What do news organizations and physicians have in common? Both are reluctant to apologize for their mistakes.
As for physicians, the president of the American Medical Association wrote May 24 in a letter to the New York Times, “The current system creates such a contentious atmosphere that some physicians are discouraged, even by their own attorneys, from offering an honest apology to a patient when a mistake occurs.” Ditto for journalists and their lawyers.
Newspapers are rife with errors. Corrections are common, but seldom are they accompanied by apologies. James Squires, former editor of the Chicago Tribune, once told the American Society of Newspaper Editors, ”We correct errors. But we have a terrible problem saying we are sorry or explaining our actions. One of the reasons is in Chicago, if you admit something, the opposition will take out an ad and put it on the Kennedy Expressway pointing it out. We have done that in the past to the Sun-Times and they have done it to us. So in Chicago if you made an error you correct it without admitting that you made it, and without being the least bit sorry for it. That’s a terrible policy. That is the greatest threat to our credibility, it is a great danger to our public image.”
Squires could have added that newspaper lawyers frequently caution against apologies because they may be used against the publication in a subsequent libel suit as an admission of fault. Some states have sensibly passed laws barring the use of apologies in litigation.
A heartfelt apology is a wonderful therapeutic device. It costs nothing and can make both parties feel better. It’s ironic that the healing professions especially don’t routinely include it, when warranted, as part of patient care.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Gilbert Cranberg: SHIELD LAW A TWO-EDGED SWORD
The issue of a federal shield law is back on the front burner in light of the government’s surveillance of the Associated Press. News organizations are hot under the collar about the effort to get to the bottom of news leaks by surreptitiously spying on AP reporters and editors. President Obama gave a boost to chances for federal shield legislation when he asserted May 23 the need to “pass a media shield law to guard against government overreach.”
Some 40 states and the District of Columbia have such laws, but they are no protection when the federal government is the overreacher. I know first-hand the value of media shield legislation. A few years ago I fought a pitched battle with local Iowa officials over a money-losing horse track they insisted on subsidizing with tax funds. When I disparaged them and their plans in articles I wrote they retaliated with a subpoena demanding to know my sources. I would have gone to jail rather than reveal them, but the Iowa Shield Law squelched the inquiry.
Naturally, I’m a fan of shield laws, but I have to admit they are problematic. The Iowa officials in my dispute with them fought to keep me from invoking the state’s shield law by arguing to the court that while I was once a journalist, my retirement from the Des Moines Register ended my status as a journalist. The presiding judge read many of the articles I had written post-retirement and declared me to be a journalist covered by the Iowa shield law.
I was thrilled to be one of a very few court-certified journalists, but also troubled by it. We do not have government licensing of the press in this country nor government certification of journalists. Both would be clearly incompatible with the First Amendment. But shield laws inevitably require identification of the protected persons. That means lawmakers deciding who is a journalist.
Congress will find itself enmeshed in this issue as the federal shield proposal works its way through the legislative process. It will be interesting to see how the nation’s media lawyers reconcile their support for the First Amendment with what looks uncomfortably like a form of government certification of the press.
Some 40 states and the District of Columbia have such laws, but they are no protection when the federal government is the overreacher. I know first-hand the value of media shield legislation. A few years ago I fought a pitched battle with local Iowa officials over a money-losing horse track they insisted on subsidizing with tax funds. When I disparaged them and their plans in articles I wrote they retaliated with a subpoena demanding to know my sources. I would have gone to jail rather than reveal them, but the Iowa Shield Law squelched the inquiry.
Naturally, I’m a fan of shield laws, but I have to admit they are problematic. The Iowa officials in my dispute with them fought to keep me from invoking the state’s shield law by arguing to the court that while I was once a journalist, my retirement from the Des Moines Register ended my status as a journalist. The presiding judge read many of the articles I had written post-retirement and declared me to be a journalist covered by the Iowa shield law.
I was thrilled to be one of a very few court-certified journalists, but also troubled by it. We do not have government licensing of the press in this country nor government certification of journalists. Both would be clearly incompatible with the First Amendment. But shield laws inevitably require identification of the protected persons. That means lawmakers deciding who is a journalist.
Congress will find itself enmeshed in this issue as the federal shield proposal works its way through the legislative process. It will be interesting to see how the nation’s media lawyers reconcile their support for the First Amendment with what looks uncomfortably like a form of government certification of the press.
Gilbert Cranberg: THE NOT-TOO-SMART PARTY
How stupid is the Republican Party? On the available evidence, very. Recall that the party fought Medicare tooth and toe nail, earning it the lasting enmity of seniors. Unfortunately for the GOP, Medicare turned into, by far, the most popular of all federal programs. So when the Affordable Care Act came along to pick up where Medicare left off, instead of seeing it as an opportunity to mend fences, the GOP turned on it with a vengeance. So having antagonized the elderly on health care, Republicans now seem poised to tick off much of the rest of the electorate. According to a New York Times count, the Republican-controlled U.S. House has voted 37 times since January 2011 to cut off funds for the Affordable Care Act.
Why such single-minded hostility? The Act was a signal accomplishment of President Obama’s first term. The more the GOP conducts its vendetta against the Act the more it earns the title the Party of Spite.
That’s preferable, though, to another title Democrats could well hang on it: the Party of Lowered Life Expectancy. The Affordable Care Act is a huge benefit to the many millions in this country without health insurance, the people whose only access to care is the emergency room. Anyone who has received medical care in the ER knows it to be stopgap care at best. The physicians and nurses encountered in the ER usually are caring but rarely is there continuity of care. If the patient has a chronic condition, the Emergency Room can’t, or won’t, provide care on an ongoing basis.
People treasure health care. They realize that it’s their ticket to a better, more comfortable, life. If Republicans were smart -- a very big if -- they would want to be associated with providing care that enhances life expectancy. Instead, they seem to be doing their best to make people’s lives shorter.
My question at the outset was “How stupid is the Republican Party?” My answer: Exceedingly.
Why such single-minded hostility? The Act was a signal accomplishment of President Obama’s first term. The more the GOP conducts its vendetta against the Act the more it earns the title the Party of Spite.
That’s preferable, though, to another title Democrats could well hang on it: the Party of Lowered Life Expectancy. The Affordable Care Act is a huge benefit to the many millions in this country without health insurance, the people whose only access to care is the emergency room. Anyone who has received medical care in the ER knows it to be stopgap care at best. The physicians and nurses encountered in the ER usually are caring but rarely is there continuity of care. If the patient has a chronic condition, the Emergency Room can’t, or won’t, provide care on an ongoing basis.
People treasure health care. They realize that it’s their ticket to a better, more comfortable, life. If Republicans were smart -- a very big if -- they would want to be associated with providing care that enhances life expectancy. Instead, they seem to be doing their best to make people’s lives shorter.
My question at the outset was “How stupid is the Republican Party?” My answer: Exceedingly.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Gilbert Cranberg: A REFORM HELPFUL TO DOCTORS AND PATIENTS
Not long ago my urologist seemed a bit insistent, or so I thought, that I try a particular medication for enlarged prostate. Almost immediately after taking the drug my vision deteriorated markedly. It returned to normal when, on my own, I stopped the prostate medication. Coincidence or cause and effect?
My physician, who practiced in an academic setting, seemed only mildly interested when I reported my experience.
All of this flooded back to mind when I read in the May 14 New York Times about how “gifts and payments to physicians from drug and medical device companies have been rampant in medicine for decades.” Could gifts to my physician have made him defensive about a benefactor’s product and explain his indifference to my complaint about it?
Those are reasonable suspicions that might also be totally unfair. When I had reported my experience to the Food and Drug Administration, the agency sent me pages of reports it had received from patients of adverse experiences with the same medication. Some of the complaints about the product were plainly preposterous. Perhaps my urologist knew that he should not take too seriously the report from a lay person about an adverse drug reaction.
Still, it would have been helpful to know if my physician had been on the take from a drug company when he prescribed that company’s product. Helpful not only to patients but also to physicians. Next year when the federal Physician Payment Sunshine Act goes into effect nationwide patients won’t have to wonder, as I did, because payments to doctors will be on a searchable record. That will be wonderful protection for patients and doctor alike.
My physician, who practiced in an academic setting, seemed only mildly interested when I reported my experience.
All of this flooded back to mind when I read in the May 14 New York Times about how “gifts and payments to physicians from drug and medical device companies have been rampant in medicine for decades.” Could gifts to my physician have made him defensive about a benefactor’s product and explain his indifference to my complaint about it?
Those are reasonable suspicions that might also be totally unfair. When I had reported my experience to the Food and Drug Administration, the agency sent me pages of reports it had received from patients of adverse experiences with the same medication. Some of the complaints about the product were plainly preposterous. Perhaps my urologist knew that he should not take too seriously the report from a lay person about an adverse drug reaction.
Still, it would have been helpful to know if my physician had been on the take from a drug company when he prescribed that company’s product. Helpful not only to patients but also to physicians. Next year when the federal Physician Payment Sunshine Act goes into effect nationwide patients won’t have to wonder, as I did, because payments to doctors will be on a searchable record. That will be wonderful protection for patients and doctor alike.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Michael Gartner: A VERY STRANGE “IF”
The Iowa Supreme Court last week ruled that the non-birthing mother in a married gay couple has the right to have her name automatically put on the child’s birth certificate. The Attorney General of Iowa, in his wisdom, had argued that the non-birthing mother should have to adopt her own child.
For the record, that mother is my daughter, that child is my granddaughter.
The decision, carefully and gracefully written by Justice David Wiggins, was based on the equal-protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. The decision was unanimous from all six justices who participated. But Justice Ed Mansfield, joined by Justice Thomas Waterman, added a one-paragraph concurring opinion. It said:
"The Iowa Department of Public Health accepts the decision in Varnum v. Brien, 763 N.W. 2d, 862 (Iowa 2009) for purposes of this appeal. I agree that if Varnum is the law, then Iowa Code section 144.13(2) cannot be constitutionally applied to deny Melissa Gartner's request to be listed as parent on the birth certificate of the child delivered by her same-sex spouse. Accordingly, I concur in the judgment in this case."
IF Varnum is the law?
Either:
1. Two justices on the Iowa Supreme Court are doubting the authority of the very court itself; or
2. Two justices on the Supreme Court do not understand the role of the Supreme Court; or
3. Two justices on the Supreme Court are politically pouting or politically posturing; or
4. Two justices on the Supreme Court are taking a not-very-subtle cuff at their colleagues past and present; or
5. Two justices on the Supreme Court farmed out their concurring opinion to Iowa Tea Party activist Bob Vander Plaats, who famously has said: "Varnum is just an opinion. We all have opinions. It's not the law.”
Varnum v. Brien was the 2009 case in which the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously said the Iowa Constitution guarantees people of the same sex the right to marry one another. That decision led to the ouster of three Supreme Court justices in 2010. Indeed, if Varnum were not the law, Justices Mansfield and Waterman would not be on the Iowa Supreme Court today.
They’re smart guys. You’d think they’d have figured that out.
For the record, that mother is my daughter, that child is my granddaughter.
The decision, carefully and gracefully written by Justice David Wiggins, was based on the equal-protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. The decision was unanimous from all six justices who participated. But Justice Ed Mansfield, joined by Justice Thomas Waterman, added a one-paragraph concurring opinion. It said:
"The Iowa Department of Public Health accepts the decision in Varnum v. Brien, 763 N.W. 2d, 862 (Iowa 2009) for purposes of this appeal. I agree that if Varnum is the law, then Iowa Code section 144.13(2) cannot be constitutionally applied to deny Melissa Gartner's request to be listed as parent on the birth certificate of the child delivered by her same-sex spouse. Accordingly, I concur in the judgment in this case."
IF Varnum is the law?
Either:
1. Two justices on the Iowa Supreme Court are doubting the authority of the very court itself; or
2. Two justices on the Supreme Court do not understand the role of the Supreme Court; or
3. Two justices on the Supreme Court are politically pouting or politically posturing; or
4. Two justices on the Supreme Court are taking a not-very-subtle cuff at their colleagues past and present; or
5. Two justices on the Supreme Court farmed out their concurring opinion to Iowa Tea Party activist Bob Vander Plaats, who famously has said: "Varnum is just an opinion. We all have opinions. It's not the law.”
Varnum v. Brien was the 2009 case in which the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously said the Iowa Constitution guarantees people of the same sex the right to marry one another. That decision led to the ouster of three Supreme Court justices in 2010. Indeed, if Varnum were not the law, Justices Mansfield and Waterman would not be on the Iowa Supreme Court today.
They’re smart guys. You’d think they’d have figured that out.
Gilbert Cranberg: A SCANDAL GROWS IN BROOKLYN
The Brooklyn District Attorney is wisely reviewing every conviction obtained with the help of a suspect veteran detective, Louis Scarcella. The New York Times says it examined a dozen cases worked by Scarcella “and found disturbing patterns," including the detective’s reliance on the same eyewitness, a crack-addicted prostitute, Teresa Gomez, for multiple murder prosecutions, "and his delivery of confessions from suspects who later said they had told him nothing.” A New York judge told the Times it “was near folly to even think that anyone would believe Gomez about anything, let alone the fact that she witnessed the same guy kill two different people.”
The review of the Brooklyn cases would be especially useful if it sheds light on whether the suspects Scarcella handled were represented by lawyers and if so, when, and how diligent they were. It is also important to know, given the corners apparently cut, at what stage the suspects were advised of their right of access to an attorney and their right to remain silent.
The U.S. Supreme Court took a lot of flack for its rulings that are supposed to guarantee these rights. I say “supposed to” because what happens in practice may be very different from what’s written in the law books. A suspect of marginal intelligence can be no match for experienced, crafty Scarcellas determined to obtain convictions. Besides, many suspects are so unsophisticated they willingly waive their rights.
The Brooklyn prosecutors reviewing the cases that may have been tainted by Scarcella are part of the same law enforcement team responsible for what looks like serious miscarriages of justice. For that reason, the inquiry should be enhanced through participation by members of the New York bar.
New Yorkers and their watchdogs in the press need to insist that all of the inquiry be impartial and thorough.
The review of the Brooklyn cases would be especially useful if it sheds light on whether the suspects Scarcella handled were represented by lawyers and if so, when, and how diligent they were. It is also important to know, given the corners apparently cut, at what stage the suspects were advised of their right of access to an attorney and their right to remain silent.
The U.S. Supreme Court took a lot of flack for its rulings that are supposed to guarantee these rights. I say “supposed to” because what happens in practice may be very different from what’s written in the law books. A suspect of marginal intelligence can be no match for experienced, crafty Scarcellas determined to obtain convictions. Besides, many suspects are so unsophisticated they willingly waive their rights.
The Brooklyn prosecutors reviewing the cases that may have been tainted by Scarcella are part of the same law enforcement team responsible for what looks like serious miscarriages of justice. For that reason, the inquiry should be enhanced through participation by members of the New York bar.
New Yorkers and their watchdogs in the press need to insist that all of the inquiry be impartial and thorough.
Gilbert Cranberg: TIME TO DUST OFF THE THIRD AMENDMENT
Americans know that if they are in a crowded theater and smell smoke and see flames they have a right under the First Amendment to shout “Fire!” They also know that if an obnoxious neighbor steps into their yard they have a Second Amendment right to shoot him. Less well known is that the Third Amendment gives them the right to be free of unwanted houseguests.
That’s right, the seldom-mentioned Third Amendment says, “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
And you wonder why the country struggles under a mountain of debt? Millions of half-empty private residences dot the land while the government pays a fortune to put traveling troops in motels.
The folks who scream to high heaven about government spending and the deficit don’t utter a peep about this wasteful extravagance. It’s time they did and raise their voices in behalf of a movement to urge Americans to waive their Third Amendment rights.
Despite the Third Amendment, troops were quartered in private homes during the civil war. All those who moan and groan about taxes and government spending should favor bringing the Third Amendment back into the conversation.
That’s right, the seldom-mentioned Third Amendment says, “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
And you wonder why the country struggles under a mountain of debt? Millions of half-empty private residences dot the land while the government pays a fortune to put traveling troops in motels.
The folks who scream to high heaven about government spending and the deficit don’t utter a peep about this wasteful extravagance. It’s time they did and raise their voices in behalf of a movement to urge Americans to waive their Third Amendment rights.
Despite the Third Amendment, troops were quartered in private homes during the civil war. All those who moan and groan about taxes and government spending should favor bringing the Third Amendment back into the conversation.
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