Of course what we know as the “mainstream media” has a political
agenda, but those who think for themselves can see right through it and
discount it as they review the products of newspapers and television (although
local television news tends to have less of it). Certainly it gnaws at outlets’ credibility and extends to the entire
industry (large
majorities now do not think they can believe most of what comes out of the
media and rank them near
the bottom of all industries/institutions in terms of public confidence). But
sometimes it becomes so obnoxious that it makes one wonder just what kind of
bubble do these journalists live in to be so oblivious to the nakedness of
their narrative-building attempts.
Just such an example appeared in the New Orleans edition of the Baton Rouge Advocate. There, a story
goes into how a rehired (at a salary cut of $5,000 per year) former state
worker at what was the previously state-run Southeast Louisiana Hospital describes
her experience there – with absolutely no
independent corroboration – under new private management in the very first
days of the facility’s management transition. Essentially, she claims she saw
lots of chaos unhelpful to patient care, she got put into a job that was not in
her primary professional field, and then she quit in disgust after just a few days.
The remainder of the article deals with officials responding to the
self-described events asserted by the disgruntled employee to be demonstrating
declining care.
Several things about this should set off alarms concerning basic tenets
of journalism I learned in my first day of journalism class and/or the first
day I was on the job as a newspaper reporter. First, why is one woman being
upset a story to begin with? Now, if you had a relatively large number of staff
resignations, or an unusual number of patient emergencies, or many visiting
families reporting significantly different conditions, or any systematic data
from multiple sources showing an unmistakable change in care and in a negative
direction, maybe the media ought to snoop into this. But one person
subjectively upset in her workplace and this merits a story? How is this news?
OK, maybe it’s news if those things described above were happening. But
does the reporter, Kari Dequin Harden, bother, or is asked by her editor, to
check these things out for herself or gather other eyewitness testimony?
Apparently not; all she seems to do is to ask state overseers about them in
general terms. In other words, readers don’t know whether what is described
actually was what was going on, or was the product of a feverish imagination
from an ex-employee with an axe to grind.
And just what are this ex-worker’s qualifications to render this
judgment? Does she have any special expertise that other employees, apparently
none so exercised as to quit that we know of and make it a mission to tell the
media, lack? And what is her motive? Is she a righteous crusader, exposing the
heartless money-grubbers now shortchanging patients with the heartless Gov. Bobby
Jindal Administration flacks and now-privatized flacks countenancing such
inferior care because they enjoy it?
But what if she had trouble adjusting to her new job that may have made
more demands on her than she was capable of handling in an atmosphere where
increased efficiency was mandatory? What if she didn’t like her new supervisor?
Maybe one or both of the reasons explain why she transferred quickly into a
less critical area as the need for her specialty had decreased and there were
other, better employees to fill those jobs? If these are the case, perhaps she’s
just a deluded, if not disgruntled, employee trying to get back at some
imagined sense of injury – or even being coaxed along by others with an agenda
against the new order?
The point is, we don’t know the answers to these reasonable
suppositions because there’s nothing in the story to tell us one way or the
other. It’s all he-said/she-said with no quantifiable evidence or credible testimony
to back up either side.
Which leads us to the biggest question of all: why did Harden and the Advocate even go with this story? It
clearly had major holes. How did Harden or her editors even learn about it? How
is its teller assumed to have so much credibility that none of this is looked
into other than asking higher-ups about unproven allegations, nor is the teller’s
situation there and background investigated?
You know what, after 22 years with the same state agency, I’ve got skeletons
in closets I can throw open about my institution, or can point reporters to
former employees who might be able to do the same. Why haven’t we been
contacted about these stories? And if all you did was be a stenographer for
their compilation, without making any effort to check independently on them, would
you trust us so much as to go to others and get denials or explanations as to
what we said we witnessed – and then run such a thin story?
Perhaps you would – if you had a larger agenda you wished to propagate
for which such stories would provide excellent fodder. One can’t help but think
pushing this belies precisely that from the reporter, editor, and the Advocate, perhaps something along the
lines of big government good/privatization bad (even as 58 of the 60 psychiatric
hospitals in the state, representing well over 80 percent of all beds available,
are nongovernment), or Jindal is a meanie who makes bad policy as a result – or
maybe it’s as basic as we’re in a newspaper war with what’s left of the New Orleans Times-Picayune who has
invaded our turf and we’re doing the same to theirs and we need to catch
eyeballs even if it means going with induced salaciousness by running stories
that would have made Joseph
Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst proud.
2 comments:
My Gosh!!!
The Kettle is calling the Pot black!!!!!!!!!!!
Like you are the king of "dispassionate analysis?"
This blog is becoming comedic.
I agree. A sad, black comedy.
The Professor has more than audacity stating that someone else has an "agenda."
Here, Between The Lines, you will find the biggest "agenda" on the Internet.
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