Report looks at nonprofits’ health reporting
Maralee Schwartz, a Shorenstein Center Fellow at Harvard University, has written a report titled “Getting It for Free: When Foundations Provide the News on Health.” (35-page PDF)
She points out that using stories produced by nonprofit foundations “raises questions that go to the heart of the journalistic enterprise and its role in American democracy: Does the very availability of content about a pet issue of a particular foundation mean that coverage will be skewed? Does nonprofit journalism mean lower standards? How does a newspaper safeguard integrity and independence?”
The report also looks at the economic challenges that editors are facing, including the results of a survey AHCJ and the Kaiser Family Foundation did in March.
Schwartz, formerly a political reporter and editor at The Washington Post, takes a close look at Kaiser Health News. Schwartz also writes about efforts in various states to create nonprofit organizations to do health reporting, including the Center for California Health Care Journalism, which first partnered with the Merced Sun Star for a project. Other similar projects include the Kansas Health Institute News Service and Health News Florida.
The report includes interviews with reporters and editors at the nonprofit organizations and at newspapers that have used their work, including AHCJ board member Karl Stark.
Schwartz concludes that “Most of the experts interviewed expressed hope that this trend can be supported. They also agreed that objections about the dilution of independence and journalistic standards can be addressed by developing odes of conduct, for lack of a better phrase, so that both editors and readers can have confidence in the work produced by Kaiser or ProPublica, or a variety of other nonprofits.”
Foundations’ role in health reform is changing
Some philanthropic foundations and think tanks in California are frustrated that efforts to finance studies and projects have done little to improve medicine. So some are taking on a crusading role for health care reform in Sacramento, which is the state capitol, and Congress, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Breaking from more traditional practice, several have staffed offices in Sacramento and hired experienced former advisers to lawmakers in hopes of educating legislators. However, as the paper points out, this may be risky, since nonprofits are barred under Internal Revenue Service rules from lobbying or engaging in partisan politics.
Here’s one example: the California Endowment, a foundation based in Los Angeles with more than $3 billion in assets, has hired Daniel Zingale, a senior adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to encourage policies the endowment favors. Such as? Ensuring that all children have health coverage and making doctors and hospitals focus more on disease prevention and the management of chronic ailments, the Times tells us.
“We really consider ourselves to be supporting positive change and not just making grants,” Dr. Robert Ross, the endowment’s president, tells the paper. As for the California HealthCare Foundation, its Sacramento office employs a former legislative health expert to ensure the foundation’s research topics are relevant to legislative agendas.
“Our view is the legislature is not facing a shortage of recommendations but a shortage of reliable information,” Dr. Mark Smith, president of the foundation, tells the Times.
Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute, a conservative think tank based in San Francisco, says foundations risk undermining the credibility of their research by wading into policy deliberations. “I think that’s a bad move for them, because I think they will be really tarred as lobbyists,” Pipes tells the paper. “I don’t think lobbyists have the respect of economists or researchers.”
What do you think? How far should foundations go in pushing for legislative change?
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Health Journalism 2010, AHCJ's annual conference, features a world-class program with story ideas, sources, stronger reporting skills, chances to meet newsmakers and network with other journalists.
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
- Shortened Lives: How location, lifestyle affect health
- Covering a complex story for the long haul
- Aging in the 21st Century: Presentations and tip sheets
- AHCJ calls for better information from Joint Commission Web site
