HCAN and other pro-reform groups plan more demonstrations this month. On Oct. 5 and 6, HCAN activists will protest at insurance company offices in at least sixty cities. In mid-October, MoveOn.Org, an HCAN partner, is planning to demonstrate at Senators’ offices to coincide with the latest campaign contribution filings. HCAN also intends to confront CIGNA’s Hanley, UnitedHealth’s Hemsley, WellPoint’s Braly and their counterparts at other major insurers at the annual meeting later this month of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s lobby group. On October 29, HCAN and its local affiliates will be trick-or-treating in the neighborhoods of industry CEOs and board members.
As in previous protests, HCAN plans to bring clergy, doctors, nurses, victims of insurance industry neglect and their families, as well as members from unions, religious congregations, community and consumer groups, MoveOn, and other groups.
Some demonstrators may engage in civil disobedience. HCAN forswears anything raucous, disruptive, or violent. But they worry that editors and reporters won’t deem their peaceful protests newsworthy.
Meanwhile, during the first half of this year, the insurance and HMO industry increased its lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions to some $700,000 a day. You won’t find their CEOs manufacturing news by taking to the streets.
Correction: This article originally stated that The Philadelphia Inquirer did not cover the CIGNA/HCAN rally on September 22. In fact, a brief on the rally ran in the Inquirer’s business section the next day.
Really? The Inquirer doesn't cover "staged" protests, as in organized, publicized, peaceful and non-violent? But just the other day, the Inquirer sent reporters AND photographers to an organized & publicized demonstration opposing the construction of casinos on Philadelphia's waterfront: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20090929_Dozen_arrested_at_casino_protest.html This was a protest where people said just what you would expect them to say because they've been saying it for 3 yrs now. The Inquirer IS capable of going out there and covering a protest even if they already know what the protesters will say. Interesting.
But more interesting to me is that so far as I know the Inquirer/Daily News has not fully drawn connections between the city's dire budget problems, its healthcare expenses, and the relief that could be found in health reform. Philly News did analyze the costs of health benefits for municipal workers but in the context of union negotiations, which some interpreted as an attempt to pressurize an acceptance for downgraded benefits among city workers (http://www.philly.com/dailynews/hot_topics/49462997.html). Instead of a reasoned analysis about the advantages of effective health reform, we've had a distressing and at times almost comical debate about rearranging the deck chairs on the budget titanic (including the options of closing health clinics and libraries).
#1 Posted by MB, CJR on Mon 5 Oct 2009 at 01:44 PM
It is humorus to me that HCAN feels like they are being blacked out because they are protesting peacefully. Nobody really knows how big thier movement is. What about the 1.7 Million people that marched on Washington, D.C. on September 12th? 1.7 Million people that got NO coverage because it was peaceful and against the golden one. Cry about your little protest not being covered, I does not compare to the masses that are being ignored on the opposing side of the issue.
#2 Posted by JF, CJR on Mon 5 Oct 2009 at 06:55 PM
JF,
Nice spelling on "humorus". That and getting your facts wrong about the "teabaggers" march on DC promoted by the Faux News cable network. 1.7 mill? You gotta be kidding me.
http://www.thealbanyproject.com/diary/7279/what-18-million-people-in-dc-looks-like
Please reread the essay above and THINK...it could help deplete the surplus population of bobble-headed conservatives by one?
#3 Posted by Patrick Briggs, CJR on Mon 5 Oct 2009 at 09:16 PM
So the editors really think that the townhall mettings disruptions were somewhat "not staged", and that the shouters represented a large movement? The idea that they precisely shouted so loud in order to look like something real and big didn't cross their mind... ?
#4 Posted by Christophe Thill, CJR on Tue 6 Oct 2009 at 08:44 AM
Instead of straightforward reporting of events--the "who, what, why, when and how" of things, "news" reporting today is so selective and "censored" by what sells, by what "angle" publishers deem important, that it really becomes just a show and a production anyway. I'm often aghast at what seems to be an "important" news story on any of the tv news stations. Instead of in-depth reporting and analysis from all angles of an issue, our media are content to skim the surface and/or continue gnawing at the same end of the bone. Are journalism schools falling down on the job of educating reporters or is it the corporate ownership that is to blame?
#5 Posted by Michelle, CJR on Tue 6 Oct 2009 at 02:23 PM
Demonstrating at someone's house is "playing nice"? What planet are you from? Oh, one where people have no problem slinging derogatory sexual slander against people who disagree with them. You kiss your kids with the same mouth that spouts that stuff, Patrick?
#6 Posted by JP, CJR on Tue 6 Oct 2009 at 04:06 PM
I listened to an ON POINT radio broadcast out of WBUR in Boston. It is usually hosted by Tom Ashbrook, but this day it was hosted by Susan Page of USA Today.
The program's theme on Friday is to provide a summation of the week's news issues.
This broadcast had a WSJ reporter as one of the guests. The subject of the rowdy health care reform debates was on the agenda.
One caller mentioned that there were reasoned, civil and salient debates that were held in Massachusetts that were not covered ala the now-famous confrontation that Barney Frank had with an Obama-as-Hitler-photo-toting participant. The reporters there zeroed in on the yellers and screamers who contributed NOTHING to the debate immediately after the crowd had left. They didn't bother to talk to those less boisterous members of those groups. This caller intimated that this was normal procedure for many other anti-Democratic crowds roistering for attention.
Whereupon our supposedly intelligent, husband, head of a family who has health care coverage from the WSJ said:
"Well you know those town hall meetings are kind of boring if there aren't any noisemakers around."
This doofus is PAID by the WSJ to supply information of an important nature and he decides what is pertinent by the boring quotient as opposed to it's relevance to millions of American lives, held in the balance.
Question: Where did he learn this in the board room or the school room?
He should be fired so he can pursue what he really wants in life--perpetual titillation.
#7 Posted by David T. Gray, CJR on Wed 7 Oct 2009 at 09:08 PM