April seems to be Earth Month on PBS. While today may be Earth Day, PBS has allocated a significant amount of airtime this month to broadcasting shows on the state of our planet and what we can do about it. Recently, I brought your attention to NOW’s report on the world’s glaciers and how their accelerated disappearance affects everything from our drinking water to the price of bread at the supermarket. David Brancaccio’s report was beautiful and picturesque, if not incredibly sad.

Yesterday, Frontline aired a very fine piece of reporting from Hedrick Smith entitled, “Poisoned Waters“. Smith is a veteran storyteller who has been able to tell a story of our nation’s water, while maintaining a sense of great fluidity in his reporting. He explores the health, scientific, political and community waters of this important subject by showing, in great detail, the situations in the Chesapeake Bay on our East coast and Puget Sound in the West. The story is fascinating, informative and I highly encourage you to take the time to watch this 2-hour piece (I have embedded it below).

Although the entire report is well worth watching, there were two moments that really stuck with me: First, the discovery of frogs with six legs and male fish with eggs in the Potomac river. The other was the way environmentalists and community activists are now framing this issue, with some preliminary success. I’ll explore that later, but first I want to remind readers of one of the reasons scientists are finding mutated animals in our waterways: Endocrine disruptors. We have repeatedly focused on the issue of BPA (or Bisphenol-A) in certain plastics used to carry and store our food and water. In addition, the EPA has for years stalled on fully regulating their use, as required under a law passed by Congress a decade ago. Well, it turns out that these same endocrine disrupters that, in humans, can cause higher instances of breast cancer, lowered sperm count and a whole host of other problems, are also contained in the drinking water for many of our municipalities. The causes range from industrial to agricultural, but one thing is clear: Washington, D.C.’s water supply has a host of endocrine disruptors and other substances in it and the scientists who are studying this problem won’t drink D.C.’s water.

One of the most memorable moments for me was when a community activist in Virginia acknowledged what needs to be done: Market the solution instead of the problem.

By marketing the solution to our environmental woes, we can move away from the self-imposed position of caging ourselves as victims vs. perpetrators in this fight and instead explore what needs to be done to fix the problem. One example Smith reports, can be seen in northern Virginia where developers were set to suburbanize yet another plot of farm land and forests. Instead of trying to block the action by framing it in environmental terms, activists opposed to this development lobbied the community to their call based on the expected higher tax burden (due to more crowded schools, hospitals and other administrative matters), as well as increased traffic congestion, guaranteed under any development scheme. The citizens demanded action and the developers were forced to abandon their plans and adjust to the changing public climate.

Perhaps the newspaper industry could learn a thing or two from these environmentalists and community activists: Instead of blaming the Internet and trying to advertise the industries downfall (due to multiple reasons), why not approach this from a more constructive angle and market the solution… Granted, they need to first find this solution…

I have watched PBS’ Frontline and Frontline World programs for years and continually look forward to what they present. I have given examples over and over again on this site of the fine work the Boston-based crew and their team of freelance reporters have done. Just a couple of days ago I promoted the bribery story that Lowell Bergman reported… Hell, Al Pacino has played the part of Bergman in a major Hollywood production, that’s how big a deal he is… But my streak of unchecked praise for this program has sadly come to an end with the news that broke a couple of days ago.

T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, reported a story last year entitled, “Sick Around the World” which Frontline produced and air on PBS. It was a thorough look into the health care systems in Canada, the UK, Germany, Japan and Taiwan. I was very impressed with both the reporting AND the production of the story. So, with great anticipation came Reid’s follow-up report on the state of the American health care system entitled, “Sick Around America“. It coudn’t have been timed any better, with Obama promising to fix this clusterf*** of a system and everyone weighing in with their say. Well, I watched the report and I’m sad to say I wasn’t overly impressed. But after a little digging and another review of the program I realized why I wasn’t so impressed with the report.

Here’s the jist of what has come out since the airing of the story: In “Sick Around the World”, Reid presented the nationalized insurance systems in Canada and the UK as well as the privately run, government managed, non-profit insurance schemes in the other three countries. Each has its differences, but the fundamentals of each system are the same: Everyone gets coverage, everyone pays into the system equally (with government subsidies for the poor) and everyone makes money, more or less. Basic coverage is the exception, however and insurance companies are designed and required to operate as essentially non-profit organizations. If the insurers want to make money, in some countries they are allowed to do so, but only for elective, non-crucial procedures. A novel, but basic concept.

Well, the report last week spun things a little differently in the end. While Reid’s reporting set the scene and gave an insightful look into the current state of our system, the final product suggested something in direct contradiction to his findings in the previous series, not to mention his upcoming book. The report featured numerous insurance industry advocates all espousing their point of view, but not a single person was interviewed about a single-payer health care system; actually, it wasn’t even mentioned as an option! Reid has spoken out about what happened, thanks to the Corporate Crime Reporter:

“We spent months shooting that film,” Reid explains. “I was the correspondent. We did our last interview on January 6. The producers went to Boston and made the documentary. About late February I saw it for the first time. And I told them I disagreed with it. They listened to me, but they didn’t want to change it.”

Reid has a book coming out this summer titled The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care (Penguin Press, August 2009.)

“I said to them — mandating for-profit insurance is not the lesson from other countries in the world,” Reid said. “I said I’m not going to be in a film that contradicts my previous film and my book. They said – I had to be in the film because I was under contract. I insisted that I couldn’t be. And we parted ways.”

“Doctors, hospitals, nurses, labs can all be for-profit,” Reid said. “But the payment system has to be non-profit. All the other countries have agreed on that. We are the only one that allows health insurance companies to make a profit. You can’t allow a profit to be made on the basic package of health insurance.”

“I don’t think they deliberately got it wrong, but they got it wrong,” Reid said.

Reid said that he now wants to make other documentaries, but not for Frontline.

“Frontline will never touch me a again – they are done with me,” Reid said.

I have yet to see an excuse for this type of behavior or any sort of correction or contraction that could explain what Reid has stated. Frontline has tried, as you’ll see, but failed miserably I feel. All I can hope is that with enough pressure from the public, something will be done to correct this horrific lapse in judgment at worse or egregious error at best. Here’s just one example of the movement this has spawned, taken from the FAIR.org site (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) which compiled a petition to the Frontline producers:

To Whom This May Reach at FRONTLINE:

I am an Academy Award nominated and Emmy winning documentary filmmaker, and I am APPALLED at what I’ve been told you did with the work of T.R. Reid and “Sick Around America”. It is almost inconceivable to me that you would exploit, usurp and distort his good work in the manner it has been described by FAIR (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3756). Your actions reek of politics, of corporate influence, and of general disregard and disrespect for both this man’s work, and the truth. Let me guess: Big Pharma sponsors a LOT of PBS shows. Am I right? I’ll bet I am. Just can’t piss-off those for-profit mega-med corps now, can we?

Words do not express my disappointment and disgust- mainly because I have always had such respect for the work Frontline has done. Your webpage of “Guidelines on Journalistic Styles and Practices” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/us/guidelines.html) states that “We ask for the viewer’s trust.” Well, you’ve certainly lost mine.

Very Sincerely,

William Gazecki
http://www.williamgazecki.com

As an update to the petition, it appears Frontline has responded, but without much in the way of promising to correct the issue on-air. Let’s hope they do so soon. To me, this is the essence of what defines a Media Slacker. I’m just disappointed I have to point my finger at Frontline this time.

Frontline’s long-awaited report on international bribery and corruption finally aired last night and did not disappoint. I have been writing about this investigative report for months now in anticipation of the finished product. Lowell Bergman goes into great detail to show how an agreement between the British and Saudi governments for fighter jets became a gift from Allah, so to speak, for the Saudi royal family, among many others. Investigators have tracked money from BAE Systems in the UK to Washington, the British Virgin Islands, Switzerland and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The allegations are not trivial and were enough for Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan to threaten to end cooperation in terrorism investigations if the original British investigation into the deal continued. The British government complied and Tony Blair ended the investigation. However, we will have to wait and see whether the FBI will be forced to end its investigation as well, due to BAE System’s critical participation in US defense and American jobs. Prince Bandar is a longtime friend of the Bush family, Clinton’s and Carters, so with the new administration perhaps this investigation has wings. As one of the original French prosecutors involved in the creation of the international anti-bribery laws said, we are good at prosecuting low level and mid level corruption but only by accident are we able to successfully investigate and prosecute high level corruption and bribery cases.

Investigations involving major international defense contractors employing 10’s of thousands of jobs (in the US alone), the leading family of the largest oil distributing country in the world (not to mention the good personal friends of every US President since and including Carter) and government officials of some of the largest economies in the world do not play themselves out easily. The political will needed to allow such an investigation to see its way through is more than I can imagine. The US Justice Department didn’t have the political will to be able to fully investigate the 2000 presidential election, so I’m skeptical to say the least that this will see the light of day. However, the FBI must try, even though Prince Bandar is being legally represented by former FBI Director Louis Freeh. I know!! What better way to beat a charge than hire the investigative body’s former head as your attorney! The video is embedded below, however please go to Frontline’s website to continue reading and watching this tremendous job of reporting by journalists from all over the world.

Yesterday I mentioned one of Frontline’s latest endeavors with its Digital_Nation project. Jeff is one of the more active bloggers on the project and has had an ongoing discussion about generational stereotypes as they pertain to the latest buzzwords of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. He has posted some interesting reader feedback, including this:

“Here are some more thoughts we’ve received in response to my posts on the haziness surrounding the terms Digital Native and Digital Immigrant. It seems people don’t like to be defined by such simple labels.

A reader writes:

I’ve often found that defining a person as a member of a particular generation is the easy way to describe someone, not the accurate way. Previously we talked about baby boomers and Generations X and Y and now the focus is on Internet Natives and Immigrants. However, like all generalizations, it doesn’t really capture who that person is, what his or her history is or what motivates him or her. Sure there are similarities between people born during a certain time and in a similar place, but often these boxes are created either by marketers or the media without much consideration beyond the superficial. Therefore, how accurate can they really be?

I, like many others I know, am caught yet again between definitions determined by outsiders. In a previous discussion I might have been between Generation X and Generation Y and now I am again between what some might consider the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. These definitions can guide a discussion only so far before they become cumbersome and irrelevant.”

I think a career journalist I know said it best when asked about this habit to simplify and condense our differences: The overwhelming urge of the human race to pigeonhole other members of the human race is constant. It does reflect mental laziness and gives us a (false) sense of security (“Oh, I know this type of person.”). It also dehumanizes others.

It’s also a bane of modern journalism. Why do news organizations feel it necessary to label politicians or others as “liberal,” “conservative,” “right-wing” or “left-wing”?

A crew of reporters and producers working for Frontline has embarked on a new project called Digital_Nation. It is set to be broadcast either later this year or early 2010 and promises to be interesting, given the Frontline tag. We have covered there work extensively over the past year, but they are taking a different creative approach this time around. Instead of researching, writing, filming and producing the piece they are involving the public in the creative process. Encouraging dialogue, feedback and online interaction this report about how digital our lives has become is an ongoing experiment of great interest to me. It is one that crosses at the intersection of my work (IT consultancy) and my passion of writing about the media. So I’m sure to be involved as much as they will have me…

All of that being said, yesterday Jeff (one of the team members) asked the question on the project blog whether the mainstream media is too alarmist when it comes to technological issues. The post was centered around the 60 Minutes Conficker piece we wrote about here. To give you an idea of how popular this subject is, this one post was my post popular since starting this blog and writing over 130 posts in the last year. Jeff ended the post by asking a question:

“This brings me to my question: do technological issues like Conficker make it easier for the media to fear-monger? I would think that many people, and I include myself in this, don’t have a detailed understanding of how computer viruses work. The same could be said about many other technological issues. The media has a responsibility to report on the dangers of the Internet to help people avoid them, but when does it cross the line into alarmism about a subject most people don’t fully understand? Does the mainstream press do a fair job of explaining these technical issues so that we don’t overreact? Obviously, the mainstream media will always play to our fears to a certain degree, but is it worse when technology is involved?”

This was my response to him:

As you mentioned, media will always play to our fears because that is what sells (and it is the easy way out). Just turn on the 6 o’clock news for a prime example of laziness and shock. Jon Stewart had a great piece this week about how the media “teases” us with this fear.

Although I often believe in conspiracies, I don’t think the alarmist attitude is taken intentionally by the mainstream media. As you briefly mentioned, I think it is born from ignorance. Taking one example, we can see the full affect of ignorance at work.

The 60 Minutes report you mentioned was pitiful on many levels, but the scariest part was Lesley Stahl’s ignorance of the subject matter which lead her to interview people who were experts only in title and to therefore over-inflate the threat. Conficker is something to worry about, but it is nothing new or unique. None of these threats are new. However, because of the tremendous growth and spread of technology, little to no education has occurred to explain the dangers inherent in an online world. You wouldn’t just let a 16 year old drive a car without some instruction and yet we allow young and old alike to live and publish their lives online. Everything from personal, professional and financial is there for the world to see and it takes more than a week-long boot camp with Symantec to teach a reporter how to convey this message effectively and accurately.

The mainstream media has a tremendous opportunity in front of it to explain the inherent dangers AND the opportunities of a digital lifestyle, however it needs to go back to school if it hopes to deliver this message. Why do you think most people under 25-30 don’t rely on network television for their news? First, it is cumbersome and irrelevant, but more importantly if a satellite interview is needed to explain Twitter, how can we expect the media to effectively define privacy concerns? Perhaps if network television and newspapers were to fully report on this subject the way it should be reported, they would discover a new subscriber base.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Jeff has posted a response to my comment on the Digital_Nation blog, well worth a quick read. However, I have responded in kind with yet another note to his most recent post. Please note that these responses are certainly not meant to critisize the work that Jeff and the Frontline team are doing. I have done so in hopes of growing this conversation and perhaps increasing the interaction required of such an undertaking as Digital_Nation.

Certainly exciting to feel a part of this historical transformation, isn’t it? One quick note on your post: I would caution reporters (both yourselves and others) about getting too close to the subject matter. There is a difference between subject matter expertise and the interwoven reliance on the subject that affects how a story is reported. As we saw in the invasion of Iraq, Washington journalists were unable to question what some of us might have seen as obvious flaws in reason and rational simply because they were a part of the insider’s world of Washington politics. Glenn Greenwald has written extensively about this syndrome. There needs to be a balance between knowing one’s subject matter thoroughly, but not being dependent on it to the extent that one can’t see beyond it. Stepping back and taking stock is a beautiful thing for any of us to do, but an even more important exercise for reporters.