SUNDAY, MAY 1, 2011
Sunday OPINION
DANA MILBANK
Journalists
gone
wild
O
n Thursday, The Washington Post editorializ­
es that Donald Trump has been campaigning
on “bogus” issues and that he should “cease and
desist.” An article in the news pages the same day
reports that the great orange charlatan’s “simply wild
speculation” has “almost no basis in fact.”
Then, on Saturday night, Post reporters and edi­
tors, in black­tie finest, go to the White House
Correspondents’ Association Dinner to host their
invited guests, including . . . Donald Trump.
Awkward though the Trump invitation is, it is just
one of the many problems with the annual dinner and
its satellite events.
The fun begins, appropriately enough, at the offic­
es of the American Gas Association, where White
House reporters are feted by the lobbyists of the
Quinn Gillespie firm. More lobbyist­sponsored en­
tertainment comes from the Motion Picture Associa­
tion. Along the way, journalists wind up serving as
pimps: We recruit Hollywood stars to entertain the
politicians, and we recruit powerful political figures
to entertain the stars. Corporate bosses bring in
advertisers to gawk at the display, and journalists
lucky enough to score invitations fancy themselves
celebrities.
Cee Lo Green sings for us. Seth Meyers tells us
jokes. Lindsay Lohan’s ex, Samantha Ronson, is our
DJ. All the cool kids — Sean Penn, Kate Hudson,
Steven Tyler, Paula Abdul, Courteney Cox, David
Byrne and Bristol Palin — want to party with us. A
Johnnie Walker “cigar tent” furnishes us with scotch
and hand­rolled stogies. We are handed Fiji water, or
Grey Goose vodka, to slake our thirst and Shea Terra
Organics Vanilla Body Butters to soothe our pores.
The correspondents’ association dinner was a
minor annoyance for years, when it was a “nerd
prom” for journalists and a few minor celebrities. But,
as with so much else in this town, the event has spun
out of control. Now, awash in lobbyist and corporate
money, it is another display of Washington’s excesses.
There are now no fewer than 20 parties, plus a
similar number of receptions, at the Washington
Hilton before the dinner. A pre­dinner brunch, once
an intimate affair in a TV producer’s backyard, was
moved this year to the Georgetown mansion of
multimillionaire Mark Ein. Democratic and Repub­
lican consultants shell out five figures apiece to join
the Cafe Milano owner as hosts. (Cafe Atlantico’s
owner, by contrast, is cooking for the Atlantic’s
party.)
Time Warner booked the St. Regis for the People
and Time fete; Conde Nast has the W Hotel for the
New Yorker and the French ambassador’s residence
in Kalorama for its Vanity Fair party done with
Bloomberg. The MSNBC party is in the Italian
Embassy, while others choose the Hay­Adams, the
Ritz­Carlton or the Ronald Reagan Building. A few
sponsors, generally Hollywood­oriented nonprofits,
hold cocktail parties masquerading as charity bene­
fits.
Hungover hobnobbers reconvene Sunday morn­
ing at Politico publisher Robert Allbritton’s George­
town manse to “nosh on hand­rolled sushi and dim
sum prepared by Wolfgang Puck’s The Source.” The
news release continues: “The Allbrittons’ lush gar­
den, filled with 200­year­old poplar trees, will fea­
ture a white century­style tent adorned with blue­
and­white ceramics” — not to mention Ashley Judd
and Janet Napolitano.
Is it Politico’s job to get Judd and Napolitano
together? Is it ABC News’s role to unite “Glee’s” Jane
Lynch with White House chief of staff Bill Daley or
“30 Rock’s” Elizabeth Banks with national security
adviser Tom Donilon? What’s the purpose of Fox
News introducing actress Patricia Arquette to Rep.
Michele Bachmann, National Journal presenting
“The Vampire Diaries’ ” Nina Dobrev to Obama
strategist David Axelrod, NPR introducing REM’s
Michael Stipe to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, or
The Post connecting Trump and House Speaker
John Boehner?
I don’t fault any one host for throwing a party or
any journalist for attending. Many of them are
friends. There’s nothing inherently wrong with sa­
voring Johnnie Walker Blue with the politicians we
cover.
But the cumulative effect is icky. With the prolifer­
ation of A­list parties and the infusion of corporate
and lobbyist cash, Washington journalists give
Americans the impression we have shed our profes­
sional detachment and are aspiring to be like the
celebrities and power players we cover.
My late colleague David Broder once recalled how,
when he began newspapering in mid­century, jour­
nalists embraced the credo that “the only way a
reporter should ever look at a politician is down.” He
said they “prided themselves on their independence,
their skepticism, and they relished their role in
exposing the follies and the larceny of public offi­
cials.”
As I began to do the RSVPs for a few of this year’s
parties, I thought about what our hard­bitten jour­
nalistic forebears would make of Cee Lo and SamRo
and the Donald. Then I made other plans for the
weekend.
danamilbank@washpost.com
KLMNO
Mending health care
in Massachusetts
The next challenge lies in cutting costs
BY A NDREW D REYFUS
AND S TUART R OSENBERG
T
he battle over the future of U.S. health
care boils down to two monumental
issues: how to provide access to high-
quality care for those now largely shut
out of the system and how to control
rising costs.
When the major provisions of the Affordable
Care Act take effect in 2014, Massachusetts will
be more than seven years ahead of the nation on
expanding coverage to uninsured people. Thus,
it is not surprising that partisans from across the
political spectrum are using the Massachusetts
health-reform law to make their points. The
problem is, opinion and anecdotes are running
way ahead of the facts.
For instance: Have you heard that the govern-
ment has taken over health care in Massachu-
setts? Well, that’s false. More than 80 percent of
residents who are not elderly have private
insurance, and 76 percent of employers offer
coverage to their workers — up five percentage
points since 2007. Or that newly insured resi-
dents can’t find doctors? Also false. Everyone
enrolled in the new subsidized plan for low-in-
come residents belongs to a private health plan
and has access to primary-care physicians. But
isn’t health reform bankrupting the state? No. In
fact, while there have been ups and downs due to
the recession, overall state spending on health
reform has been about what was anticipated.
Not everything is working as planned, of
course, but one thing is certain: Our state is far
better off now that access to reliable coverage no
OMBUDSMAN PATRICK B. PEXTON
Many platforms, but one goal
R
eaders may not realize this, but journalists
have all become paperboys and papergirls.
We obsess over how and when the news
will be delivered to readers — will it be in print,
online, in the iPad application, pushed out to
mobile phone users, tweeted or given away in a
free edition on the subway?
In an earlier day, most of these distribution
decisions were determined by the requirements
of the subscription and circulation departments,
the relatively unmovable deadlines of the print-
ing presses and the size of the news “hole” — how
many column inches were left for stories after
the advertising spaces were sold.
But now newsies are all deeply engaged in,
even haunted by, how to distribute the news. Lots
of newsroom time is spent discussing which
“platform” should carry the story and how fast
can it get out there. It sounds like we’re all
working for FedEx.
Not all of this is wholly bad, and much of it is
necessary, prompted as it is by new technologies
that enable us to reach millions — yes, millions —
of readers instantly around the world instead of
hundreds of thousands in a limited geographical
area once a day.
That revolution, and the resulting hyper-com-
petition in the media world, has us all looking
over our shoulders. It’s no longer newspaper
against newspaper, magazine against magazine,
TV station against TV station; it’s everyone
against everyone, a Web site up against a cable
network, an iPad application against a print
version, talk radio against a streaming video. It’s
an intergalactic media arms race.
Which is why it’s time for journalists to come
EZ RE
longer depends on a person’s job, income or
health status. Less than 2 percent of Massachu-
setts residents are uninsured, more people have
access to the care they need, and health dispari-
ties based on race and ethnicity have been
reduced. Public support for reform remains
high, and behind the statistics are countless
people whose health, well-being and financial
security have improved. So, if Massachusetts has
been a laboratory for covering the uninsured, the
experiment is working quite well. Looming over
us now, however, is an urgent problem the law
was not designed to solve: the unsustainable cost
of care.
No one is in a better position to influence
health-care spending than the medical profes-
sionals at the front lines, but most work within
fragmented systems that are almost primitive in
terms of the information technology, coordina-
tion and accountability that every other large,
successful enterprise in our economy takes for
granted. At the heart of the problem is the
fee-for-service payment system most providers
operate under, in which their earnings are based
primarily on the quantity, not the quality, of their
services. Although government can use laws,
regulations, incentives and its considerable pur-
chasing power to bring about change, the private
sector — especially health insurers, doctors and
hospitals like the ones we represent — has to take
the lead through collaboration and shared re-
sponsibility.
One model for collaboration is already up and
running in Massachusetts, and so far, it’s work-
ing. For the past two years, physician groups and
hospitals of all sizes have joined with Blue Cross
back to Earth. We need to remember our an-
chors: why we are in this business, who we are,
what our mission is. We’re preoccupied with
conveyances instead of with good journalism.
Does a story “go viral” because of the transmit-
ting technology? No, it goes viral because it’s an
insightful, groundbreaking story. The great
thing about the new technologies is that a good
story will always find its audience.
So, after seven weeks as The Post’s ombuds-
man, I’d like readers and Post staffers to know
what my guideposts are for good journalism, why
I’m a journalist and what it means to me to be a
part of this unique life.
First, I think that what we do here at The Post
— all of us — is important, even supremely so. We
do not manufacture widgets. Nor do we simply
produce “content.”
What we do is report, write and edit stories.
We take and publish photographs (and now
video, too). We publish the stories and images as
news through compelling design and graphics.
And, in columns and blogs, we analyze the news.
Through this painstaking process, we reveal
truths. The country cannot long survive as a
democracy, or as a capitalist economy, without
this kind of independent journalism.
That is why after Eugene Meyer bought this
newspaper in 1933 he put at the top of his seven
guiding principles: “The first mission of a news-
paper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can
be ascertained.”
Meyer knew that not all truths are self-evi-
dent; they require the skills and toughness of
reporters to uncover them. Ours is an unusual
profession; the talents necessary for it cut across
A21
Blue Shield of Massachusetts in a new kind of
contractual relationship that gives patients, pro-
viders and insurers an opportunity to make
health care work more effectively and efficiently.
Instead of paying primarily for the quantity of
services provided, the “alternative quality con-
tract” aligns financial incentives with what the
vast majority of medical professionals want to do
with their time and talents — prevent illness,
improve quality of life and produce better
outcomes for their patients. Data from the first
year indicate this approach is producing signifi-
cant improvements in areas that are closely tied
to both the cost and quality of care, such as
screening, monitoring and effectively managing
patients’ chronic conditions; preventing hospi-
tal readmissions; and reducing the use of emer-
gency rooms for non-emergency care.
There’s no doubt that the changes needed to
control health-care spending will be unsettling
for many health-care providers. They require
more teamwork, communication and coordina-
tion than many are used to, along with a growing
reliance on data, information systems and pro-
cess improvement. The payoff, however, is that
their patients will receive more appropriate,
better coordinated, more personalized and more
effective care — better care that is more afford-
able. And, frankly, it’s the only way that we can
hope to extend high-quality health-care services
to everyone.
Andrew Dreyfus is president and CEO of Blue Cross
Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Stuart Rosenberg, a
physician, is president of Beth Israel Deaconess
Physician Organization LLC.
many occupations.
We are gossips, snoops and relentless inquisi-
tors; we are curious. We like facing unpleasant
facts; indeed our job is to get people to stare them
in the face, even when ugly and uncomfortable.
We are also ambitious commodities traders,
only our commodity — information — we regard
as the most precious of all.
And we are, in a way, artists. We challenge,
provoke, interpret and try to make sense of the
world. We do this through words, pictures and
art. It is the stories, the truths and the messages
of our journalism that have power, especially
when beautifully crafted and properly expressed.
And because our calling is enshrined in the
First Amendment, right up there with freedom of
religion, we sometimes think we are the anoint-
ed ones. We are vainglorious. Yes, readers, we
know that can be annoying.
Finally, like a religious order, we pledge our-
selves to a unitary god: the truth. It is this, this
call to something greater, this relentless pursuit
of the truth that I appreciate most about this life,
this work we do, and it is this goal that I think
should guide our newsroom decisions. Does this
story, blog post, graphic or photograph get us
closer to the truth? What more could we do to
make sure that it does?
How and when we deliver the news is of course
important in this new-media age. But our first
duty is to be truth-tellers.
Patrick B. Pexton can be reached at 202-334-7582 or
at ombudsman@washpost.com. For updates, read the
omblog at http://voices.washingtonpost. com/
ombudsman-blog/.