Covering Haiti, Death And Life Of Journalism, News Dissector Radio; Slavery and Coal In Illinois

February 26th, 2010 - by: danny

• CJR: The Challenge of Covering Haiti

• IIFCO/Pastors for Peace Release

Seven U.S. Doctors Return From Month-Long Service in Haiti — Five of the Young Physicians Hail From Harlem, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island.

Seven young women doctors return home from post-earthquake Haiti on March 1st. Working long shifts around the clock for the past four weeks in a field hospital without running water, they were able to treat thousands of Haitians in need of medical services in the area of Croix des Bouquets. Working and living among the people in extremely precarious conditions, they slept for a few hours daily on the ground in small tents whenever they could.

These physicians come from Harlem, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island in New York City and from Houston, Texas and Oakland, California.

On their first day of work, approximately 2,000 people passed through the hospital for an array of medical care, ranging from urgent surgeries and wound care to delivering babies. For many of the patients it was the first time they had ever seen a doctor.

According to Dr. Melissa Mitchell, their priority has been to serve children, women and the elderly because they are at highest risk for infectious diseases. “Each of our doctors treated 100-150 patients a day. Many who arrived at the tent hospital suffered with malaria, typhoid, infectious diarrhea and malnutrition.”

“Many of the people we examined are victims of both the earthquake and the legacy of an inadequate national healthcare system that has ignored them completely,” said Dr. Wing Wu. “We have come here to do what we can: practice medicine in the service of humanity

Geo writes:

The concept of news has always been about points of views so this doesn’t surprise me as much about how long it took them to realize that tv is a push one sided medium and internet is more about who do you trust and if you believe in the propaganda machines truth or are inside or outside the walled garden – reality is its hard to fire yourself when you are topdog – so when ship is sinking you hire more people who agree with you and fire those who don’t – traditional news/views is nolonger trusted nor does it deserve our trust the systemic meltdown was brought to you today by the letters ABC,, CBS, NBC,, FOX, BBC – the real question is in the state of blurr which jeff pulver calls state of now – real time meadia/news/print is too slow -we want what I call sur-real time media – we want it before it happens :-)

• The Death And Life Of American Journalism

• US war embezzlement visualized: 4-minute video banned from Congress testimony: “Iraq for Sale”

Robert Greenwald, the creator of Brave New Films, testified to the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Defense about war profiteering. He planned to show a 4-minute excerpt from his film, “Iraq for Sale,” as a more powerful communication than his mere speaking but was blocked by a majority vote of those in favor of the Iraq war.

The powerful and revealing 4-minute video is below.

Following is a 3-minute CBS News story of then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld admitting the Pentagon “lost” $2.3 trillion dollars:

That’s $23,000 for every US household, or embezzling $1,000,000 from a military project 2,300,000 times, or embezzling a million dollars a day for 6,300 years, or embezzling over 600 million dollars a day, every day, for ten years.

Following that is a 4-minute video of President Eisenhower’s warning mixed with Rumsfeld’s Congressional testimony dancing around the Department of Defense (DOD) waste. [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

Listen to the podcast of today’s News Dissector radio show on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com with guests Jerry Policoff, Jeanette Friedman and our dissectrix, Cherie Welch. Your comments welcome. Send it on to friends as well if you like it.

Also, I was part of a panel on media coverage on Laura Flander’s excellent GritTV today. There is a “must watch” portion on coal; synopsis below:

As the Health Care Summit was getting under way in Washington DC, our esteemed media panel looks at what role our media has played in covering the never-ending health care debates since Obama assumed power. Then, with more staff cutbacks in major press rooms and talk of The National Enquirer receiving the Pulitzer Prize, what does the future of journalism look like? Finally, our three media dissectors tackle the increasingly disastrous war in Afghanistan — is the media’s coverage (or lack thereof) leading to more death and destruction?

Writer and environmental activist Jeff Biggers’ latest book Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland tells the story of his journey into his own family’s history in the mountains of Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois. He uncovers the devastating environmental destruction of the mountains that is taking place in the heartland of America today and exposes the truth about coal.

In this week’s Got Docs?, we take a peak at Radio Unnameable by Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson who give us an insider’s look at the life and work of legendary radio DJ Bob Fass.

Then, Dean Baker of the Center for Economic And Policy Research stops by to talk health care. Free Speech TV’s Herb Boyd speaks with the NAACP’s new Chair, Roslyn Brock.

Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

The News Dissector