Darts & Laurels
Dart
to Rolling Stone for a journalistic mugging.
Back in November, an impressive special report appeared in the
Philadelphia Daily News. The result of a six-month effort that
involved the Freedom of Information Act and drew on court transcripts,
medical bills, police and prison records, and numerous interviews,
the report retraced the course of a 1999 random shooting on a
southwest Philadelphia street in order to tally the cost of the
incident, both to the people directly affected and to Pennsylvania
taxpayers. The News's findings were summed up in its title:
The $2 Million Bullet. Four months later, in the March 6 issue
of Rolling Stone, a piece appeared entitled "The Bullet
and the Damage Done." Similar in concept and set in the
same Philadelphia neighborhood and the same Philadelphia hospital,
the Rolling Stone piece offered among its examples various facts
and conclusions about the same random shooting and the "$2
million bullet" that had been revealed in such hard-won
detail by the local paper. Conspicuously not offered by the national
magazine, however — editors had taken it out — was
any acknowledgment of the source of its loot.
Dart
to The Weekly Standard for cutting out the middle
man. On March 11, the hot neoconservative magazine was featured
in a New York Times article that drew on a range of comments solicited
from Washington observers — among them, the liberal critic
Eric Alterman, whose meticulously credited statements included
this one: "Reader for reader, it may be the most influential
publication in America." On March 24, the Standard began
publishing a promotional house ad that prominently featured Alterman's
words — prominently attributed to "The New York Times."
Laurel
to The Wall Street Journal, for examining some
of the more pathological symptoms of the nation's failing
health care system. First, on March 13, Lucette Lagnado exposed,
through the case of Quinton White, a struggling seventy-seven-year-old
working-class widower in Connecticut, the inhumane practices followed
by hospitals in collecting patients' debts. Although twenty
years have passed since the death of White's uninsured wife,
the distinguished not-for-profit Yale-New Haven Hospital had been
continuing its relentless pursuit of payment for her treatment.
Tactics, not untypically, included putting a lien on White's
modest house, attempting to seize all his meager savings, taking
him to court to increase the monthly repayment plan he somehow
managed to meet, and tacking onto the original $18,740 bill —
most of which by now he'd actually repaid — a crippling
$39,000 in additional fees and interest. Next, on March 17, Lagnado
exposed, through the case of twenty-five-year-old Rebekah Nix,
a magazine fact-checker in New York, the grossly inequitable practices
followed by hospitals in calculating patients' bills. After
an emergency appendectomy two years ago at the not-for-profit
New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, the uninsured Nix was
presented, again not untypically, with a crushing bill for $14,000,
plus doctors' fees — a far cry from what it routinely
bills for the same procedure to Medicaid ($5,000), Medicare ($7,800),
and HMOs ($2,500). In the wake of Lagnado's inquiries, New
York Methodist cut Nix's bill to $5,000; Yale-New Haven
ended White's ordeal by wiping away his debt, and later
announced changes in some of its more heartless collection policies.
But clearly the very deep sickness in the system itself is not
so easily cured.
Dart
to Walter Cronkite, Morley Safer,
and Aaron Brown, for suspending their disbelief.
The vaunted skepticism of experienced journalists was in short
supply when each of the stars signed on to a lucrative deal with
a public relations outfit to act as host, on a make-believe news
set, in what they say they were told were educational news breaks
relating to matters of health — but which, as Melody Peterson
reported in the May 7 New York Times, were in fact sophisticated
infomercials promoting drug companies and their products. As one
too-easily-duped employee at a public television station that
regularly carries similar videos candidly told Peterson, "They
offer them to us for free, so I don't go digging around
for any other information." Other stations, however, have
refused such gifts because of their promotional nature. (Cronkite
and Brown have since bowed out of the deal; Safer is asking that
the hundreds of his widely distributed tapes be taken off the
air.)
Dart
to International Living for cheapening the profession.
In its latest come-on to footloose schnorrers, the monthly travel
and life-style newsletter, put out by Agora Publishing, dangles
a dazzling vision in which "for a limited time…before
the doors close," you, along with only 1,999 others, can,
for the specially discounted price of $298, become an "Agora
International Correspondent" with your very own Press Pass
— that "valuable document" that could get you,
like other members of "accredited" news organizations,
to the destination of your dreams at a cost of "next to
nothing." As just one enviable bargain among many in his
eighteen-page e-mailed pitch, Agora's president, Bill Bonner,
shamelessly cites his three-week trip around the Pacific —
"all expenses paid!" — sponsored by tourism
interests that "wanted good press to get more business."
He also cites cjr, which reported on the "$298 credentials"
in 1999. "Even the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review,"
Bonner boasts, "felt compelled to discuss it (without knowing
quite what to make of it)." Memo to Bonner: The prestigious
Columbia Journalism Review knows exactly what to make of it: it's
a truly tacky travesty of what real journalists, with real press
passes, are all about.
Darts & Laurels is written by Gloria Cooper, CJR's deputy executive editor. Nominations may be addressed to her by mail, phone (212-854-1887), or e-mail (gc15@columbia.edu).
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