ABC, NBC and CBS Mostly Ignore Obama's Recess Appointment of Pro-Health Care Rationing Doctor to Head Medicare
![](http://cdn.mrc.org/archive/biasalert/uploads/2010-07-07-Holt.jpg)
Barack Obama's decision to make a recess appointment of Dr. Donald
Berwick to run Medicare has been vastly ignored by the mainstream news
media, despite the fact Berwick has made controversial statements
favoring rationing of medical care.
As CNSNews.com's Terry Jeffrey
reported Dr. Berwick, at a talk celebrating the 60th birthday of Great
Britain's National Health Service, told the audience to be wary of
returning to a free enterprise based system as he warned: "Please,
don't put your faith in market forces," and urged them "I hope you will
never, ever give up on what you have begun" and rallied the crowd: "I
hope you realize and affirm how badly you need-how badly the world
needs-an example at scale of a health care system that is universal,
accessible, excellent and free at the point of care-a health system
that, at its core is like the world we wish we had: generous, hopeful,
confident, joyous and just."
Berwick even ominously told his audience
at Biotechnology Healthcare, "The decision is not whether or not we
will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes
open."
So given Berwick's rather outspoken faith in socialized medicine the
news that Obama is planning to circumvent Congress with a recess
appointment, to have him head Medicare, had to be big news, right? Well
not according to NBC, CBS and ABC news, as there was no mention of the
President's decision to make the recess appointment on Tuesday night's
NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News or ABC's World News.
In fact the
embargo on the information continued through Wednesday morning as there
were zero mentions on ABC's Good Morning America and CBS's The Early
Show. Only NBC's Today show mentioned the news as Lester Holt, in an
8am news brief on the July 7 show, told viewers the following:
President Obama is expected to appoint his choice to oversee Medicare and Medicaid today, while Congress is in recess. This means Dr. Donald Berwick won't have to undergo Senate confirmation hearings. Republicans had wanted to question the Harvard professor and healthcare policy expert about comments he made on rationing medical care.
[UPDATE: On Wednesday night, July 7, ABC, CBS and NBC again skipped Berwick, but all found time to mark Ringo Starr's 70th birthday and his wish for people around the world to declare "peace and love," while ABC's Diane Sawyer also squeezed in a look at an octopus in Germany which supposedly correctly predicted wins and losses by Germany's World Cup soccer team.]
While the Wednesday Today show did offer that 20 seconds to the Dr. Berwick
story, in contrast they were much more enthusiastic about the news that
actress Lindsay Lohan was sentenced to 90 days in jail for her run-ins
with the law as they devoted 21 minutes and 37 seconds to the starlet.
Over on ABC's Good Morning America, where they ignored the Berwick
appointment, they spent 7 minutes and 23 seconds dedicated to Lohan
with CBS's Early Show logging in 5 minutes.
Wednesday night the CBS Evening News led the networks in amount of time spent
on Lohan with 42 seconds, followed by NBC Nightly News and ABC's World
News at 30 seconds a piece.
So, in total, the three major broadcast
networks, from last night through today's morning shows, have devoted
35 minutes and 42 seconds to Lohan and only a scant 20 seconds to
Obama's recess appointment of Berwick.
To read more about Berwick please read CNSNews.com's coverage.
- Geoffrey Dickens is the Senior News Analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here