'Pink slime' maker suing ABC News for defamation

The beef company most affected by the "pink slime" controversy earlier this year is taking legal action against ABC and its news division for defamation of character. Beef Products Inc. claims the news organization cost the company $400 million. Anchor Diane Sawyer and reporters Jim Avila and David Kerley are also named as defendants.

“ABC ran for about 30 days a vicious disinformation campaign that consists of almost 200 false and misleading defamatory statements,” BPI attorney Dan Webb told Tim Carman of The Washington Post. The South Dakota-based company is asking for $1.2 billion because the state's Agricultural Food Products Disparagement Act allows plaintiffs to triple the amount of damages. ABC News senior vice president Jeffrey Schneider said the lawsuit "is without merit," and that the organization will "contest it vigorously."

Several media outlets reported on lean, finely textured beef, that was once widely used in fast-food burgers, school lunch programs and sold in grocery stores. But reporters discovered a reference to LFTB as "pink slime" in 2002 by former U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein, and it was revealed that ammonia was combined with meat during the process of making LFTB.

Beef Products is singling out ABC because it says that since March 7 the network reported about LFTB in 11 broadcasts, 14 online reports and in social-media statements that allegedly contained 200 false statements about the product. But media libel defense lawyer Laura Handman told Schneider that Beef Products could have a difficult time winning the suit because it will be hard to determine whether ABC knew what it reported was false. (Read more)

Kaiser Foundation video explains health reform

For those of us who find health reform confusing, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation has done a favor. Its video "Health Reform Hits Main Street" wrestles the topic down to a 9-minute, animated movie that will "explain the problems with the current health care system, the changes that are happening now, and the big changes coming in 2014," the foundation says.

The foundation promises that viewers will learn "more about how the health reform law will affect the health insurance coverage options for individuals, families and businesses with the interactive feature 'Illustrating Health Reform: How Health Insurance Coverage Will Work'." Whether you actually learn that, we figure, is up to you, but they have given it a good try. Watch the video by clicking on this website where a link will take you to the video. It's also available in Spanish.

Tool allows detailed examination of inspection reports from nursing homes all over the U.S.

Journalists now have a tool at their fingertips that will allow them to find out about problems in their local long-term care facilities. (iStock photo)

The application is operated by ProPublica, a nonprofit, investigative news group, and allows "anyone to easily search and analyze the details of recent nursing home inspections, most completed since January 2011," report Charles Ornstein and Lena Groeger.

The tool has features that the federal government's Nursing Home Compare tool lacks, including the ability to search using any keyword. Results can also be sorted according to the severity of the violation, and by state. It has already resulted in several significant news stories, Ornstein reports, giving examples and tips on how to use the application.

About 1.5 million people still live in nursing homes nationwide, though more seniors are living at home or in assisted-living facilities. The reports show there were almost 118,000 deficiencies cited against 14,565 homes. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the average number of deficiencies for a nursing home inspected in the U.S. is eight. ProPublica's analysis shows Texas had the most deficiencies in the country by far, with 183. 

While ProPublica ranks the states, nursing-home industry officials say "inspectors in different regions of the country have different thresholds for issuing a citation, and that could unfairly make one state's homes appear worse than another's," Ornstein and Groeger report. (Read more)

One story of health insurance and health reform, doable in any American community

Here's a story for every news outlet in the United States, no matter how small or large: Randall Patrick of The Kentucky Standard in Bardstown shows how the federal health-care reform law is having an effect at the individual level by telling the story of Bonnie Varnell, right, a local resident who was uninsured and is more than $65,000 in debt due to her fight against cancer.

For 18 years, Varnell worked at a daycare that didn't offer health insurance. She wasn't able to buy individual coverage because she had pre-exisiting conditions as a result of surgeries. She is only 59, so does not qualify for Medicare, and she didn't qualify for the federal law known as COBRA, which "allows workers to keep their company group health insurance benefits for up to 18 months after leaving their jobs, as long as they pay the entire premium," Patrick explains.

As a result, the bills kept mounting, despite hospitals giving the Varnells reduced rates through charity care. "I've been trying to pay something on every one," Varnell's husband Ed said of the bills he receives and has to delay paying in full. "It's really frustrating. We had never been late a day in our lives."

Now, Varnell has health insurance through a program created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. "It costs her $315 a month and covers most of her costs after the deductible is met, but the law stipulates that a person with a pre-existing condition must be uninsured for at least six months before she or he can be eligible," Patrick explains.

Varnell's fear now is the program will be taken away if the Affordable Care Act is repealed after the November election. Patrick gives opponents of the law their say. (Read more)

Varnell is among the estimated 15 percent of people in her county who didn't have health insurance in 2009, the last year for which estimates are available. For the Census Bureau website with estimates for every county, go here. 

Supreme Court to issue decision on health law Thu.; Poynter's Al Tompkins offers guide to covering it

The Rural Blog is designed mainly for rural journalists, most of whom are interested mainly in local issues. But every now and then a national issue is so broad and deep that it affects everyone, and calls for localized coverage everywhere. That is the case with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on the federal health-reform law, which is to be released at 10 a.m. EDT Thursday.

As he so often has, Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute anticipates an opportunity for coverage and provides advance help for doing it. Tompkins is a broadcaster by trade, but he's also a policy wonk and offers a rundown of the issues that almost any journalist would find helpful. "The public has said that journalists spend too much time covering the politics of the story and not enough time and space covering what the health care plan does and how it affects them, Tompkins writes. "Let’s fix that."

First, he points us to "an easy-to use tool" from The Washington Post that shows how the law affects you. Then he runs down the three big issues in the case (the individual mandate to buy health insurance, the various reforms in health insurance, and the expansion of Medicaid); Republicans' main objections to the law; what might happen under various scenarios; and fact-checking by PolitiFact, a service of the Tampa Bay Times, which is owned by the Poynter Institute. We also like FactCheck.org and the Post's Fact Checker column.

"The decision will immediately be a national story, a legal story, a political story, a business story, a health care story and a local story," Tompkins writes. "Let’s make sure you are ready to cover it."