Last evening's Town Hall Meeting on Single Payer Health Care -- "Medicare for All" -- sponsored by Progressive Democrats of Genesee Valley and numerous other progressive groups should have been the lead story in every media outlet last night and today. I'm a nurse, not a journalist, but I can think of many stories that reporters should have been eager to capture:

1. Health care is a leading concern, with public opinion polls saying that more than eighty percent of us believe there is a need for fundamental change in the U.S system. Local organizers from PDGV and other groups were able to assemble a top notch panel to discuss the issue, engage the overflow audience, and effectively explore factual statistics regarding public health, finance and politics while also delivering gut-wrenching portrayals of the realities facing ordinary people’s life and death encounters with the failed system. Those attending the town hall clearly support single payer universal health care and left the meeting inspired to fight for it.
2. John Conyers, Jr. visited Rochester. Did anyone try to get an interview with the venerable civil rights leader, member of the U.S. House of Representatives since the 1970’s? There might be something newsworthy from the Congressman representing Detroit this weekend, maybe relating to General Motors? The Chair of the House Judiciary Committee who once seemed serious about impeaching George Bush for war crimes? And, of course, he is the author of HR 676, “Medicare for All” legislation, which now has 77 sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives.
3. The Democrat and Chronicle is read, and TV news viewed, in several Congressional districts. Eric Massa, one of the newest members of Congress, is a vocal proponent of HR 676. The Progressive Caucus endorses the legislation, yet our own Louise Slaughter has not signed on. Why? Could it have something to do with money from health insurers and HMO’s? Local hospitals and some unions? And, digging deeper – do reporters still do that? – why exactly has the national health care workers union SEIU not come out in favor of HR 676 and does this influence Slaughter?
4. Most importantly, the town hall meeting offered a chance for journalists to provide substantive descriptions and comparisons of the various health care reform proposals being put forward. It would be gratifying to read or hear an in depth analysis in which journalists actually work to capture the voices of the leading proponents of each competing policy approach.

Unfortunately, it is obvious that corporate interests are powerfully stifling the opportunity to hear progressive voices – whether they are those of an elite legislator, an academic expert, a nurse or doctor, a family surviving cancer-related bankruptcy, or the roar of the crowd inside Eisenhart Auditorium chanting “What do we want? Single Payer! When do we want it? Now!

Maybe we need to bring some of that energy to shame the media. If this weekend’s silencing of so many relevant, critically important voices doesn’t paint a catastrophic picture of democracy in the U.S. I don’t know what does.