Tell Somebody

A recent column by Democracy Now host Amy Goodman cites a study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting that found that in the week before Obama’s health-care summit, of the hundreds of stories that appeared in major newspapers and on the networks, “only five included the views of advocates of single-payer—none of which appeared on television.” Most opinion columns that mentioned single-payer were written by opponents. I thought it might be a good time to reach into the archives and give another listen to a December, 2004, conversation with Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Steele.  Jim Steele was co-author, with Donald L. Barlett, of Critical Condition, How Health Care in America Became Big Business & Bad Medicine.  Even after four-plus years, the diagnosis of the problem as laid out in the book holds up. After that, Part V of Eyewitness to the Revolution, Hugo Hakk's account of the February, 1917 Russian Revolution breaking out in Petrograd, just translated this month by his daughter Liia Hakk. Tom Klammer