Wednesday, April 2, 2014

The Media is at fault for reporting rubbish!


The Minister of Health (or so the news today says) has reportedly said that the private hospitals have lost over 50% of the business as they are overcharging their patients!!!!!


I ask the reporter who submitted this to seriously consider if either he is off his head or if the Minister is off his head! This is a case of misinformation with NO rational point in the story.

To start with it is in the Minister’s interest to have private healthcare, as there then will result in LESS DEMAND for public health care, which he is in charge of. Secondly if the Private Health Charges are excessive, then if people cannot pay, they will go out of business, and will be replaced by more affordable private health care. It is WRONG to report a 50% drop in patients receiving treatment in the private sector as that is patently NOT TRUE, and in fact in general it is increasing every day.

There may be instances where in a given area the patients coming in to a private health provider falls, due to a host of reasons, which may include a transfer of the reputable doctor, increase in charges, where lower and more competitive charges are available locally, a bad press at a particular private clinic, that results in an exodus of patients or such like. It is wrong for him therefore to extrapolate a statement from ONE individual and say that there is a 50% drop.

Therefore we come to the question of whether this person is competent to hold this office. If he was he will be able to use common sense, which in this case he does not have. He is NOT EVEN scoring a political point on behalf of a better state medical system, which would have been the least he should have done in making any statement in this regard.


I would therefore request the reporter to try and at least make head of tail of what the minister says, and either insinuate that he is incompetent, and in need of mental treatment or to make sense of what he was trying to say, by enunciating what he meant without REPORTING RUBBISH        

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i think the broader point here is the severe decline in journalism in sri lanka since its golden days in the middle of last century. journalists these days simply report what a single source says, and don't do any compare and contrast with other credible sources on the subject to give context to the statements, and create an actual story of an issue rather than a story about what someone says. if we harken back to the golden era of journalism, the media was truly fair and balanced. i won't mention any names, as we the literate class know who the greats were, but today we only know the names of politicians who are reported on in the media with no context. it is, of course, a consequence of the state intervening in private media over the years creating a culture of propoganda in the world of journalism, which has taken another turn in that direction with the hyper-commercialism and politicization of private news sources!! the mountain to be climbed to revert to our old standards of journalism is high and requires a great deal of education and professionalization of the field of journalism to reach the golden age again.

Anonymous said...

Just read The Island newspaper after a long time.

A good read indeed: ‘Anarkali enters SPC through backdoor’

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=100935