A special tip of the hat to ABC News for last night’s one-hour special, “Peter Jennings Reporting: Breakdown — America’s Health Insurance Crisis.” It was the last report Jennings worked on before he died.
“Over the course of Peter’s long career at ABC News he made more than 60 prime-time documentaries, many of them covering public health issues. He had planned for this broadcast to be the first of a series confronting the problems in the American health-care system — a subject he believed was critical to all Americans,” said Tom Yellin, executive producer of Peter Jennings Reporting.
With an estimated 45-million Americans without health insurance, it should not be unusual to see such primetime coverage of an embarrassing national issue — but it is unusual.
While the report was not perfect (it lacked continuity, appeared to be glued together somewhat hastily after Jennings’ death, and relied too much on too few interviewees), it was still television worth watching. Especially since the other networks at that time were airing “The Apprentice,” and “Without a Trace.”
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
Case counts still matter. “(There) are stories that may not be told adequately if only hospitalizations and deaths are emphasized.” @garyschwitzer interviewed by @dbauder of @AP. https://apnews.com/article/omicron-changing-news-outlets-covid-data-da9272f7c4c8a109c3bfb56bed9e9c76
My friend Gary @garyschwitzer wrote to his city council representative in a Minnesota town about a Viva Las Vegas event scheduled for January.
The response he got seems to perfectly capture where we are now.
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/12/2021-ends-with-covid-craziness-in-sports-and-politics/
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