There are two key reasons why mainstream media must be talking about Medicare-for-All. First, it is sound policy, something that all Americans should hope for in truly finding affordable and accessible health care for all. Second, it is the Democrats’ position (though often muted) which stands in opposition to the Republicans’ “Repeal and Replace” Obamacare, or even simply “Repeal.”

Democrats acknowledge that the Affordable Care Act requires fixing. Most of what needs fixing is what was initially left out if the bill in 2009-2010 because (a) President Obama did not think that he could ask for that much, and (b) Republicans stood in firm opposition to it. The first step would be a public option, a proposal to create a government-run health insurance agency that would compete with other private health insurance companies within the United States. Because the public exchange would not need to charge consumers (taxpayers) the twenty percent overhead for private insurers’’ profit, it would immediately reduce costs and by its very nature, apply to everyone.

Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson both supported some form of Medicare-for-All. But without presidential leadership, it took until 2003 for Representatives John Conyers (D-MI) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and others to introduce H.R. 676, a simple six-page bill which would establish a single-payer or Medicare-for-All system. But as we have previously reported, the media paid scant attention to the proposal when Dennis Kucinich ran for president in 2008 against the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both of whom were offering “universal-lite” coverage.

In the 2016 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders forced the media to cover what was the linchpin to his health-care program. Unfortunately, for many in the media Sanders has become “yesterday’s news,” and along with his partial black-out is a silencing of many of the progressive proposals that he advocated. In fairness, very few Democrats in office have taken up his mantle, even though it was clearly more popular with voters than Hillary Clinton’s milquetoast.

An example of neither the media nor a mainstream Democrat adding Medicare-for-All to a conversation was on CNN’s “New Day” on Monday, July 3. Guest host John Berman was interviewing Maryland Senator Ben Cardin about the question of whether Democrats were willing to work with Republicans on health care reform. [I wish that I could give you a link to this interview, but CNN is notoriously bad in providing access to recently-aired clips or interviews.]. Berman asked Cardin whether Senate Democrats were willing to work with Republicans and the Maryland senator gave the requisite answer that in theory Democrats would collaborate, but it did not seem realistic presently because of the huge gulf that separates the two parties on health care. But what Cardin did not say, and what Berman did not ask about was exactly what Democrats stand for. Had he been asked that, I am not sure whether Cardin would have proposed first aid for ACA, or even mentioned that government subsidies needed to be greater to meet escalating medical costs.

All of that is confusing. Medicare-for-All is not. It is something that should be asked about and talked about.

When the main issue before us was gay marriage, members of the mainstream media did not hesitate to ask politicians whether they were for marriage equality. That was a clear question which lent itself to clear and precise answers.

The media has not done so with Medicare-for-All. It is time they do so because (a) it is good journalism to do so, and (b) their personal lives and that of the society in which they live will be better off with it.

UPDATE: On Sunday, July 9, 2019,”The Hill” reported “Single-payer healthcare gains traction with Dems”

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There was a day when Walter Cronkite was the master journalist of all of American television news. We knew the serious side of him; the one that told us of John F. Kennedy’s semi-remarkable electoral victory in 1960, the one who carried us through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo journeys with a tinge of excitement, and the one who told us all it was okay to cry when John F. Kennedy was slain in Dallas.

We didn’t know much about Walter Cronkite beyond what we saw on television or previously heard as a World War II correspondent for CBS Radio. There were references to him having been born in Western Missouri, not far from another plain-spoken man, Harry Truman. We knew that as he rose to the position of managing editor and anchor of CBS News, he became wealthier and loved to sail off the coasts of Massachusetts.

Cronkite lived in an era when the media did not ask President Kennedy about his dalliances. The probing that the media did into other public figures was tame as was the inquiry that looked into the lives of journalists. But that changed. Political figures were disrobed, most poignantly on June 13, 2011 when CNN political correspondent John King came just short of asking Republican candidates in a debate whether they wore boxers or briefs.

Twenty-three years earlier, in 1988, many in the press stalked Democratic Candidate Gary Hart about his supposed relationship with Donna Rice. Some of the photos were quite revealing. But through it all, mainstream journalists worked to protect their own integrity. A reporter for NBC, CBS, ABC, or CNN did not want to be confused with one for the National Enquirer.

In 1980, CNN took on the arduous task of providing real news around the clock. This was a most difficult task; news did not seem to move fast enough to fill each hour in a 24-hour loop. However, CNN adapted and replayed many of their earlier stories throughout the day. They also broadened their scope beyond “hard news” to the three big money-makers: weather, sports, and entertainment.

As peripheral news crept more and more into what the network projected as “real news,” the network was able to maintain the credibility of some of their top anchors and reporters including Bernard Shaw, Don Harrison, Christiane Amanpour and Nick Robertson. As time went on, CNN indulged in the production decision that somewhat doomed NBC’s Brian Williams.They sent their anchors to the scenes of so-called “breaking news.” In some cases it worked well; Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta were outstanding reporting from Gulf Coast in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina and later in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

But more recently CNN began to slide. Anchor/reporter Don Lemon was reporting from the streets of Manhattan on that January night in early 2015 when the Armageddon of all blizzards was to hit the east coast. If you were in Boston, indeed you got hit with such a storm. But in New York, the fury was mainly in the hype; not the snow and wind. All the same, Don Lemon and his crew were driving on the streets of Manhattan in their “Blizzardmobile” even though the city had banned all traffic that was not essential. Lemon wasn’t quite sure what to report; was it really a blizzard or was it a false alarm? He couldn’t make up his mind and neither could his producers. But the reporting reached a new form of absurdity when the Blizzardmobile stopped in the middle of the road; Lemon got out, all the while reporting live, thanks to the dash-cam and wireless mike, and tried to show us how the fallout on the street was good for making solid snowballs. Unfortunately for him, he could not find any good snow in the ice and water, and instead he tried to make a slushball, which simply dripped between his fingers.

If Don Lemon was chagrined, he did a good job of hiding it. However, it was clear that he had taken a hit, not from a snowball but in the form of lost respect from many in his viewing public. Lemon is game, and he has done an admirable job going back to news.

But then, CNN had a not so brilliant idea that truly sandbagged six of its anchors. On President’s Day, they wanted to have the anchors be contestants in a daytime-like game show, answering questions about U.S. presidents. Actually, the questions and answers were quite reasonable, but in order to entertain the audience, the anchors had to do just that, entertain.

Thus we saw John Burnham, Erin Burnett, Alisyn Camerota, Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, and Jake Tapper acting t like hyperactive teenagers as they battled one another for points to give a pittance of money to their favorite charities. I don’t particularly blame the anchors for their behavior; they were put up to it by management. This event was an equal opportunity misfortune.The anchors lost credibility and so did the CNN brand.

Comedian Jon Stewart has led a host of progressives to make fun of CNN. For the most part, I think that it’s fair. But with Fox being a simple propaganda machine for the right. and MSNBC allowing it arrogance to distort any real message that it may be trying to convey, CNN has the mainstream to itself. Yes, it has the problems associated with corporate ownership and providing poll-driven news, but it still is in a position to do a real public service for citizens around the world.CNN seems to be weakening its brand at the moment. It’s not too late to come back from the movement towards absurdity, but CNN had  better reverse its direction in a hurry.

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In many progressive circles, it’s become open season on CNN. The oldest cable news network has become the recent whipping boy of humorist Jon Stewart as well as many others who see the network as bumbling along with one error after another.

While Fox is deservedly viewed with great disdain by progressives, there are many who consistently toe the line with MSNBC. I am among the many who frequently find it affirming to watch MSNBC to receive reinforcement for the views that I have held for numerous years. I’m also among those who find it to be as boorish as it is insightful.

CNN is different from the two aforementioned. It is a news channel, or at least it tries to be one. When visionary Ted Turner launched the network on June 1, 1980, he set out to bring the United States and the rest of the world immediate news from wherever it occurred. This required a large staff of reporters, cinematographers, producers, editors and managers. Miriam-Webster refers to news as “new information or a report about something that has happened recently.” The presumption here is that it will be presented in an accurate fashion, or as Fox mistakenly says about itself, in a “fair and balanced” way.

Except on weekend nights, CNN is 24/7 news. It broke us through the barrier of having to wait until 5:30 PM (6:30 PM in the East and West) for what became commonly known as “breaking news.” CNN had the capability to turn live to any story in which there was breaking news. When the U.S. went to war in on August 2, 1990 to kick Iraq’s Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, CNN brought us the “green jello” from many angles and many reporters. We heard from soldiers with boots on the ground, from military leaders, from Iraqi citizens on various sides of the dispute, from Kuwaitis and other interested parties in the Mid-East and around the world.

In 1992, when Bill Clinton energetically captured the Democratic nomination for president by plodding through dozens of primaries and caucuses, CNN was there. We the viewers received far more information on political strategies from key personnel than we ever had before in a campaign. When Clinton made himself a political fool and legal target in the Monica Lewinsky escapade, CNN was also there.

Through these stories and many more in recent years, CNN has worked to fill up 168 hours a week with news. The result is that many of us are far better informed than we previously were, but we also have been provided with unintended comedy. The station that tries to cover every story from beginning to end intended to do so with missing Malaysian Airline Flight 370. Regrettably for CNN, this is only the latest story in which the network becomes a parody of itself. Initial coverage was thorough, albeit it halting because of the misinformation of the Malaysian government as well as the overall paucity of facts. Traditionally when real breaking news occurs, CNN’s ratings double, allowing it to surpass Fox and MSNBC combined. It was in the network’s interest to keep the story of the missing airliner in the category of breaking news, so it made every attempt to do so.

But the story dragged on day after day and week after week. Now two months later, we really know no more than we did the day of the disappearance, perhaps less. CNN has laid itself on the line repeatedly, and generally come up empty. The low-point may have come on the evening of March 20 when anchor Don Lemon raised the question of whether the plane had disappeared in a black hole. “That’s what people are saying,” Lemon said. “I know it’s preposterous – but is it preposterous you think, Mary?” (to former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo). Schiavo calmly responded “A small black hole would suck in our entire universe, so we know it’s not that.”

Many laughed at Lemon’s questions as many had laughed the previous year at CNN’s round-the-clock coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings which included a number of false theories, albeit all of them were qualified as not properly sourced.

CNN has made a fool of itself. But it’s also doing something that no other network has done – work to provide up-to-date news 24/7. This means that situations arise such as when Lemon was repeatedly asked to go on the air hours at a time and talk about the missing plane, while no news was happening and the only thing left to talk about was discredited theories and wild hypotheses. He was a good soldier to go out and try to keep alive the illusion of breaking news.

It finally became so farcical that the network essentially gave up coverage of what had become a non-story. But they were right that it was an unsolved mystery, and experts from around the world were faced with a challenge the likes of which they had never previously seen.

Joking about some of CNN’s on-air embarrassing moments is fair. But to use these moments to characterize their entire body of work is not fair. They have taken on a challenge that none of the other networks have attempted to duplicate. Perhaps CNN would vet their stories better if they had real competition in the round-the-clock news business. In the absence of that, I’m certainly willing to give them a break and would find it terribly disappointing if the mockery of their mistakes became so widespread that they gave up their mission of trying to bring us timely news.

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I must confess; I’m a semi-secret fan of the mainstream press. This is not because I admire its approach to the news. Rather, I think that the mainstream accepts the conservative mantra that all is well so long as the government doesn’t intervene. My soft spot for the mainstream is nostalgia; I grew up with it. The descendants of Huntley-Brinkley and Uncle Walter are no match for their elders, but all the same, I prefer to first receive news from sources that were my initial introduction to “news.”

CNN is not far behind; it celebrated its thirty-third birthday this year. That’s the combined ages of Fox News and MSNBC. It purports to be politically neutral, and it certainly is as much so as the three broadcast networks (damnation by faint praise). However, if you’re able to dig into the network’s on-line platform, you can often find links to progressive thinking. Such was recently the case as I found a link to a post by Paul Waldman of CNN, “The health care reality conservatives ignore.”

Waldman points out how liberally the conservatives criticize the Affordable Care Act. Whether or not there is any merit to their contention that it is flawed, they have no alternative to suggest save just repealing it. That means that we would go back to a system of virtually unfettered capitalism in which private insurance companies offered plans that would only elevate their profit margins, regardless of what kind of care of accessibility citizens were left with. As Waldman says:

In the American system, there are multiple points where companies do the rational thing: Extract as much money as possible from the system. That’s why an MRI costs three times as much in the U.S. as it does in France or Holland.

The rational thing for private enterprise to do is to increase profits; the rational thing for a government program like Medicare to do is to optimize care to as many people as possible at minimal cost. Which better serves the public? As Waldman says:

But people living under the oppression of those other governments’ systems must hate them, right? Wrong. The Commonwealth Fund recently released a study of health systems in 10 developed countries around the world which included a survey of satisfaction. America’s health system was the least popular, with only 25% of Americans saying it works well and the other 75% saying it should be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt.

The most popular was the most socialized, Great Britain’s, with 63% saying it works well. You may remember that the opening ceremonies of the 2012 summer Olympics in London included a tribute to the National Health Service, so proud are Britons of their health system.

For decades, liberals [in the United States] have been working to devise policy solutions and create the political conditions for health care reform that would achieve secure, universal coverage. On the other hand, in the face of millions who can’t get insurance because of pre-existing conditions and millions more who just can’t afford it, the conservative response was always, “Whatever.” The market spoke, and you lost. Too bad for you.

The Affordable Care Act can certainly be improved. But in health care – to paraphrase Ronald Reagan — the free market isn’t the answer to our problems. It is the problem.

What Mr. Waldman has to say is sensible and logical. I just have to wonder what some of his colleagues like Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett, Don Lemon, John King, Dana Bash and Gloria Borger have to say about Waldman’s post. Do they say, “Yea, that really makes sense, and it’s exactly what I think, but I can’t say it on this network,” or do they say, “We have this radical guy working here who makes no sense; somebody should shut him down.” I’d prefer that it be the former because if they know that single-payer makes more sense than unfettered capitalism, then one or several of them may reach a tipping point at some time. When they do, they’ll ditch the false equivalency of points on the right and left and instead will be a news organization that better informs the public and raises the dialogue.

The post Finding a voice for single-payer healthcare in an unlikely place–CNN appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s interesting while reading about “15% of Americans living in poverty” on the CNN website that it’s doubtful that 15% of the readers are ones who are living in poverty. It seems that in the 1960s, most people who were poor knew that they were. Their frustration often flared up in the form of what were gently described as “urban disturbances” but more commonly known as riots. Some feel that the source of the outbursts in the 1960s was rising expectation; the sense by the poor that things could get better, but they just weren’t. In the 2000s, it seems that the expectations that the poor hold are rather limited because this is what the past half-century has taught them to believe. Additionally, the standard of living for middle income families has also stagnated. Since the Bush Recession, we have had some macro-economic growth. But when it comes to jobs and household income, the story is not one of success. Median household income fell from $51,100 in 2011 to $51,017 in 2012 (an $83.00 drop).

Tangentially, one of the reasons why Larry Summers was disliked so much by progressives is because he favored a much smaller stimulus in 2009 than other economic advisors to the President. In 2013 while Republicans continue to oppose government spending, no matter how good it can be for the country (including Republicans), progressives want another larger stimulus package. It will take an unexpected turn to the left in the 2014 elections for this to happen. In the meantime, we might look at the latest economic news on poverty to be better acquainted with the scope of the problem. Steve Hargreaves writes about it on the CNN website.

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You might think, if you are a leader of a political party, that you would seek as much air time on television and radio as possible. You might also think that it would be beneficial to your party if your candidates were able to penetrate the airwaves that traditionally are filled with information from and about opposing parties.

The operative word in the sentences is “think.” At the risk of sounding too judgmental, it strikes me that Republicans frequently have trouble rendering decisions that require real thinking rather than impulsive action based on beliefs that are likely founded on little or no reason.

Looking for a report on recent Republican actions that is “fair and balanced,” we got our latest information from Fox News.

The Republican National Committee has voted to boycott any presidential primary debates primary debates planned by CNN and NBC if they proceed with lengthy television features on Hillary Clinton, widely expected to be a 2016 Democratic candidate.

Okay, if I have this correct, the RNC (Republican National Committee) is going to try to prevent Republican candidates running for president from participating in debates sponsored by either CNN or NBC because those two networks will be presenting documentaries or docudramas about Hillary Clinton who may or may not be the 2016 Democratic nominee for president. Or as Fox further reports:

The RNC claims that a Clinton-themed documentary and a separate miniseries — in the works from CNN and NBC, respectively — will put a “thumb on the scales” in the upcoming 2016 presidential election.

The draft resolution, obtained by Fox News in advance and later voted on by RNC officials, calls on CNN and NBC to cancel what it describes as “political ads masked as unbiased entertainment.”

There are several assumptions that the RNC makes that are highly questionable. First they assume that the programs on Hillary Clinton will be slanted favorably towards her. We all know that she has plenty of baggage in the closet and it wouldn’t take much for either or both of the television networks to go for the ratings by promoting the films as “tell-alls” about Ms. Clinton. The RNC potentially could be biting the hand that feeds it.

Secondly, both CNN and NBC have millions of regular viewers. They may not tune in to watch a Republican debate on Fox but would likely watch it on more mainstream networks such as these two. But Fox reports:

Even before the Clinton dispute, Republican leaders favored plans to have fewer presidential debates with more friendly moderators. They believe their 2012 presidential candidates spent too much time beating up on each other in last year’s months-long primary season, contributing to Mitt Romney’s loss.

“Our party should not be involved in setting up a system that encourages the slicing and dicing of candidates over a long period of time with moderators that are not in the business of being at all concerned about the future of our party,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told reporters.

The RNC may well be right that in the 2012 presidential debates Republicans spent too much time beating up on each other. But it is doubtful that such conduct had anything to do with the questions that were asked by reporters. The RNC may also be correct that the debate moderators are not concerned about the future of their party. However, the RNC fails to ask the obvious question, “Is it the job of debate moderators to concern themselves about the well-being of the Republican Party?”

Finally, it is not beyond the realm of possibility for a television network to incorporate a little bit of revenge into its decisions. Ideally CNN and NBC would not have any of their programming affected by a possible boycott, but it’s quite conceivable that anyone along the chain of command could work to shade these networks’ coverage as deliberately anti-Republican.

One of the key challenges for the Republican Party is to stop making decisions that actually sound like jokes and instead to actually be serious about public policy. They claimed that they learned a lot from their experiences in 2012 yet with decisions like the boycott, they make us all wonder.

The post The curious “thinking” of Republicans continues appeared first on Occasional Planet.

[A CNN poll, released on Dec. 23, 2010, offers some encouraging news–and perhaps a word of caution– for President Obama.]

Two nights before Christmas, surveying the land,

A poll put good news in the President’s hand.

Fifty six of a hundred folks made this confession:

“Obama did well in this year’s lame-duck session.”

The Republicans’ rating was just forty-two.

Oh, the damage that Senate obstruction can do!

Even Congress’ Democrats, damaged by voters,

Got forty-six, trumping GOP gloaters.

But it didn’t stop there, for on further inspection,

The surveyed said they like Obama’s direction.

Fifty-five say, “He’s moving our country correctly,”

With the GOP going the wrong way directly.

And out of 100, fifty-nine said,

“In reaching for compromise, Obama’s ahead.”

While just twenty-eight, who cannot be faking,

Saw Republicans doing the giving and taking.

“So, who is the source of the blockading passion,”

The surveyors asked, in surveyor fashion.

Here, Republicans won with a margin quite great:

46 to 28.

The lesson we learn from this poll is enlightening,

There’s a bit of good news, but the future is frightening.

Though some think the GOP’s good for the U.S.,

We’ll have to be careful, or else they will screw us.

–Gloria Bilchik

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The television program “Father Knows Best” hit the airwaves in 1954 and was a staple of American viewing through 1960.  Robert Young, who played “father,” was in many ways the country’s paternal figure before “Uncle Walter” Cronkite became “America’s News Anchor” in 1962.

“Father Knows Best” depicted what much of America saw as the idyllic family on the late 1950s.  On numerous occasions when “the wife” and the children went into the living room, they saw father reading the newspaper.  You see, it was dad’s responsibility to keep informed about the world, and if necessary, he might share what he read with satellites of his family.

The last original episode of “Father Knows Best” was produced twenty years before visionary Ted Turner initiated the novel idea of a

twenty-four hour news channel called CNN (Cable News Network).  During the era of “Father Knows Best,” the three networks each had fifteen-minute evening news programs.  With the launch of CNN, Turner multiplied the availability of television national news by a factor of 96 over what it had been in 1960.

Often lost in the shuffle of discussion about CNN is that on January 1, 1982, Turner launched a companion network originally named CNN2 but a year later rebranded as “Headline News.”  Perhaps Wikipedia best describes its format:

The channel’s programming focused around the idea that a viewer could tune in at any time and, in just 30 minutes, receive the most popular national and international stories, in addition to feature reports. The format, known as the Headline News Wheel, featured “Dollars and Sense” personal finance reports at 15 and 45 minutes past each hour, Headline Sports at 20 and 50 minutes, lifestyle reports at 25 and 55 minutes past each hour, and general news during the top (:00) and bottom (:30) of the hour.

So how does this relate to “Father Knows Best?”  Because Robert Young, as father, was essentially living in a pre-television news era.  Many observers believe that television news did not become “real” until the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 when Americans essentially stopped, sat, and stayed glued to the television for four days.  The fact that Kennedy’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself killed live on TV on Sunday, November 24 made television the clear news medium of choice, immediacy, and drama.

Robert Young in “Father Knows Best” was the 1950s image of an adult who wanted to be informed about the world around him.  Never mind that the program reflected the chauvinism, paternalism, and simplicity of the 1950s, or at least as we perceive the ’50s.  If we project the program into the 1980s and beyond, this “fictional functional family” would have dad, mom, and the grown kids all watching television news on a regular basis to stay informed.

Now fast-forward our fiction to 2009 when George Clooney starred in the movie “Up in the Air.”  Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, somewhat of an empathetic and enigmatic protagonist who flies from city to city doing the dirty work for corporations: firing employees.  If we forget the nature of Bingham’s work, we can see that his lifestyle is similar to that of millions of professional men and women in the United States and around the world.  His days often begin early and frequently end late, due to professional responsibilities or discretionary extracurricular activity.  It would be common for him to get back to his hotel room at 9:30 PM.

His work and his natural curiosity would motivate him to be informed about what is going on in the world.  One option for him upon reaching the hotel might be to prop himself up in his bed, grab the remote, and turn on the TV to catch up on the day’s happenings.  There’s only one problem.  There’s no way to get news on TV.  Instead, he’d have the choice of hearing the likes of Bill O’Reilley or Glenn Beck rant from the right or Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow pontificate from the left.  CNN (the main channel, not Headline News) could be offering serious journalism with John King or Anderson Cooper, but not a wrap-up of the day’s events.  He might not even get any journalism on CNN, if Larry King is interviewing the latest contestants from “American Ido,l” or Cooper is fixated on a sensational murder.

To its credit, CNN has tried to present  serious journalism.  The bias it has is to the center, which is probably as reasonable as we can expect it to be.  But it worked best when it had the companion network of “Headline News” with summaries of the day’s event every thirty minutes.

The problem is that “your father’s ‘Headline News’” no longer exists.  When you might want that 7 pm, 7:30 pm, 8 pm, 8:30 pm, etc. wrap-up, you get Nancy Grace sensationalizing the latest gruesome crime, or “celebrity news,” with A.J. Hammer and Karyn Bryant.  Many may forget that before Glenn Beck began distorting and sensationalizing the news on Fox, he did so on, you guessed it, “Headline News.”

The ratings of the current CNN are down, and some feel that its days may be numbered (as opposed to Ted Turner’s original prediction that it would not go off the air until the world ended).  But CNN still has Christiane Amanpour, Fareed Zakaria, John King, Candy Crowley, Nic Robertson, Joe Johns, and frequently the non-frivolous Anderson Cooper.  There is quality to be found there, if one is selective.

To be fair, “Headline News” also has its moments.  Through most of the daytime it provides us with 30-minute round-ups of the day’s news.  The gravitas of the reporting is a function of the events occurring at the time.

But if Robert Young of “Father Knows Best” ever got home from work late (oops, scratch that; it never happened in the idyllic family of the 1950s) or more likely Ryan Bingham checked into his hotel room at 9:30 PM, he could literally surf hundreds of channels and not find a wrap-up of the news.

Our lives have become more fragmented and unpredictable.  We are not going to go back to the lifestyle of “Father Knows Best,” when everything seemed scheduled and no one varied from the prescribed schedule.  Computers give us access to information any time that we want it.  But streaming video is not yet a match for high- definition television.  We need an informative and vibrant CNN.  If that’s going to happen, it has to reestablish a healthy symbiotic relationship with “Headline News.”  So, Nancy Grace, why don’t you check if there are any openings at Fox?  Bring back the “Headline News” “stars of the pas,t” like Chuck Roberts, Lyn Vaughn, David Goodnow, Bob Losure, Lynn Russell, Don Harrison.  Restoring the credibility of television news must start with returning to Ted Turner’s vision of it being available for any one at any time … until the world ends.

The post “Father Knows Best” and the decline of CNN appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Who controls what you view on TV as you stair-climb, ellipiticize, pump, lift and stretch? In many gyms, the TV is permanently set on Fox News. Some of us object to this practice: It’s okay to watch Fox at home, but there’s something uncomfortable about businesses showing Fox in public places. It feels like an endorsement of the Fox viewpoint.  Indeed, it would not shock me to learn that, among right-wingers, there’s a tacit, unspoken understanding that like-minded folks should capitalize on every opportunity to make Fox the preferred channel where the public gathers. I’d like to see a study of what percentage of gyms, bars, electronics stores and other enterprises with tv’s are, at any given time, showing Fox.

So, here’s an idea. If you’re looking for a simple, everyday way to demonstrate your commitment to progressive ideas–and to perform a non-threatening act of protest, try talking to your gym manager, bartender or tv salesperson and asking that the channel be changed to CNN.

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