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.

This is the first of a two-part series on international bribery and the use of offshore accounts. We first touched on this subject a couple of months ago when pointing you towards Lowell Bergman and Frontline’s excellent work on international bribery. I’d like to thank Frontline for pointing me to the following report. They have compiled some great reporting on bribery which can be seen here. However, the greater issue here is transparency vs. secrecy, what part politicians play and how the media report on such activities, or not… The second part of this series will focus on the ongoing US financial bailout and how US taxpayers’ money is being used to prop up companies who invest millions in the politicians they lobby.

Below are two reports from a Swedish television crew who investigated a multinational arms deal between Sweden and the Czech Republic. Demonstrating great investigative reporting, they uncover how SAAB (working with BAE Systems) used third parties and offshore holdings to influence the deal in their favor, to the tune of millions of euros in compensation to any number of agents, politicians and defense contractors. The Czech deal was just one of many, including similar arrangements with South Africa and Hungary. The first video explains the Czech deal and the second video goes into greater detail when the reporters work under cover to expose the rampant bribery going on in the international arms industry.

Well, not really about hookers, but certainly related. Frontline is set to report on the massive, severely under-reported world of bribery and its importance in the global marketplace. How relevant is this? It couldn’t be more important to focus on the issue of bribing public officials than it is today. As PBS describes it,

“Beginning February 11th, FRONTLINE and FRONTLINE/World will be partnering with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Pro Publica to launch an online investigation of international bribery. Covering a practice estimated at $1 trillion worldwide, the team will report on some of the largest bribery investigations in corporate history, including prominent multinationals such as Siemens, Halliburton, and BAE.

“The joint online site will investigate the global impact of bribery, including complex financial systems to hide payments, and the systematic corruption of high-ranking foreign officials that contributes to the destabilization of the developing world. It will also examine U.S. and international efforts to police illegal acts of bribery once considered “the cost of doing business.”"

One of the experts interviewed by veteran investigative journalist Lowell Bergman, is former CIA Operations Officer Bob Baer. Baer, who George Clooney roughly portrayed in “Syriana“, is more than qualified to speak on the subject of global bribery, considering he was one of the main players in the Middle East for more than 20 years representing the interests of the CIA and American foreign policy. After all, one of the primary tools used by intelligence officers is bribery, of one kind or another. In this clip, Baer says it could be money, a new Ferrari or a Russian hooker. I only have one question though: What the hell is so special about Russian hookers anyway?!?

Bob Baer and Lowell Bergman for Frontline