularly European-style, single-payer programs."

The Times' James Rainey concluded his column, "TV Needs To Deepen Coverage of Healthcare Reform," with a report on the delivery of FAIR's petition at ABC--the network that disinvited Obama's longtime physician Dr. David Scheiner, a single-payer advocate, from its June 24 "Prescription for America" program:

The liberal media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting and a group of progressive activists delivered a petition Tuesday to ABC News in New York (which recently excluded one of the activists from a forum on healthcare) to demand broader reporting, including an assessment of government-managed health systems.

I suspect some in the big media have tiptoed lightly on that turf for the same reason as the politicians. Better to appear ill-informed about the world of healthcare than to appear open to anything, you know, French.

Asked by a Canadian viewer, "Has anyone noticed that life expectancy in Canada under our health system is higher than the USA?" Bill O'Reilly (7/27/09) responded: "Well, that's to be expected, Peter, because we have 10 times as many people as you do. That translates to 10 times as many accidents, crimes, down the line."

(h/t Political Animal.)

Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom--best known for his bestseller Tuesdays With Morrie--had a July 25 column that criticized the Obama healthcare reform with an argument that suggested an unfamiliarity with how the U.S. tax system works:

In explaining why it was OK to sock a new 5.4 percent tax on the highest earners in this country--to pay for healthcare reform--President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said this:

"The president believes that the richest 1 percent of this country has had a pretty good run of it for many, many, many years."

Ah. So that’s it. The old "You’ve had it good enough for long enough" policy. That’s why a family earning a million dollars a year should now cough up $54,000 of that--in addition to all the other taxes it pays--to cover healthcare for people who may not pay a penny of new tax themselves.

But a family making $1 million a year wouldn't pay an extra $54,000 in taxes from the proposed 5.4 percent surcharge--because that surcharge would only apply to income beyond the first million dollars of income. A smaller surcharge would kick in at $350,000, and increase at $500,000--but the total tax increase for a couple making $1 million would be $9,000, or one-sixth of what Albom claimed was a "grossly overweighted tax."

This is how taxes generally work, with marginal tax rates that apply to income over a certain level. You'd think that Albom, who has an MBA from Columbia University, would be familiar with the concept. But media outlets have been known to trip up on this subject, even when their stories are prepared in conjunction with tax experts (FAIR Action Alert, 9/22/08).

Albom's charge that the Obama administration is "engag[ing] in the worst and most destructive form of politics: class warfare" is also a familiar corporate media trope (Extra!, 1-2/01). Given that for the media, "class warfare" is almost always waged by the bottom against the top, it's perhaps not surprising that Albom has trouble figuring out what Gibbs means when he says that " the richest 1 percent of this country has had a pretty good run of it for many, many, many years." (Albom speculates that he's "suggest[ing] that the top 1 percent are a bunch of Bernie Madoffs, that they’ve been scheming their way to riches, evading the system, hiding their money in complicated offshore deals.")

Gibbs is presumably referring to data compiled by the Congressional Budget Office (CBPP, 4/17/09) showing that income for the top 1 percent has climbed by 256 percent from 1979 to 2006, while the take-home for middle-income households has grown by only 21 percent; for poor households, growth was just 11 percent. The share of all after-tax income that's gone to the top 1 percent has more than doubled since 1979, from 7.5 percent to 16.3 percent.  You might say they've had "a pretty good run."

Under the succinct Consortium News subhed "Too Late the Leak" (7/24/09), former CIA analyst Ray McGovern revisits the Downing Street Minutes--which he says should

represent the kind of documentary evidence after which trial lawyers, intelligence analysts--and serious investigative journalists--lust.

Though the unauthorized disclosure did not come early enough to head off the war, which had started more than two years before the document surfaced, the unique disclosure could have thrown some harsh light on the war's origins--if the Fawning Corporate Media in the United States did its job.

However, having been acrobatic cheerleaders for war on Iraq, the FCM did its level best to suppress this documentary evidence of the war's fraudulent character.

McGovern recalls U.S. Representative John Conyers' "temporary fit of courage" in scheduling a June 16, 2005 "hearing" on the documents "in the only space the Republican majority would make available--a basement room under the Capitol." McGovern's description of the U.S. press response indicates as much about independent reporters' value as it does about corporate media perniciousness:

On the morning before the hearing, Amy Goodman invited Conyers and me to be interviewed on Democracy Now!. Just before the interview, I had a chance to look at the editorial page of Pravda, er, I mean the Washington Post, for that morning, and guess what? The Post saw fit to mention the Downing Street Minutes, though dismissively so as not to tarnish the newspaper’s glorious cheerleading for war.

Listen to the After Downing Street founder on FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "David Swanson on Healthcare Reform" (7/24/09).

The United Farm Workers have a new action alert (7/24/09) about "an education war going on in Texas" they note has "major national implications as Texas is such a major purchaser of textbooks and their state’s required curriculum drives the content of textbooks produced nationwide."

Specifically, "the Texas State Board of Education is currently preparing to adopt new social studies curriculum standards" informed by certain "experts" who

are arguing that the state’s social studies and history textbooks are giving "too much attention" to some of the most prominent civil rights leaders in U.S. History, namely Cesar Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.

David Barton, one of these "experts," claimed Cesar Chávez "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others." Another of these "experts" evangelical minister Peter Marshall said, "To have Cesar Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin"--as in the current standards--"is ludicrous." He went on to say Chávez is not a role model who "ought to be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation."

The same "expert" wants to eliminate Thurgood Marshall, a prominent civil rights leader who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court justice. He wrote that the late justice is "not a strong enough example" of an important historical figure to be presented to Texas students.

To the UFW, complaints of an "over-representation of minorities" are particularly "ironic in light of the changing demographics of our country"--where, "sadly, Latino and African-American children have the highest drop-out rates in the country."

Take action against cultural censorship by telling the Texas State Board of Education chair and vice chair "to ensure schools are providing students with role models and historical figures whose experiences reflect their own."

Realizing that "by now, talk of the Iranian elections will have traversed into the abyss of yesterday’s news," Warehouse magazine contributing writer Mohsen al Attar (7/10/09) still thinks "the events narrate a highly educational tale about the role of media in present-day society":

Few would question the media machine's efficiency. Once a major media outlet decides to run with a story--as was done with the Iranian election protests--there is little to arrest its circulation or to challenge the implications the particular telling makes.

Of the Iranians and non-Iranians supporting the protests--and they are numerous in Canada alone--an important distinction can be made between those reacting to the events and those reacting to the story of the events. I suspect those belonging to the former must possess a perpetual feeling of dissatisfaction with the media’s porous and flimsy representation of Iranian politics, as if social reality can always be tucked away in neat little binaries: tradition and modernity, religious and secular, legitimate and illegitimate.

Al Attar goes on to contrast Amira Haas' maxim that "the role of the media is to monitor the centers of power" with the appropriate term for such "stories that contain little substance, an obvious slant and are devoid of any critical analysis: propaganda." In al Attar's view, "cheerleading a particular position--there is a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, Hugo Chávez is a bad man, the solution to the economic crisis is to throw more money at the financiers who got us into the mess--is the role of a propaganda machine."

Listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "David Barsamian on Iran Upheaval" (6/26/09).

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) has done some valuable decoding of a Senate committee bill's "public plan that would 'compete with private insurers,'" as "the Times chart explained on July 18":

The public plan "would provide 'only the essential health benefits,' as defined by the bill, 'except in states that offer additional benefits.'"

Meanwhile, the newspaper noted, "Democrats from three House committees are working on a single plan." Under that plan, "Different levels of coverage--'basic, enhanced and premium'--can be offered through the public option."

Those few grainy sentences, quickly swept beneath the waves from oceans of media, referred to a disturbing aspect of "public plan" scenarios. If the ostensible goal is healthcare for all, then--at best--some of the "all" would end up being much more equal than others.

The Republican Party is coming from such a right-wing place that any government action to improve healthcare access is ideologically unacceptable. In contrast, the broad outlines of a Democratic "public plan" at least embrace the precept that the not-so-tender-mercies of the market are insufficient to fully provide for the population's medical needs.

But as a practical matter, a "public plan" coexisting with the private health insurance system--generally touted by U.S. media as the pole of real options farthest from the Republican "free market" fixation--is inherently reconciled to major inequality in access to healthcare.

While "media accounts keep telling us that the current political debate on healthcare is unprecedented and groundbreaking," Solomon points to "an article in the latest edition of the Columbia Journalism Review, by seasoned healthcare reporter Trudy Lieberman, makes a convincing case that little has changed within the frames of media parameters."

Sign on to FAIR's petition telling corporate media to stop censoring the healthcare debate.

And if you happen to be near New York City, join our July 28 Petition delivery at ABC.

The L.A. Times has published a commentary from Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Marc Weisbrot (7/23/09) furthering recent exposés on the damaging influence of U.S. lobbyists hired by unlawful regimes throughout the world.

Under a headline about "The High-Powered Hidden Support for Honduras' Coup," Weisbrot invites us to

meet Lanny Davis, Washington lawyer and lobbyist, former legal counsel to President Clinton and avid campaigner for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid. He has been hired by a coalition of Latin American business interests to represent the dictatorship that ousted elected President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in a military coup and removed him to Costa Rica on June 28.

Davis is working with Bennett Ratcliff, another lobbyist with a close relationship to Hillary Clinton who is a former senior executive for one of the most influential political and public relations firms in Washington. In the current mediation effort hosted by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, the coup-installed government did not make a move without first consulting Ratcliff, an unnamed source told the New York Times.

Davis and Ratcliff have done an amazing public relations job so far. Americans, relying on media reports, are likely to believe that Zelaya was ousted because he tried to use a referendum to extend his term of office. This is false.

Weisbrot reminds us that "Zelaya's referendum, planned for the day the coup took place, was a nonbinding poll," "only asked voters if they wanted to have an actual referendum on reforming the country's constitution on the November ballot," and "Zelaya would be out of office in January, no matter what steps were taken toward constitutional reform" Zelaya even "has repeatedly said that if the constitution were changed, he would not seek another term."

Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Greg Grandin on Honduras Coup" (7/3/07).

The Media Bloodhound blog's Brad Jacobson has a post (7/22/09) adding some depth to the Walter Cronkite as belated-Vietnam-War-critic story:

Following his death last week, various network news tributes replayed footage of Cronkite's influential '68 on-air editorial. Yet scrubbed from the memorializing were similar instances of Cronkite's journalistic candor regarding Iraq, such as his 2006 call for withdrawal from a war he went on to describe as "illegal from the start," initiated on "false pretenses" and a "terrible disaster" serving "no purpose" that has "probably made us less safe."

But the most revealing omission from these tributes--especially in context to the pageant of eulogies extolling Cronkite's journalistic integrity--may be his response to a reporter's question during a 2006 news conference.

As reported in the Independent UK at the time:

When a reporter asked [Cronkite] whether, given the chance, he would offer similar advice on Iraq [as he had on Vietnam], he did not even wait until the end of the question. "Yes," he said flatly. "It's my belief that we should get out now."

In the fact that, "for Cronkite, the question was simple, his answer emphatic," Jacobson perceives some journalistic ideals distinctly unfashionable nowadays: "No need to chew it over, to seek a mealy-mouthed moderate reaction to address the Bush administration's unprecedented extremism, brutality and lawlessness. Doing so would mean that he was operating within their narrative, not his."

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 just aren't Americans."

Of Barack Obama's July 22 news conference "mention of single-payer in passing, as something that would be better than anything else, but something that mysteriously lies out of reach," Swanson notes that the same view "is typical of the very few mentions of single-payer healthcare in the U.S. corporate media":

I just did some searches in the Lexis Nexis databases of major U.S. and world publications, news wire services, and TV and Radio broadcast transcripts. Searching for "healthcare" in July 2009 found over 1,000 documents, the maximum number that Lexis Nexis will display. In fact, searching just the past two days found over 1,000 documents. Another search confirmed that this is "Michael Jackson" level coverage. And another search confirmed that virtually none of these documents mentioned single-payer at all, much less told anyone what it was. A search for documents later than July 1 containing single-payer OR "single payer" turned up only 197 documents.

Americans have consistently told pollsters for decades that they want single-payer. But America's government refuses to provide it, and therefore America's state media refuses to discuss it. Of the 197 records of the media mentioning single-payer in July, almost half were congressional records or press releases or otherwise not media reports at all.

Still "others were articles in medical trade publications," and "even so, those articles tended to mention single-payer very briefly and dismiss it." Read the recent issue of FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Media Quarantine of Single-Payer Continues: Fifteen Years Later, Public Health Insurance Still Taboo" (6/09) by Julie Hollar & Isabel Macdonald.

Time has a big piece by Nina Burleigh on Israeli settlements in this week's issue. It's a familiar framing: The Katzes, very normal, gentle people readers can identify with (they're even from New York!), "consider themselves law-abiding citizens" and do painfully earnest and upstanding things like "publish a small community magazine and take part in civic projects. Sharon raises money for charity by putting on tap-dancing and theater shows." There's a smiling family portrait, and a picture of settlers playing in a swimming pool with their kids. They "don't think their town is an obstacle to peace."

These settlers from the large settlement of Efrat are contrasted somewhat with the more militant settlers who live in the small outposts--the "legal" versus "illegal" settlements, according to the Israeli government. The two are "profoundly unlike each other," writes Burleigh, "but Palestinians revile them equally."

In fact, that's just about all Palestinians do in this article: "revile," "hate," "despise" and generally just be "unwelcoming." A single Palestinian is quoted (and one Israeli human rights group that opposes the settlements). The "Two Views of the Land" the print headline promises--online the headline is "Israeli Settlers vs. the Palestinians"--may be given equal billing, but it's far from an even match.

The piece wraps up by talking about Obama's and Netanyahu's strategies and options: "Challenging...law-abiding citizens like Sharon Katz" will be politically difficult, Burleigh observes--note that law-abiding has no qualifier here as it did in the beginning. The closing paragraph reinforces the normalcy of the Katz family: "Sitting around their kitchen table, with grandchildren's plastic toys scattered on a deck beyond sliding-glass doors, the Katz family doesn't look or sound militant. Indeed, to American ears, their version of the national narrative sounds rather familiar. " Sharon Katz is given the last word: "Israel shouldn't leave any hilltop! How did communities start out in the American West? With one log cabin. When we bought this land, it was a rocky hillside. Look what it looks like today."

Political realities and options are shaped to no small degree by public perception of situations, which is in turn shaped by media coverage. Perhaps if Native Americans had been portrayed in media accounts as sympathetic individuals instead of a generally undifferentiated mass (a mass often portrayed as unwelcoming and hateful), the political realities of the American West would have turned out differently. U.S. media accounts of the Israeli settler issue that portray the settlers as highly sympathetic and "law-abiding" individuals against a backdrop of largely invisible but clearly hateful Palestinians obscure the illegality of the settlements and contribute to the intractable political situation the Time piece wrings its hands over.

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 he

talked about the photos on a few progressive radio shows. I received calls from some advocacy groups that have been trying for years to get hold of these photos. But I received not one single inquiry from the corporate media. Even most good blogs ignored this story, despite a handful of prominent blogs promoting it. This started me thinking and fantasizing: What would the world look like if we had major media outlets that were worth more than a warm bucket of spit?

Imagine if the media monopolies were busted, a diversity of private outlets were free to compete, and public media were developed, including free substantive air time for election campaigns. Imagine media outlets with democratic accountability. Imagine media outlets that judged a story important if the majority of the public said so, and not if those in power said so.

The majority of the public favors single-payer healthcare. Corporate media outlets are crammed with endless, often pointless, stories about healthcare that never mention single-payer.

"Our existing media outlets (whose lead blogs follow more than bloggers admit to themselves) decide what's important based on the preferences of a small number of powerful people," says Swanson--"and the fact that these preferences almost always differ wildly from majority opinion does not lead to any rethinking of the acceptability of this approach in a democratic republic."

For further imaginings on the potential of a non-corporate U.S. press, read the latest issue of the FAIR magazine Extra!: "The Future of Journalism" (7/09)

Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 7/21/09) has synopsized the latest fiasco of a David Brooks column under the headline "David Brooks Wanted Tax Increases to Pay for Stimulus"--since, Baker writes, "that is presumably the implication of his complaint that the Democrats paid for the stimulus package 'with borrowed money.'"

Predictably, "this is not the only peculiar item in his column. He also claims that only 11 percent of the stimulus will be spent in the first seven months of the program." Even though, as economist Baker explains, the "Congressional Budget Office puts the figure at 20 percent, which doesn't seem bad for a program that is just getting started and should be spent out over time in any case." And

then, in full Republican talking point mode, Brooks tells us:

The House [health care] bill adds $239 billion to the federal deficit during the first 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would pummel small businesses with an 8 percent payroll penalty. It would jack America's top tax rate above those in Italy and France. Top earners in New York and California would be giving more than 55 percent of earnings to one government entity or another.

Let's see if we can rewrite this slightly:

The House bill adds an amount equivalent to 10 percent of the spending on the Iraq and Afghan wars to the federal deficit during the first 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Some small businesses will end up converting as much as 8 percent of their wage bill into healthcare insurance for their workers. The richest 1 percent will see an increase in their marginal tax rate, but it will still be lower than in most European countries. And the effective marginal tax rate for the wealthy will still be far lower than the marginal tax rate and reduction in benefits that most moderate income families face.

Baker's version of the same points renders somewhat silly the sentiment he attributes to Brooks' screed: "Are you scared?"

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 smaller benefit cuts and a furlough, but a higher 8.3 percent salary reduction." The Boston Globe eventually agreed instead to "a 5.94 percent salary cut, a one-week furlough, a pension freeze and healthcare cost increase."

Strupp quotes Guild president Bernie Lunzer saying the result "does demonstrate that there is strength in bargaining," that "people can push back" and they "are correct now to question what management is doing, to pursue more control over their futures":

Boston is among the few guild locals in the past year to reject contracts that called for concessions. In many cases, from the Denver Post to the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, guild members have approved furloughs, pay cuts and various benefit reductions when management asked....

"People will take concessions and take less when they believe it is being done fairly," says Lunzer. "There is not a [guild contract] situation out there that isn't a difficult one."

But Boston was somewhat different in that the guild rejected an initial offer even amid threats of a shutdown and sale of the paper, a sale that appears inevitable. In recent weeks, guild locals at the Times Union in Albany, N.Y., and the Indianapolis Star have also rejected contract proposals. But leaders in both of those units believe new contracts will be approved.

On the subject of negotiations "being done fairly," Lunzer goes into details when describing how the "New York Times Company, which owns the Globe, used the controversial lifetime job guarantees of some 170 guild members as an unfair issue in the recent bargaining." While "the guild agreed to give up that protection in this latest agreement," Lunzer asserts that "the issue was exploited by New York Times management... to cause divisiveness."

Listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: Jonathan Tasini on the Boston Globe/GM (6/12/09).