When he was in the Army, the current secretary of Veterans Affairs, Gen. Eric Shinseki (USA ret.), no doubt had occasion to read the riot act to subordinate officers. It's time for him to get into command mode again, and the subjects this time are his incompetent public relations staff, which created an embarrassing nightmare for an Administration dedicated to transparency and openness.
Last week, David Schultz, a reporter for WAMU-FM, a public radio outlet in Washington, D.C., went to cover a public forum on care for minority veterans. For the April 7 meeting, Schultz, a new, part-time reporter, had with him a recorder, headphones and a microphone. (Even with that gear, he was accused of not identifying himself as a reporter.) After listening to vets speak to a packed room in public about the care they were being given, Schultz wanted to interview one of them, Tommie Canady, 56, who has a terminal pancreatic disease and who said he has been denied benefits and had poor care.
According to a number of reports, VA staff said Schultz would need a waiver from the patient in order to do an interview, and here's where it got ugly.
VA public relations officials demanded his microphone, headphones and recorder. They brought four armed, uniformed guards to enforce the order and wouldn't let Schultz leave. Schultz called his editor, who advised him to give up the recorder's storage card to the VA and then get out, figuring the event shouldn't escalate and that the radio station would get the card back.
Here's how Schultz initially described the confrontation.
Eventually, Schultz went around the VA PR machine and got the story, interviewing Canady on the phone.
So far, the VA had declined comment on the story and the storage card remains with the agency.
How can we put this gently: Unacceptable. Ridiculous. Insulting.
Heaven knows, the VA is under a great deal of pressure these days, with an aging veteran population on the one hand, and the demands of a six-year (and counting) war on the other. Even so, this incident is low-hanging fruit and Shinseki should deal with it forthwith.
Start with the concept that the vets in the hospital were there as a result of defending freedom of speech and of the press, and it's not the duty of the VA flacks (and I'm a flack in my day-job) to interfere with that. Calling the cops to keep a reporter from leaving the building until he turns over a storage card is beyond sanity.
This wasn't a top-secret briefing the reporter had infiltrated. It was a public meeting. Announced by a news release.
WAMU's news director, Jim Asendio said he tried to hand-deliver a letter to the VA on April 9, but they wouldn't accept it. Today (April 10), a courier is taking over a letter from station management, which may find its way to the executive suites. The letter says in part: "WAMU and its owner, American University, take this matter extremely seriously. Our reporter was subjected to an unlawful detention against his will, a search of our recording equipment without any probable cause, and the seizure of our sound recording medium. Mr. Schultz's newsgathering activities and the product of his work not only are protected by the First Amendment, but he was attending a public meeting at which the VA had encouraged public discussion on the treatment it gives to minority veterans. It is inconceivable that any interest of government, let alone the Department of Veterans Affairs' desire to plan its press strategy, would ever justify the clearly unconstitutional behavior of its staff and uniformed officers".
Asendio told us he has heard that the agency is willing to release the flash card if the station signs a release.
It doesn't matter what the release says. The station shouldn't sign it. What should happen is that Shinseki should invite Schultz and Asendio to the department, return the card and apologize. And the PR people who were idiots enough to have perpetrated this assault should be sent away to learn how their jobs should really be done.
Then Schultz can get back to doing the important work of covering vets' health care - not covering it up as the VA was trying in its clumsy way to do.
The PR person in question involved the VA POLICE (fact: Statuary Police authority) Title 38 USC. Thus the VA Police, like any city Police force must enforce the policies and regulations are that in the books. And to say "at gunpoint" !!! Well that writer must have been tagged or arrested by the Police at one time. As I said, and NONE of us were thier and course, the reporter has to juice it up for reading. The regulations are just for theprotection of our veterans who may be taken avantage of by someone.
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/local_news/nyc/090217_VA_Hospital_Cops_Have_Limits_to_Power
Just goes to show, even the very people being protected don't know when they got it good. If the VA failed to protect your privacy you would be singing like a canary to anyone who would listen about how you've been violated and you know it. Now you're riding the wave of fanatisicm and actually believe the VA is at fault. So much so you write to them and you're encouraging others to do the same. Really, they would have you fighting the gaurds? Give me a break. And if it means my right to privacy is protected, send the friggin papparazzi to jail for not going through proper channels.
I say "sue the hell out of them".... false imprisonment, etc... there is a whole slew of potential here.....
This was badly mishandled by the VA...
We had better training as Professional Transit Drivers on dealing with situations then the poor handling of this event...
Don't know what the Reporter's intent was, but the VA made it into a Power struggle and gave themselves a headache... And not some underling, either...
This was a Senior Official's Power Play and it escalated because of that, instead of being de-escalated...
Pay them, if you must, till they are removed from office. If they ask to resign, take their resignations, pay them off & have them escorted by armed VA Hospital Police till they leave the VAMC. As they say, "Give 'em the gate.".
What is more unpatriotic, to protest a war you don't believe in or to start one and then not take care of those you order into battle when they are wounded...you tell me what's more unpatriotic.
The VA has had problems for years (as a veteran, I know that all to well), I don't blame King George for all of it's problems, many existed for decades, but they had an opportunity to make changes for the better and they have only made things much worse. They knew the VA would be stretched beyond the breaking point with the war vets coming home from the 2 wars, but they failed to prepare for the onslaught. So know those issues that were there before are compounded by the influx of new patients.
We are counting on Gen. Shinseki to make the changes that are so desperately needed.
The woman needs to be cut from service. It needs to be determined what else she's done, who authorized it, and those officers need to be disciplined and/or cut from service.
This is about managing information to keep the American people from learning what "tax cuts" and "getting the money out of Washington or else Congress will spend it" means on a practical level for ordinary people.
An educated electorate is a threat to Corporate Government. So to that end, anything that can be done to interrupt the flow of information keeps the people from knowing and organizing a government that works best for them.
Reporters are not immune to being bias and injecting their opinions into a story. Give me your medical history so I can put it on the air for all to hear. Who knows? Maybe your are crazy? Maybe your lying and then my story is ruined once the proof comes back to haunt me? Do you know what I'm going to say afterwards.. once I start writing about you? Is it really in your favor or do I have a grudge with the company because my daddy didn't have great service in the 1940s or I served 18 months and did not qualify for the GI Bill because I had to serve 24? Do you know me?
As long as you enter my facility I will protect those people, once home they can do all they want... that's what this is all about! Now go on and fight for Universal Healthcare and demand Bush and Cheney's criminal investigation and removal of the patriot act!
From the little that was obtain seems like Mr. Canady's complaint has to do with certain individuals rather that a practice across the board. Whatever the case when you are on government property and want to interview anyone you have to get a consent or request to interview at a proper location other than the facility. The public meeting was not set for, or a place, to interview medical patients. If anyone interviews a patient to obtain medical information you must obtain consent even if they don't initiate the request. Be smart when you’re dealing with extracting medical information from individuals and expect to be treated like you would at any private company when doing other than attending a meeting. It's as simple as that.
How many of you want to add your unmarried son or daughter, mother or father onto your medical plan but can't because even if they live with you there are RULES? Well there are rules for vets who can qualify for medical care, dental and vision.
Holden was right, when it comes to race america is too cowardly not incline to talk about it. Have you seen the comments at the immigration blog?
I just love the disconnect on the Left between the care veterans receive, and the care they expect us all to get, if single payer healthcare gets passed.
What will be different-will the same lifetime appointee healthcare workers somehow give a crap about you, or will the government not ration care, as in the case of the veteran in this story?
Please, enlighten me.
At various times in my life, I've been uninsured, used the VA healthcare system (on an outpatient basis), and had private insurance. The VA care I received was rough, but infinitely better than nothing. Private insurance is ridiculously expensive.
Despite the challenges with current VA care, (which the silly Left would like to see improved so veterans can be as well cared-for as possible), I didn't hear anyone, right or left, standing up and cheering about the idea that veterans might be cared for by private insurers where that option is available.
All I know is that for a sick or injured person having medical care is better than not having medical care at all, and that it is wrong for any country with our level of overall prosperity to have millions of human beings suffering in misery for lack of healthcare. I don't care who you are or what you do - that's just wrong.
"Criminal." It's called theft. If you do theft at gunpoint it's called armed robbery. People spend their entire lives in prison for that. He should have called the police. The "security guards" would have either stood down to the real police, or else the reporter could have gone to jail which would have escalated this story to Neil Sheehan levels.
Well, maybe. In the public mindspace, the reporter already missed the war.
W are not an armed dictatorship. If the rule of law is to mean anything it must apply to cases like this. If it does not, then the Goverment has no moral standing to enforce the law whatsoever.
There's no mention of this reporter having an official badge identifying him as a reporter, do you think he was purposefully being deceitful?
As for those lunatics who believe there is some big conspiracy to screw the veterans at the VA, get real, get a life. If you believe "big brother" is out to get us all, hehehehehe, maybe you need to be seen at the VA for your paranoid schizophrenic tendencies, HAHAHAHAHA! Give me a break
The old stories of, "I heard from a friend of a friend whose father went to the VA 20 years ago and said it was bad" are ancient history. Name ONE organization that does more for any veteran than the VA, you can't, THERE ISN'T ANY. We all know reporters can listen to you state a paragraph of information and they take one sentence and state it out of context, so who is the problem in this situation? The "new" reporter, or the VA? I know who is wrong.
Maybe this isn't some big brother conspiracy but it certainly smells of a petty bureaucrat not liking a set of questions and escalating the issue. Perhaps this is someone more comfortable with previous atmosphere of secrecy that pervaded our government ....
Oh, and yes, better watch out for me as I am Big Brother responding to all the naysayers, I love and miss the days of pervaded secrecy, HA! Puh-lease. I am more comfortable with reality and the truth. None of us knows the truth of what happened, you don't, I don't, so until I know the truth I'm not going to speculate on some fantasy notion that there's some pervasive secret society in the government worried about letting out all the VA s secrets simply because some rookie part time wannabe reporter screwed up. But alas, there are always those who think like this.
Also, yes it does mention that he failed to identify hiimself as a reporter. It also describes his "equipment" as, and I quote, "headphones and recorder", My son walks around all day with his headphones on listening to his I-Pod, DANG! He could be a reporter too, better watch my butt!.
As far as "petty bureaucrat" I would bet my bottom dollar that the Public Affairs officer was doing the same job any Public Affairs officer would do at any hospital in this nation, protecting his patients rights.
If my son does what he is expected to do around the house, nothing is mentioned because he does the right thing, when he fails to do what is expected, it becomes an issue HE created, not me because I got mad at him for not doing it. This reporter did the wrong thing and is wanting us to believe that Big Brother is shutting him down??? Get Real!
Where is your rice bowl located? You seem to be very defensive of the VAs thuggery. This is not about the VA in general, this is about the actions of some VA employees on a particular day.