"Ah, but not on NPR," writes Mytwords, when citing how All Things Considered's Andrea Seabrook "explains Kent Conrad's opposition to the pubic option and offer of health insurance co-ops as the result of his expertise on fighting government deficits and his commitment to centrism and bipartisanship."

Mytwords' response:

There's just one little, tiny problem with all this emphasis on expertise, budget deficits and BIG, NEW PROBLEMS, great co-ops, and winning Republican votes: It doesn't wash. First, there is no consensus that deficit spending is a bad thing. As far as the danger of a BIG, NEW GOVERNMENT PROGRAM costing sooooo much more money than what we've got--that's a factually challenged assertion, too. But Health Insurance Co-ops are a good thing, like Credit Unions, right? Wrong, they are a sham.

Tempted to throw the public broadcaster a bone by considering that, "Well, at least the bit about getting Republicans on board makes sense"? Mytwords points out how that is just "Wrong again." Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Trudy Lieberman on Healthcare Reform" (8/14/09).

On Tuesday, August 4 Jeremy Scahill broke the story about two sworn statements implicating Blackwater (now Xe) founder Erik Prince in the murder of employees or former employees who were cooperating in the federal investigation of Blackwater. He also revealed that sworn statements indicated that Blackwater was organized and run as an anti-Muslim, Christian identity paramilitary force. By any measure this is a major news story. It was picked up by ABC, Boston Herald, CNN, the [London] Times, etc. Of course, Democracy Now! featured Scahill the next day for a substantial interview, and Scahill also was promptly featured on Olbermann's Countdown on MSNBC.

But "how about our nation's public radio news" stories?--well, mytwords will give "you a hint: it's less than one...."

He equates a completely false distortion--characterizing the tepid Democratic health reform proposals as "government-run healthcare" in opposition to "the free market"--with a completely fact-based statement--"we have a system today that works well for the insurance industry but it doesn't work well for you [the public]." Yes, the system works well (insurance profits more than quadrupled from 2000 to 2007) but not for the public, which pays more for less and suffers about 22,000 deaths a year from the insurance industry's commitment to not covering people. How could anyone cast them as the villain?

Having set up this falsehood, Horsely turns to health insurance industry vampire representative, Karen Ignani (no stranger at at NPR--see March 7, 2009 and June 13, 2009), so she can claim how wrong Obama's statement is because the mob her industry supports "reforms."

But that's not all--"Horsely ends this report with a bit of moralizing against the Democrats, noting that 'Brookings scholar [Stephen] Hess thinks it's unfortunate the Democrats have chosen to demonize health insurance companies.'" Leading mytwords to ponder: "Demonizing the health insurance companies, now why would anyone do that?"

Rovner then backs up her "analysis" with "a little Meet the Press sound-bite from Fred Thompson"--"The only way to really save cost is to have rationing or it can be done by a cram-down by the government and take it out of the hides of doctors, hospitals":

Rovner's report mainly serves to highlight and promote the research of Elliott Fisher of the Dartmouth Institute. The big deal is that Fisher has found that some areas in the U.S. with lower cost prices for healthcare have better outcomes. Funny thing is that on June 11, 2009, NPR featured this exact research. An interesting thing not mentioned on NPR is the chief "partners" of the Dartmouth Institute. On the list are

• Wellpoint Foundation
• Aetna Foundation
• United Health Foundation

I do smell a conflict of interest, eh?

Rovner fills out the report by going to a solid centrist--Len Nichols (no single-payer, he)--of the New America Foundation (as far left as NPR dare venture).

Don't worry, though--"the wrap-up is provided by Joe Antos of the far-right American Enterprise Institute, who concludes that real change to healthcare is a cultural/behavioral issue more than a cost issue." Read the new 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 and Isabel Macdonald.

Congratulations NPR--as a "public" news station you have done a great service by providing a voice to the voiceless: the health insurance industry, which lacks the funds and connections to get its message out. After yesterday's Republican slant on the public plan from [Mara] Liasson, [Julie] Rovner and [Steve] Inskeep--you showed a brave commitment to your mission statement ["'Fair' means that we present all important views on a subject"] by giving yet more airtime to the insurance lobby this morning.

Mytwords then offers his view that "it's time to tell your member stations to stop begging for support from the public (whose opinions don't seem to amount to much on NPR)," advising them instead "to just plug into the money stream from the insurance industry that you are so loyal to." Read the current edition 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.

Heck, if that's too expensive, why not just get on the Internets and pull some hard-hitting journalism from the military website of whatever unit Tom would have been embedded with? It sure would be a lot cheaper, even though it would mean we wouldn't get the kind of critical insight that Bowman coughed up for us this morning:

What they're going to be doing is something similar to what they did in Anbar province in Iraq. They're going to move out into the countryside and really live among the people--and that's the whole point here, is the counterinsurgency technique is to live among the people, provide security and eventually help rebuild this part of Afghanistan.

Momentarily dropping his sarcasm for some straightforward outrage, Mytwords asks, "Could you have a more sanitized, propaganda-laden description of the often repressive, brutal and violent strategy of counterinsurgency?"