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CBS’s Biased Medicare Coverage
Copyright © 2003 RatherBiased.com
Conservative media outlets have been abuzz of late with news that ABC ran a
profile of the same woman who had appeared on CBS’s Evening News two years previously, claiming to be in urgent need of federal assistance to pay her medication bills. Much was made of this report, for it undermined television journalists’ claims that the people they put forward as “typical” have political connections that made them anything but.In reality, the exposure of ABC and CBS’s double featuring of Eva Baer-Shenkein was but the discovery of the tip of an iceberg, for Baer-Shenkein was but one of several individuals who have been featured by multiple news outlets, multiple times. This case study of CBS News demonstrates how one network has crossed the line from observing to advocacy through disingenuous profiles of political activists posing as innocent victims, a total blackout on conservative policy analysts, and on-air editorializing.
By such tactics, CBS News has succeeded in creating a climate that has stifled debate over the biggest expansion of government in decades. Whether it has done so out of a liberal bias, a deliberate pandering to its aged viewers or a desire for government subsidies of its biggest advertisers or some combination is hard to say. But what is clear is that Dan Rather and his colleagues have severely damaged their reputation for objectivity by their persistently unfair coverage of prescription drugs.
On the subject of taxes, it’s a given that conservatives want them lower while liberals want them higher, and when it comes to government spending, liberals want more while conservatives want less. The dispute over which side is wrong is one of the fundamental controversies of politics and one where Dan Rather and his colleagues at CBS News have taken sides.
In its reports on taxes, CBS News has, on many occasions, relayed the liberal view that the government cannot afford the size and scope of the tax cuts favored by President Bush and his fellow Republicans. Various reasons have been offered such as increased deficits, higher interest rates, etc.
Typical of this type of reporting was a tell piece by Dan Rather on March 7th’s Evening News which placed the blame for higher deficits on tax cuts and not increased spending. The anchorman even waxed alliterative to hammer home the point:
The Congressional Budget Office is upping its projection of the recently rapidly rising federal deficit. It sees red ink of $246 billion this year, $200 billion next. Add on President Bush’s proposed tax cuts and the deficit hits a record $338 billion next year. None of this includes the cost of a war.1
Yet now that the dialog in Washington has shifted to the subject of adding a new prescription drug insurance program to Medicare, Rather and company are turning a deaf ear to conservative complaints that the proposal that seems likely to pass is fiscally irresponsible and will balloon in size once enacted. Instead of worrying about budget deficits as CBS had previously done in the tax debate, a June 24 report by Joie Chen fretted that neither the House nor Senate plans were spending enough.
Chen’s story was emblematic in both its complete disregard of conservative claims and in its making use of liberal political groups to provide people for stories, while not doing the same with conservative groups.
From Rather’s introductory remark that “lawmakers are still working out details, but as CBS’s Joie Chen reports, the plan may wind up falling far short of what Medicare recipients were hoping for,” to Chen’s comment that “with only $400 billion to spend, there just isn’t enough money,” the report was a virtual advertisement for the AARP—which helped out by providing one of its members as a “typical” victim of the House and Senate bills to prove the point that more spending is necessary.
The victim in Chen’s report was one Claire Krulik, whom the CBS reporter used as an example of a gap in the coverage provided by both congressional plans where some senior citizens whose drug expenses are in the middle of the cost spectrum--neither extremely high nor extremely low--must pay full price for their prescriptions. Although Krulik portrayed herself in the most dire circumstances (“It’s that doughnut, that hole in the middle that’s going to eat up your money. It’s the same thing as not having any insurance at all,” she says), Chen had to admit that Krulik clearly would be better off, to the tune of $1,700 under the Senate plan and $1,000 under the House proposal.
But aside from having a rather unvictimized victim (under the Senate’s plan, Krulik has to pay only $200 per year more than if no “doughnut hole” existed), Chen’s story featured no one from the White House or Congress explaining why the payment gap exists at all—much less an expert provided by a conservative group to express concern about government waste.
And it’s not as though conservatives have been silent on the matter. Fax machines and Web servers at conservative interest groups and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have been working overtime sending out material to the media, but thus far, no one at CBS News has taken notice. In the current debate which started in 2001 after George W. Bush became president, no representatives from any conservative group have been invited on the CBS Evening News to talk about the debate over prescription drugs subsidies.2
In contrast, representatives from groups favoring large federal benefits have been given ample opportunities to share their views. Spokespeople from the AARP have appeared five times since 2001 talking about prescription drugs. The head of one liberal group, Families USA, has been invited on CBS programs five separate times to give his opinions on drug subsidies and two other times to talk about lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies. At no time during any of these appearances was either group identified as liberal or as supporting stances favored by liberals nor was a conservative invited on to share an alternative perspective.
But it is not just conservatives’ objections that Dan Rather and his colleagues have swept aside. The same Congressional Budget Office quoted repeatedly by Rather in the context of tax cuts and deficits also released a report about the prescription drug bills, but so far, no one at the Evening News (or CBS) has talked about it. It’s not too hard to see why. One of the key findings of the study was that 37 percent of all retirees who currently have drug coverage from their pension plans (about 4.5 million people) would likely lose it once their former employers realize they can cut costs by making their employees use the federal plan. According to the CBO, under either congressional plan, these retirees would be forced to pay higher premiums for worse coverage. Whether this analysis proves true or not matters less in a journalistic context than that CBS failed to mention it. If the CBO is a credible source on tax matters, why not about prescription drugs?
Television as a medium is far better at conveying emotions than facts and the best way to do so about policy debates is to show the viewer how individuals will be affected. But finding average people whose stories fit the reportorial storyline can be expensive and time-consuming. How this dilemma gets solved is one of the dirty little secrets of television news.
Political groups are forever trying to get government officials to hear their stories and ideas, but perhaps even more important than this is the public campaign through the news media. The best way to persuade the public is through persuading the press. Interest groups do this by deluging reporters with faxes, emails, and phone calls that present opinions, offer analyses, facts, and—most importantly for TV news—provide people. Television needs people to tell the story and political groups need to tell their stories, particularly if they can get one of their activists to do so. Getting an analyst or executive on the air is accomplishment enough, but for most interest groups, getting a member on TV as an “average” person is a far more desirable since life stories are far more empathetic and persuasive than political remarks from a guy in a suit.
While both liberal and conservative groups benefit from backdoor contacts with journalists, unfortunately for the national debate, liberal groups often benefit disproportionately from promotion by the news media. This has been particularly true with CBS’s coverage of prescription drugs. Not only have liberal interest groups provided all of the featured analysts, the network has never featured an average person who was against federal subsidies; nor has it featured anyone who worried that politicians might be acting improvidently by creating a program that the U.S. might not be able to afford in the future.3
In comparison, Dan Rather and his colleagues have featured numerous profiles of people claiming to be hurt by high prescription drug prices and demanding government action. A July 11, 2001 Evening News report by White House reporter John Roberts featured a particularly strident senior citizen:
ROBERTS: Fourteen months after we first met her [CBS has featured her five times4], after all the campaign promises, 80-year-old Rita Butler today had this spirited appraisal of what the government has done to lower her monthly prescription drug costs.
RITA BUTLER (Senior Citizen): Not a damn thing.
ROBERTS: Tomorrow, in the very first step to ease the burden for millions of people like Rita, President Bush will offer seniors a drug discount card the White House says will take 10 to 30 percent off the price of prescriptions.
BUTLER: What one president said, “a chicken in every pot.” That’s what it would mean. As it is now, it’s either medicine or food.5
While the rest of those profiled by CBS News did not make profane outbursts (unlike Butler who did so in more than one profile), several of the “ordinary” people featured by CBS have been anything but hapless victims of the system. A number have been hard-core liberal activists, but up until Joie Chen’s June 24th report, CBS viewers were never informed of their not-so-average backgrounds. Our researchers also noticed that in many cases, the same people were interviewed repeatedly—by CBS and other news organizations.
Claire Krulik was a poor example of the crisis Joie Chen tried to create in her June 24th story. Even Chen herself admitted at the end of her story that, "as it turns out, Krulik would be better off" after a "rough calculation based on Claire Krulik's current expenses." So why did CBS choose to use Krulik at all? Of the pool of millions seniors, could CBS producers not find even one elderly American who actually had the problem Chen was describing? Producers chose Krulik because she either came to them or the AARP referred CBS to her. Why search long and hard for a cash-strapped senior when one can be placed in your lap? Even if she's a poor example, it's a lot easier than calling around, searching for an older American with a particular problem-- especially when a deadline is looming.
Of the 40 million seniors on Medicare, the following six activists (all of them women) were featured on CBS shows an average of three times each. Each passed herself off as a common elderly citizen with difficulties paying drugs, in need of government intervention. CBS's producers and reporters played along with the charade:
Viola Quirion is perhaps the most conspicuous “nobody” featured by CBS News. This average elderly American has testified before Congress, lobbied her state’s legislature, and was an interested party in the state of Maine’s successful defense of its drug price control regime.
Quirion is also a member of the Maine Council of Senior Citizens and an activist for the Alliance for Retired Americans, an organization which seeks to “ensure social and economic justice” by “enroll[ing] and mobiliz[ing] retired union members and other senior and community activists into a nationwide grassroots movement advocating a progressive political and social agenda.”
During her five appearances on CBS, Quirion’s political activities were never revealed. She has also appeared in wide array of news outlets including the Associated Press, Time, Newsweek, the Boston Globe, NPR’s Marketplace, the Hartford Courant, in addition to newspapers in her home state.6
Despite Quirion’s status as a virtual poster girl of liberalism, CBS’s Chen allowed her to pass herself off as an average elderly woman:
CHEN: Like many older Americans, Viola Quirion faces tough choices over what she needs to survive.
QUIRION: First, I buy my prescriptions to make sure I have enough money for that. Then if I have any left, that’s what I have to do with the food.
CHEN: The price of her prescriptions for ovarian cancer and a variety of other ills keeps going up. She says she and other Medicare recipients are in desperate need of prescription drug coverage.7
Carolyn Swift appeared along with Quirion in a one-sided 60 Minutes piece by Mike Wallace about a very well-publicized bus trip sponsored by the Maine Council of Senior Citizens that took elderly Americans to purchase cheaper medications in Canada. Prior to that, with the help of a liberal litigation firm specializing in medical suits, she sued a Massachusetts-based HMO to force it to pay for her prescription drugs. None of this was made known to CBS News viewers, who were led to believe that Swift was just a hapless granny.
Like many of those profiled, Swift has made her rounds in the news media: she has been featured on NBC’s Nightly News, twice by a Boston NPR affiliate, once by the Boston Globe, and once by the Boston Herald.8 Wallace’s piece painted a bleak portrait:
WALLACE: The bus started in Portland, Maine, drove across New Hampshire, then up through Vermont, picking up about 40 seniors along the way. One of the seniors we met: Carolyn Swift, a retired English professor.
SWIFT: I feel that we are all—on this bus, we are refugees from the American health care system.
WALLACE: What do you mean?
SWIFT: We are, all of us, inadequately insured, struggling to take our medications, without which we will die. And thank goodness Canada’s here.9
While Claire Krulik was properly identified by Chen as an “AARP activist,” the on-screen “super” below her name called her “New Jersey Senior Citizen,” which suggests that divulging Krulik’s activist background was a last-minute decision. Krulik has also been mentioned by other news organizations including a Northeastern cable news channel and a local newspaper. The AARP features her on its Web site in almost the exact same manner that CBS News did. 10
Eva Baer-Schenkein was first featured on the CBS Evening News in 2001 complaining that she couldn’t afford to buy her osteoporosis medication. She turned up this year on ABC with different maladies but still wanting federal insurance. Baer-Schenkein has appeared on four CBS news shows.11 Reporter Diana Olick contrasted Baer-Schenkein’s situation with the fact that she was ineligible for a benefit plan then supported by President Bush:
OLICK: Last Thursday, Democrats introduced a Medicare Reform Act, which includes unlimited prescription drug benefits for seniors who have paid their deductibles. President Bush backs a plan that would target only the poorest, and that leaves out middle-income patients like Eva Baer-Schenkein.
BAER-SCHENKEIN: So now I’m not taking anything at all for my osteoporosis.
OLICK: Because she can’t afford the $3,500 a year for the drug her doctor prescribed.
BAER-SCHENKEIN: When I was given this bill, I almost passed out. The pharmacy was crowded, so I felt embarrassed to give it back.12
Lyn Lovinger was a party in a 2001 class-action lawsuit which accused two drug companies of price-fixing. Her involvement in the suit, which was financed by the Prescription Access Litigation Project, an organization created by the liberal health care interest group Community Catalyst, was never disclosed by CBS’s Jim Axelrod. Far from being the mere “breast cancer survivor” portrayed by CBS News, Lovinger had been active for some time trying to get the government to act on her claims against drug makers AstraZeneca and Barr Laboratories. According to the Associated Press, “she made endless calls to agencies and legislators to protest the high cost of the drug” tamoxifen after which “a representative of a senior citizens’ group asked Lovinger if she would consider being a named plaintiff in a class-action suit. She immediately agreed.”
“I was fighting on my own for months,” Lovinger told the AP. “I was just so happy someone wanted to help me.”
Besides three appearances on CBS and an AP profile, Lovinger has also been featured by the New York Times and the Chattanooga Times Free Press.13 An excerpt from her CBS profile:
AXELROD: When Lyn Lovinger heads to the drugstore, she’s got one thing on her mind: her breast cancer medication.
LYN LOVINGER (Breast Cancer Survivor): Number one priority. I mean, I have to have it.
AXELROD: Living only on Social Security, it costs her $25 a month.
LOVINGER: It’s not peanuts. I mean, I’m not desperate, but it’s certainly somewhat of a burden.14
Lena Sanford was another member of the Maine Council of Senior Citizens bus trip profiled by Mike Wallace. Besides two 60 Minutes appearances, she has been portrayed as a victim of the American health system on the CBS Evening News, the Associated Press’s State and Local Wire, four times in the Boston Globe, three times in the Boston Herald, and once by Newsday and Boston NPR affiliate WBUR.15 During Sanford’s 60 Minutes profile, Wallace and Sanford painted a woeful picture:
SANFORD: Well, you know what I feel like, Mike?
WALLACE: Hmm?
SANFORD: A convict.
WALLACE: A convict?
SANFORD: I’m leaving this country to go to another country, going over the border to get my medication so that I can live.
WALLACE: Yeah. [...]
SANFORD: I feel like a victim. And I also feel like a fugitive, that I have to leave the United States to go over the border and come to Canada to get over a $1,000 break on my insur—on my medication.16
Rita Butler, although not an activist--as far as our researchers could tell--was regurgitated five times on CBS news shows; the profanity was just too good to pass up. With her included, the total comes to 23 stories with the same seven women--six of whom are activists.
While it has ignored conservative objections to either the House or Senate plan, CBS provided ample coverage of liberal criticisms of a more privatized plan that was initially backed by President Bush.
On the night Bush was to outline his prescription drug proposal in his first State of the Union Address, Rather and Bob Schieffer focused exclusively on the objections to Bush’s proposal, not mentioning any reasons why Bush (or anyone) supported it.
RATHER: In addition to war, President Bush faces a major challenge at home, the economy. And tonight he will outline his wartime tax cut package and his plan for prescription drug coverage for seniors. Both are controversial. CBS’s Bob Schieffer is back there at the Capitol with more about all this. Bob, tell us about it. [...]
SCHIEFFER: The most dramatic proposal he’ll unveil for the people who will fill this hall will be a plan to overhaul and modernize Medicare. He’ll tell Congress he’ll set aside $400 billion over the next 10 years to provide seniors with prescription drugs, but only if Congress changes the program so that seniors can switch from the current Medicare system and get their health insurance from private insurance plans. Specifics won’t come until later, but Democrats are already steamed.
SENATOR TED KENNEDY (D-Mass.): They are effectively going to hold hostage the seniors.
SENATOR TOM DASCHLE (D-S.D.; Minority Leader): To force them to give up the doctor they choose for the drugs they need is a huge mistake, and we will fight it to the last day.17
The next day, Rather and Joie Chen agreed that Bush had made a mistake in proposing such an idea, particularly because it involved the network’s bogeyman, HMOs. Both asserted that Republican congressional leaders opposed Bush’s idea but failed to say what they (being conservatives) thought was wrong with it. At the end, Chen bemoaned that the government had not taken any action:
RATHER: The possibility is growing that President Bush may have made a major miscalculation on a key domestic policy. It is the president’s version of a prescription drug plan for seniors that would switch some of them out of Medicare and into HMOs. This has run into a blast of criticism and not just from Democrats. CBS’s Joie Chen is covering the effort at damage control on Capitol Hill. Joie.
CHEN: Dan, the idea of tying prescription drug coverage to some sort of privatized, HMO-style Medicare ran into stiff and immediate resistance on Capitol Hill. [...] Back on Capitol Hill, Republican leaders downplayed expectations and said they had nothing from the White House either.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM DeLAY (R-Texas; Majority Leader): You’re way ahead of us. We’re not even close to understanding what the president’s going to propose.
CHEN: And the new majority leader took to the Senate floor to reassure seniors that the president wouldn’t take away the Medicare coverage they now depend on.
SENATOR BILL FRIST (R-Tenn.; Majority Leader): —that they will, in this vision that he paints, have the option for not changing anything, for keeping it just the way it is.
CHEN: What happened here is that members of Mr. Bush’s own party, including the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, made it clear they couldn’t back this plan. So now it’s back to the drawing board and a—yet another delay for seniors in need of prescription drug care.18
When Bush unveiled his plan officially in March, Chen reported only liberal objections to it and none of the reasons the president or his allies favored it.
CHEN: He outlined his plan to fix Medicare today and offers three options: traditional Medicare, with a drug discount card and a $600 drug subsidy for low-income seniors; a choice of subsidized private-sector plans with drug coverage and participants paying some of the cost, or an HMO-style program that would provide full drug benefits.
But the president’s plan is already in trouble. Democrats complain it will be too costly and will force seniors into managed care just to get the drug benefit. And even moderate Republicans warn it’s not comprehensive enough. They say it’s just a first step.
SENATOR OLYMPIA SNOWE (R-Maine): I applaud the president for moving that direction, understanding that this is a major down payment. Obviously, it will require more into the future.
CHEN: Lawmakers have wrangled over Medicare for more than five years, but with a new proposal now on the table, they’ll have a tough time meeting the deadline Mr. Bush set today, putting a fix in place by this summer.19
Whatever the merits and demerits of any of the drug insurance plans currently being offered, there is a sense in Washington now that some sort of bill will be passed this summer; one Washington Post reporter compared the issue’s momentum to that of a train with broken brakes. But where did this tremendous momentum come from? One factor, obviously, is that prices have gone up on medications. But the lobbying power of the news media should not be overlooked, either.
On this issue, as with last year’s campaign finance bill, CBS News has clearly taken sides, practically conducting a campaign for a federal prescription drug insurance program through its reporting. Since medication coverage became a major issue in the Bush presidency, the Eyemark Network has never once featured anyone, expert or average, politician or pundit who opposed federal involvement in such a large portion of the economy or who thought that what was being proposed was wasteful or unnecessary. By running numerous stories bemoaning the expensiveness of medication, disingenuous profiles of “average” people claiming to be helpless casualties of the current system, CBS News has pounded the drums loudly for a federal welfare program in a manner which has further decimated its claim to be an evenhanded broker of information. The bill Dan Rather and his colleagues have pushed for looks as though it is headed for success in Congress, but at what price?
1. CBS Evening News, March 7, 2003.
3. This is a stark contrast to how the Evening News covered the debate over President Bush’s tax cut. See our earlier report for details.
4. CBS Evening News: May 10, 2000, July 11, 2001; CBS Morning News: May 11, 2000, July 12, 2001; Up to the Minute: July 12, 2001.
5. CBS Evening News, July 11, 2001.
6. 60 Minutes: October 17, 1999, July 1, 2000; CBS Evening News: March 4, 2003, May 19, 2003; CBS Morning News: March 5, 2003; Marketplace: May 19, 2003; Time: February 10, 2003; Hartford Courant: January 21, 2003; The Associated Press State & Local Wire: May 20, 2002; Boston Globe: August 21, 2000, March 28, 2001; Newsweek: May 8, 2000.
7. CBS Evening News, March 4, 2003.
8. 60 Minutes: October 17, 1999, July 1, 2001; NBC Nightly News: July 31, 2000; WBUR-FM: November 18, 1998, October 28, 1999. Boston Herald: November 26, 1998; Boston Globe: October 30, 1998.
9. 60 Minutes: July 1, 2001.
10.CBS Evening News: June 24, 2003; CN8 News, May 9, 2001; Lincroft Journal: April 2002.
11.CBS Evening News: July 1, 2001; Up To The Minute: July 2, 2001; The Osgood File: July 2, 2001; CBS Morning News: July 2, 2001; ABC World News Tonight: June 11, 2003.
12.CBS Evening News, July 1, 2001.
13.CBS Evening News: July 25, 2001; Up To The Minute: July 26, 2001; CBS Morning News: July 26, 2001; Associated Press State & Local Wire: May 25, 2001; New York Times: May 10, 2001; Chattanooga Times Free Press (AP): May 27, 2001
14.CBS Evening News, July 25, 2001
15.CBS Evening News: April 8, 2000; 60 Minutes: October 17, 1999, July 1, 2001; Boston Herald: January 11, 2000, October 10, 1999, June 29, 1999; Boston Globe: December 12, 1999, December 7, 1999, July 6, 1999, June 19, 1999; WBUR-FM: October 28, 1999; Newsday: October 17, 1999; Associated Press State & Local Wire: September 12, 1999.
16.60 Minutes, October 17, 1999.
17.CBS Evening News, January 28, 2003.
18.CBS Evening News, January 29, 2003.
19.CBS Evening News, March 4, 2003.