Frontline – Healthcare-NOW

PBS ombudsman: Ignoring single payer was a mistake

Single-Minded About Single-Payer: The Ombudsman Column By Michael Getler, PBS, April 23, 2010 – PBS’s venerable public affairs and investigative series Frontline is, I confess, a favorite of mine, and has been for as long as I can remember watching public television. For me, Frontline, along with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” is the best of what…

Frontline Disguises Single-Payer Advocates as Public-Option Promoters

By Peter Hart for FAIR – The PBS program Frontline on April 13 offered a look at the White House drive for healthcare reform titled Obama’s Deal. Like a previous Frontline special about the U.S. healthcare system, the program failed to adequately include single-payer. But the way the show did it this time was remarkable.…

PBS Ombud Sides with Frontline Critics

By FAIR— PBS ombud Michael Getler is siding with critics of a Frontline documentary that failed to examine single-payer national health insurance as a possible alternative to the U.S. healthcare system. Citing FAIR’s study “Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare,” which documented that single-payer advocates were all but shut out of the media discussion about healthcare…

Frontline Responds on Sick Around America

By FAIR— In the wake of a FAIR Action Alert (4/6/09), Frontline has responded to critics of its documentary Sick Around America, defending the film’s focus on mandatory private health insurance and its exclusion of the single-payer option. (Frontline’s full response follows.) In an email response to FAIR (4/7/09), Frontline characterized FAIR’s charge that the…

Something is Rotten at PBS

By Russell Mokhiber for Counter Punch— Last year, former Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid made a great documentary for the PBS show Frontline titled Sick Around the World. Reid traveled to five countries that deliver health care for all – UK, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Taiwan – to learn about how they do it. Reid found…