Last night on the local NBC affiliate’s 5:30 News, a story about doctors who accept Medicare patients facing a 21% cut in reimbursements aired. The story had so many inaccuracies, although the potential cut was not one of them, that I was prompted to protest via E-mail. I was going to blog about that story this morning, and link to the story in Homework. But when I went to their website to get the link, I couldn’t find the story. I must have been hallucinating.
Yesterday, I also had a conversation with an unemployed journalist, who is considering going to law school. He left the field of journalism because he felt there were too many constraints on his reporting. An example was a story he wrote about the death penalty in Minnesota, and because he wrote for an African American publication, he was required to ignore socio-economic factors that might lead to a prisoner ending up on death row in favor of highlighting racial inequities.
It is human nature to look at issues from within one’s own cultural biases. It is hard work to ferret out all the nuances of a story, especially when facing hard deadlines. In today’s world of 24/7 news reporting combined with competition for advertising dollars, it is much easier to just report what is expected. Unfortunately democracy depends on informed citizens, which is why the Fourth Estate is the only industry specifically mentioned in the US Constitution. It is too bad that freedom of the press doesn’t include a responsibility to report the whole story, warts and all.
Homework:
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0310/AMA_outraged_over_21_percent_cut_to_Medicare_rates.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press
Yesterday, I also had a conversation with an unemployed journalist, who is considering going to law school. He left the field of journalism because he felt there were too many constraints on his reporting. An example was a story he wrote about the death penalty in Minnesota, and because he wrote for an African American publication, he was required to ignore socio-economic factors that might lead to a prisoner ending up on death row in favor of highlighting racial inequities.
It is human nature to look at issues from within one’s own cultural biases. It is hard work to ferret out all the nuances of a story, especially when facing hard deadlines. In today’s world of 24/7 news reporting combined with competition for advertising dollars, it is much easier to just report what is expected. Unfortunately democracy depends on informed citizens, which is why the Fourth Estate is the only industry specifically mentioned in the US Constitution. It is too bad that freedom of the press doesn’t include a responsibility to report the whole story, warts and all.
Homework:
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0310/AMA_outraged_over_21_percent_cut_to_Medicare_rates.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press
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