Category: Journalism

Inky Finally Reports On The Crisis In Obstetrics

The Philadelphia Inquirer, this morning, got around to reporting about the health care crisis facing expectant mothers and their babies.

“Fifteen hospitals in the eight-county Philadelphia region have closed their labor and delivery units since 1999, including two last year,” the Inky noted.

In the last paragraph, the Inquirer finally gets around to explaining the cause via Ken Braithwaite, regional executive of the Delaware Valley Healthcare Council of the Hospital and Healthsystem
Association of Pennsylvania, which represents area hospitals.

“Hospitals are being squeezed by low insurance payments, especially from Medicaid; the high cost of medical liability insurance; and a shortage of obstetricians,” said  Braithwaite.

Ten years ago the doctors were screaming about these issues especially regarding the need for tort reform regarding medical liability.

The Inquirer dismissed these concerns with stories that could have been written by the trial lawyers.

If they did a proper job of journalism the problems would be much less today.

 

Inky Finally Reports On The Crisis In Obstetrics

Stories Missed By The Dino Media In ’09

Stories Missed By The Dino Media In ’09 — Foxnews.com has a slide show on the nine biggest stories missed by the “mainstream” media in 2009, which it says are:

1. The resignation of White House Green Jobs adviser Van Jones which happened after it became public that he thought the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 tragedy.

2. The ACORN tapes which revealed that the government-funded activist organization had no problem with giving advice on how to maximize the financial benefits of underage girls brought to this country illegally for prostitution.

3. How White House science adviser John Holdren has floated draconian ideas as to how to reduce the human population.

4. Climate-gate in which emails leaked from the leading research center for climate change showed the entire global warming movement to be a fraud. (I would have made this #1)

5. How the federal National Endowment for the Arts asked artists to promote President Obama’s political agenda.

6. The connections that Chas Freeman, who President Obama tried to appoint to chair the National Intelligence Council, has to the Chinese and Saudis.

7. The massive Tea Party protests.

8. President Obama’s appointment of Kevin Jennings as “safe school czar”. Jennings has promoted homosexual sex with minors.

9. That Democratic congressional districts have received nearly twice as much money per district as Republican ones.

I think I would add the water shortages in California’s San Joaquin Valley caused by government policy — it is likely to increase the cost of food for all of us; the pending removal of four major hydro-electric dams on the Klamath River on the California-Oregon border to restore a 300-mile migratory route for salmon — so much for global warming; and the attempts by the Obama administration to force Honduras to violate its constitution to  reinstall a law-breaker as president, whose socialism Obama had been sympathetic to.

And something to consider — if we continue to use the phrase “mainstream” to refer to newspapers, magazines and network TV newscasts,  it will soon be an antonym to its present definition.

The phrase, IIRC, was coined by Rush Limbaugh.

Stories Missed By The Dino Media In ’09

Bob Surrick Called It 26 Years Ago

Bob Surrick called it 26 years ago Bob Surrick Called It 26 Years Ago

Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer has a story about Pennsylvania’s Judicial Conduct Board and how it has become perverted to protect rather than remove corrupt or bad judges.

The impetus for the piece is the scandal in Luzerne County where Common Pleas Judges are facing charges of taking nice kickbacks for sending juveniles to private-run detention centers often for fairly minor offenses.

Anyway, with regard to corruption in the state judiciary and the way the corruption is supposed to be sniffed out, attorney Bob Surrick brought up those very same points as a member of the state’s Judicial Inquiry and Review Board 26 years ago and was roundly quoted  regarding them in newspapers throughout the state. His crusade is part of his book Lawyers, Judges and Journalists, The Corrupt and Corrupters. 

Bob Surrick Called It 26 Years Ago

 

Bob Surrick Called It 26 Years Ago

Stensland Fires Back At Spencer

Stensland Fires Back At Spencer — Former Fox29 anchor Dawn Stensland responded, today, to the Delaware County Daily Times’ Gil Spencer regarding this Dec. 11 column concerning rumors of a run for the  Pa7 congressional seat by Ms. Stensland.

Ms. Stensland said  it was unfair for Spencer to compare her to Elin Woods since her husband, former KYW-TV anchor Larry Mendte, was not a serial adulterer.  Which is a fair point by Ms. Stensland.

In fact, I don’t even think Mendte has ever been actually accused of, or admitted to, adultery with former KYW-TV-anchor Alycia Lane, and, anyway, being pals with her is not what got him in trouble.

Ms. Stensland is definitely not ruling out a primary run which would be as a Republican and against party-endorsed former U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan.

“Mr. Spencer hammered another nail into the“Girls Not Allowed Sign” on the “Good Old Boy’s” political clubhouse,” Ms. Stensland said in her letter, which is the sort of thing that winds up as an issue when you get prurient with politics.

A more relevant thing to bring up regarding any candidacy by Ms. Stensland would be that it was the U.S. Attorney’s office led by Meehan that prosecuted her husband for hacking into Ms. Lane’s computer and leaking her emails.

Stensland Fires Back At Spencer

Biker And The Lion

Biker And The Lion –A Harley biker is riding by the zoo in Washington, DC when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion’s cage. Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the cuff of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.

The biker jumps off his Harley, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch. Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly. A Washington Post reporter has watched the whole event.

The reporter addressing the Harley rider says, ‘Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I’ve seen a man do in my whole life.’

The Harley rider replies, ‘Why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger and acted as I felt right.’

The reporter says, ‘Well, I’ll make sure this won’t go unnoticed. I’m a journalist, you know, and tomorrow’s paper will have this story on the front page. So, what do you do for a living and what political affiliation do you have?’

The biker replies, ‘I’m a U.S.Marine and a Republican.’ The journalist leaves.

The following morning the biker buys the paper to see if it indeed brings news of his actions, and reads, on the front page:

U.S.MARINE-BIKER ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH

That pretty much sums up the liberal news media’s approach to the news these days.

Kudos to FreeRepublic.Com for the tip.

Biker And The Lion

Hey, The Inquirer Uses A “D”

The Philadelphia Inquirer in today’s front page story managed to put a D after  Stephen Stetler’s name when reporting his resignation as Pennsylvania’s revenue secretary shortly before Attorney General Tom Corbett announced that he was one of three officials being charged with six counts of conflict of interest, theft, and conspiracy.

Granted the Inky didn’t spell out the D as Democrat, nor did they put the word in the headline as they would have perhaps if another party had been involved, nor did it mention with the first reference the party affiliation of the other two persons, House Majority Whip Bill DeWeese and DeWeese legislative aide Sharon Rodavich — DeWeese got his D in the eighth paragraph — but I’ll chalk it up as progress.

DeWeese was a long-time power in state and Democratic Party politics for two decades, and was a big player in the 2005 pay raise matter.

Inky Mentions Global Warming Scam And Baghdad Bob Would Be Proud

Using style that would make Baghdad Bob proud, the Philadelphia Inquirer this morning covered the global warming scandal. The Inky put the stories on page 20. The headlines were “White House scientists defend climate data” and “Penn State professor: Research is sound”.

So what if dissenting views are squashed. So what if raw data is destroyed. So what if evidence is distorted so the desired conclusion is reached. Trust us, we are the Inquirer. There is no problem. We will welcome them with bullets and shoes.

Inky Still Mum On Global Warming Scam

Inky Still Mum On Global Warming Scam — Didn’t see a line in today’s (Nov. 25, 2009) Philadelphia Inquirer regarding the now five-day old story showing how respected proponents of the theory that man-made emissions are causing a catastrophic warming of the globe cooked the data to make their case.

And this is despite one of the central characters, Michael E. Mann, getting some of Pennsylania’s tax dollars funneled to him as the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State.

Another Inky Fumo Tale And What’s Not Mentioned?

The Philadelphia Inquirer, today, reported the sentencing of Susan A. Skotnicki, 53, a longtime aide to “disgraced former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo”.

What did the Inquirer again neglect to mention regarding Ms. Skotnicki or the “disgraced former State Sen.”?

To assist the Inquirer in its journalistic mission, I’ll again point out the party involved was the Democrats.

Ms. Skotnicki, btw, got four years probation for theft via inflating her boss’ meal expenses by thousands of dollars.

Surprise (Not): Inky Mentions GOP In Scandal Story

The top story in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer involved the filing of corruption charges by Attorney General Tom Corbett against former Senate Majority Leader John Perzel and nine other Republicans.

And it was topest story I’ve seen in the Inky in a long time, with a four-column double-deck headline and a subhead and big three column picture and a big, bold pull out and a couple of sidebars.

And yes, as I predicted,  it mentioned that  those charged where Republicans several times – including in the pull out and in one of sidebar headlines.

I was wrong, though, that the Inky would fail to mention that Corbett was a Republican. One of the sidebars concerned how the rest of the party was going to take vengeance by not helping him in his bid for governor.

Frankly, I think Corbett is going to get all the help he wants and is now the front-runner. He is my choice right now.

One of the funniest aspect of the coverage is John Baer’s column about Perzel: The Fumo-ish fall of an unsubtle pol.

Baer, and the Inky, still couldn’t bring themselves to point out that Vince Fumo was a big-time Democrat.

If the Inquirer handled the far more common Democratic scandals and groups like ACORN in the same manner as they handled these charges, the state would be much better off.