CNN's Wolf Blitzer did a lousy job of doing his homework during at least one aspect of his interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders about getting meaningful health insurance legislation passed. The interview was broadcast yesterday on "The Situation Room."
One of Blitzer's questions centered on an ad opposing a public option by an organization called "Conservatives for Patients' Rights" in which he showed two individuals in the ad who expressed the horrors about public-run health care.
What Blitzer didn't mention is the fact that the head of the organization he mentioned, Rick Scott (who appears in the complete ad), has a completely checkered past in the health insurance industry.
More below.
Just how checkered is Scott's past in the health insurance (which Blitzer refused to mention when he quoted Scott's organization)? Check out this video:
Scott's problems aren't just when it comes to fighting against the best interests of patients. Here's past of what the Huffington Post reported on May 12:
A report released on Tuesday calls out former hospital CEO Rick Scott for sitting on the board of a company used by Saudi Arabia and Iran to suppress Internet access. In recent months, Scott has become the most high-profile conservative activist working to oppose the health care reforms backed by the Obama administration.
The Huffington Post piece continues:
Secure Computing's work for Saudi Arabia continued well into Scott's tenure on the board. In May 2007, the site OpenNet did a country profile that concluded that the Saudi Arabian government used "Secure Computing's SmartFilter software for technical implementation and to identify sites for blocking."
In November 2008, Business Week reported that Saudi Arabian Internet "censorship is considered among the most restrictive in the world." The government, the story went on, "uses more sophisticated software from San Jose-based Secure Computing that offers a menu of 90 categories of sites to block."
Perhaps more controversial was the use of Secure Computing's technology by the government of Iran. In 2005, OpenNet reported that "Internet content regulation in Iran" was occurring "at multiple levels, through multiple methods." The filtering, it added, was being enabled by "Secure Computing's SmartFilter software" and was blocking such sites as: www.lesbians-against-violence.com, www.gayegypt.com, www.gay.ru, and gaytoday.badpuppy.com.
The company insisted at the time that they had "sold no license to any entity in Iran" and were taking steps to stop the "illegal" use of their products. That said, in May 2008 (with Scott now on the board), the group Reporters Without Borders issued a report that said Iran was using "filtering technologies" that were "supplied by Secure Computing," allowing "users to block Internet website addresses."
Is this really Blitzer's definition of someone who really has patient's interests at heart when he decides to use Scott's ad without mentioning Scott's past in interviewing Sanders?
Is Blitzer so much interested in seeing that meaningful health insurance fail that he was so willing not to mention the checkered past of the man most prominent in seeing health insurance reform fail?
Blitzer's failure to delve more deeply into Scott and his past while mentioning his organization in a question to Sanders represents shoddy journalism of the worst kind. If he was going to mention his organization, he should have mentioned its most prominent spokesman and his past.
His failure to do such makes one wonder whether Blitzer wants health insurance reform to fail. He sure didn't sound like an objective journalist.