Lies and Medicare: not necessarily the new.

• Author: Walker, Jesse
• Position: Citings - Brief Article

IF YOU WATCHED the news in Baton Rouge on January 23, 2004,you might have seen a report on WBRZ-TV about the new Medicare law. It was a sunny story, featuring reassuring comments from Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and Medicare chief Leslie Norwalk. And it was a fake.

The "reporter," Karen Ryan, was in fact the head of a public relations firm called Karen Ryan Group Communications. The report and others like it were funded and distributed by the federal government, and they were run as ordinary newscasts on stations from Fresno to Tuscaloosa. These facts were uncovered in February by the General Accounting Office, which also announced that the reports contained "notable omissions and other weaknesses" Pundits and Democratic politicians were quick to accuse the White House of conducting, in the words of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a "covert attempt to manipulate the press."

The Republican response was that such "video news releases" are hardly new, and that the...