I’ve sat back and watched the spectacular disaster that is the Jefferson Parish hospital privatization effort unfold as told by the beat gang at both the NOLA.com and the Advocate and I certainly came away wanting more information and even more important perspective. Call me a harsh critic folks but I’m not feeling it from the beat as it appears on this issue the newspapers have become mere mouthpieces for the politicians.
The history of the process and the attempts of Chris Roberts, Elton LaGasse and Ricky Templet to derail it are too numerous to mention in the limited time I have this morning. There the newspapers have done a decent job following the gyrations albeit sans any useful analysis but there are a couple of examples of reporting where I read the news and came away thinking, “Myers sure had someone blowing mega smoke up his ass” or “Quinlan is giving Roberts another redo”. I know they are better than the slop being served but it is what it is. First up from the smoke up Ben’s ass files I have this from January:
Jefferson hospital lease process started with ‘one parish,’ wound up with division ~ Ben Myers
In this piece the Parish council is thoroughly infantilized by Myers, who pinned the blame that day for the disaster on the Hospital Boards and the consultant hired by the Parish. The fix for Children’s Hospital had been in for way longer than last September. In fact astute political observers who speak to Slabbed on the condition of anonymity indicate Children’s Continue reading “News schizophrenia on the Jeff Parish Hospital Beat while the reasons for Chris Robert’s SBA default come into sharper focus”