A Sworn Foe of Single-Payer
By VICENTE NAVARRO
President Obama has put forward the name of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the well-known chief medical correspondent for CNN, for the position of surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service – the chief public health officer of the federal government. Dr. Gupta has received wide acclaim as the most important voice on medical matters in the U.S. broadcasting industry. And CNN has played an important role in developing and promulgating the U.S. establishment’s conventional wisdom on what is happening in the country’s medical care. Dr. Gupta has been a major force in the promotion of that wisdom.
It is important that before discussing the appropriateness of President Obama’s choice for surgeon general, I make a few points about the role of the mainstream media, including CNN, in the country’s affairs, in particular, in its major international and domestic conflicts – that is, conflicts not only in, for example, Iraq and Vietnam, but also at home.
As we know, in the buildup to and conduct of the Iraq war, the mainstream media played a crucial role – supporting the invasion and occupation, and uncritically reproducing the Bush administration’s justification for this intervention. The mainstream media considered it their primary role to promote the conventional wisdom on this war, and not to challenge or question it. Not until 4,226 Americans and 654,965 Iraqis had been killed did CNN and the other mainstream media start questioning President Bush’s and the establishment’s justifications for the Iraq War. And it is important to remember that, before reaching this point, CNN and the other mainstream media had consistently ignored, marginalized, or ridiculed those voices that were explaining how the justifications for war had no credibility.
This series of events was nothing new. The same thing had happened with the Vietnam War. This reality on the role of the mainstream media is well known both in the U.S. and abroad. A primary function of the U.S. broadcasting industry is to reproduce the establishment’s position on whatever conflict the country is involved in at the time.
But not so well known is the mainstream media’s (including CNN’s) role in the wars at home.
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