Michael Corcoran
Michael Corcoran is a journalist based in Boston. He has written for theBoston Globe,The Nation, theChristian Science Monitor,Extra!,NACLA Report on the Americas and other publications.
‘Government-Run Healthcare’ Is a Product of Health Industry–Run Media
Election Focus 2020: Power brokers in the for-profit health industry have worked to make the language of “government-run healthcare” the boilerplate description for a national health system in major media outlets.
WaPo’s ‘Hard-Line’ Stance Against Medicare for All
Medicare for All, which the Washington Post describes as “hard-line” and “far left,” is actually a very popular position.
What Corporate Media Failed to Learn About Canadian Single-Payer
When it was announced that several journalists would travel with Sen. Bernie Sanders in October for a hospital tour of Canada to learn about its single-payer system, one question immediately sprang to mind: What would corporate media do to smear universal healthcare this time?
Media ‘Extremes’ on Healthcare: Universal Coverage or Taking Healthcare From Millions
Unable to continue ignoring the single-payer policy, corporate media have, with predictable uniformity, undermined it as utopian nonsense.
Stigma Over Solutions
While there is never a good time to gut Medicaid and throw 22 million off their health insurance, it is especially worrying that it may happen in the middle of a tragic opiate epidemic that is being covered by the media in all the wrong ways.
For USA Today, Healthcare Glass Is 1/24th Full
USA Today had a very different emphasis than most outlets when it broke the news of AHCA scoring on Twitter. The paper emphasized to its 3.3 million followers that the report was an improvement over the past CBO projection of an earlier different version of the law.
Trump Uses Power of FCC to Pay Back Friends at Sinclair Broadcasting
Sinclair Broadcast Group, the conservative media behemoth that owns more local news stations than any other company in the country, just got even bigger. It announced it was buying Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, creating what Bloomberg calls a “TV goliath.”
Study: Sean Spicer’s Handpicked Press Corps
A new FAIR study finds that 45 percent of the reporters Spicer called on were from conservative outlets. Fifteen percent of questions came from journalists working under the Fox brand.
Media Find Room for ‘Trumpcare Too Progressive,’ but Not for Single-Payer
While even mass arrests couldn’t get attention to left-wing critics of the Democrat’s milquetoast health reform plan in 2009–10, today the far right is given thousands of words in the media, and plenty of air time on television, to air its ideological opposition to the current GOP plan.
WaPo’s Factcheck of WikiLeaks Highlights Paper’s Strange View of Facts
The problem is that the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column is often not in the business of checking facts, but instead offers its own judgements and opinions under the imprimatur of factchecking.
Media Legitimizing GOP’s ‘Universal’ Health Plan That Doesn’t Exist
It appears that the same corporate media who misled us into the Affordable Care Act are now misleading us out of it—and the New York Times’ reporting on the GOP’s health care agenda is a particularly egregious example of this.
The ‘Anti-Clinton Media’ Are Big Donors to Clinton Foundation—and to Clinton
Despite the Clinton Foundation’s financial relationships being a major news story in recent weeks, most media seem entirely uninterested in disclosing—let alone covering—their own industry’s donations to the foundation.
Dark Money Dominates Election
“Super PACs may be bad for America, but they’re very good for CBS.” CBS president Les Moonves’ candid comment at an entertainment law conference (Bloomberg, 3/10/12) was one of the few honest things said by someone so deeply involved in the post–Citizens United political ad frenzy. This past election season was dominated by a record […]
Ignoring Monetary Stimulus as Economic Policy
With the United States now years into a crippling economic downturn, and Europe facing a looming economic crisis, media have been covering the economy more than any other issue. The two most recent annual reports on U.S. media coverage from the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism (2009-10) conclude that “the No. 1 story of […]
Uygur Out at MSNBC
When talkshow host Cenk Uygur announced that his short tenure at MSNBC had come to an end due to his criticism of “those in power” (Young Turks, 7/20/11), it highlighted an unsettling pattern at the channel. Uygur’s ouster represented the third time in recent years that a show hosted by someone with progressive ideals and […]
The End of the Bill Keller Era
When Bill Keller announced that he would soon be stepping down as the New York Times’ top editor, he was hailed as the man “who rebuilt the confidence of the New York Times newsroom after the Jayson Blair scandal” (Forbes, 6/2/11). Rem Rieder of American Journalism Review (3-4/11) wrote that Keller “righted the ship” and […]
Media Don’t Bite the Ruling That Feeds Them
As major participants in and beneficiaries of the influence-buying orgy, it’s hardly surprising that television outlets did not seriously examine the impact of the Citizens United decision.
Media Continue Bank Bailout Advocacy
For corporate media, the verdict is already in: The Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the unpopular program that redistributed some $700 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds upwards, to the very financial institutions that contributed to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, is an unabashed success. It is hardly stunning that corporate media would […]
The Flotilla Story U.S. Media Won’t Report
At a June 10 press conference (Cultures of Resistance, 6/10/10), passengers from the Mavi Marmara released new footage of the Israel Defense Forces’ deadly May 31 raid on the ship, which killed nine activists attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza in defiance of the Israeli blockade. Days earlier, another video was released allegedly showing […]
The Flawed Media Narrative of the Healthcare Debate
Through all the twists and turns of the healthcare reform debate, one thing has remained constant: Progressive ideas with majority popular support are falsely portrayed as radical, ideological fantasies, while those who oppose them are praised as pragmatic and reasonable. This trend began when Washington insiders excluded the idea of a single-payer public health insurance […]
