Our intrepid media are at it again.
For months, while the ebola plague raged on in West Africa,
American media titillated our gawkers-at-a-train-wreck mentality with a
constant stream of little articles insinuating that the disease was poised to
pounce upon the United States, and what were we going to do when that happened? The annoying and non-factual speculation did
nothing positive…was in fact designed
to do nothing positive. It was designed
to sell soap.
It was designed to stir up fear among a population arrogantly
ignorant about many things—infectious disease included (anti-vaxxers, anyone?)—and
entice millions of clicks to non-articles about the disease and the
threat. To pages lined with ads, of
course. Fear does indeed sell soap.
Unfortunately, it also creates a public prone to over-reaction,
finger-pointing, xenophobia and mob mentality.
The kind of mentality that would allow a politician’s tweet—that the best control for the disease would be to execute anyone testing
positive for it—to fade into the background of heinous statements and speculation
splattered all over the internet concerning this unfamiliar disease and our
irrational fear of it.
But then, lo and behold, the virus DID make it to our
shores, as it was bound to do in this shrunken world of international air
travel. This presented a golden
opportunity for our media to fear-monger, and they took full advantage of it. For a couple of weeks, the top five stories
on any news outlet centered upon ebola, the fear, the quarantines, the outcry…
And the mistakes. This
is where it gets interesting.
Has anyone but me noticed how the ebola story has suddenly
seemed to burn itself out?
Ebolaebolaebola!!!!! is no longer screaming at us from every
available news outlet. This morning, MSNBC
has one ebola story in their top ten—and it’s ranked number 6. CBS features one story on its home page,
which you have to scroll down to see.
ABC news features links to a couple of stories in their sidebar—one about
an international travel ban and one featuring good news about one of the
ebola-infected US nurses. And, very
tellingly, not one ebola story appears on Fox News’ home page this morning.
So what’s going on? Has the ADD American public gotten over
the whole ebola thing and begun to wander the airwaves in search of the next
new sensation? Have American news
outlets conceded that they over-covered the story and that there is other news
going on in the world? Or have they
finally decided they’ve done enough fear mongering and are now taking the high
road in an altruistic effort to practice responsible journalism and NOT create
more panic?
Dream on.
Sure, there are a few ebola stories still floating around. But there are almost none concerning the topic that should be front and
center of the discussion: the glaring inadequacies
of our for-profit medical culture. The
culture that puts profits before patients, cash before care, corporations
before individuals. The culture that has
made our health “care” system an unnavigable tangle of red tape, referrals,
inadequate diagnostics and botched communication. The “treat ‘em and street ‘em” mentality that
saves shareholders money (and endangers the public health) by putting very sick
people back out on the streets.
This culture has latched on to the idea that medical care is
one of the few services left stateside that cannot be outsourced. And as one of the last remaining American
industries where there are still actual jobs to be had, it has become partners
with another expanding American entrepreneurial effort—for-profit educational institutions. These “colleges” provide our health “care”
system with a steady stream of poorly-trained warm bodies, churned out as
quickly as they can be inadequately vetted and licensed. Who are then unleashed upon an unsuspecting
public, were they are given an increasing number of life-or-death responsibilities
for which they have not been properly trained and for which they have no visceral
understanding or respect.
Yep…our national nod to capitalism has turned our health “care”
system into one huge profit center. One
that is never going to go away—because people will always need medical care.
Unfortunately, it has also compromised the system so badly
that it has become a gigantic money-making, compassionless juggernaut that has little to do with "health," nothing to do with “care” and everything to do with profit.
This has been going on for years. American medicine has descended not too
gradually into a hellish system designed to facilitate the ring of the cash
register, at the ultimate expense of the effectiveness of the system.
Some critics—who are largely ignored and given little
credence—estimate that over 200,000 American lives are lost through medical mistakes each year. I’ll bet that if you
take a moment to think about it, you personally know at least one patient who
has been dangerously misdiagnosed, or whose treatment has been complicated or
botched by miscommunication, specialist-hopping and/or buck-passing. Off the top of my head I can think of one woman—my
sister’s sister-in-law—who was scheduled for a tonsillectomy by a doctor who
was unaware that she was on blood-thinners for a heart condition; the surgery
would have killed her. Luckily, they discovered
the error the day before she was scheduled to go under the knife.
But how many people don’t get so lucky? How lucky will we ALL be if a real infectious disease threat descends
upon our health “care” system, which demonstrated in spades earlier this month
its complete cluelessness in handling such a menace?
And yet, our media have not merely dropped the ball on this
story. They have actively thrown it down
a well and poured concrete on it.
Ask yourself why.
The answer that comes to mind should probably have something
to do with 90% of American media being under the control of six large
corporations. Corporations which have
the power to disseminate the exact messages they want the public to hear. And kill the ones they don’t. Ask yourself in whose best interests it would
be not to raise questions that might
cause the cash registers at hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and pharmacies
to stop ringing with merry abandon. You
can’t really wonder what happened to
investigative reporting here in the good ole U S of A, can you?
Unfortunately, this—not
ebola, or terrorism, or imagined WMD in some Muslim country—is what could ultimately
be the death of us:
What we don’t know.
What we don’t want to know.
What we are not allowed
to know.
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