Friday, January 09, 2009
Geraldo report was anything but fair and balanced
From the RoundTable blog
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Charles L. Fallis
Fallis is the president of Families and Friends United for Central Virginia Training Center in Salem.
Fox News, the self-declared "fair and balanced" cable news service, regularly produces "Geraldo at Large," which airs on Saturday evenings.
Many will recall that Geraldo Rivera, host of the show, achieved initial fame nearly two score years ago with his investigative work in New York leading to the closing of Willowbrook, an intermediate care facility for intellectually disabled citizens. Perhaps his current predisposition to close all such facilities, regardless of the quality and need of the service they provide, is attributable to that long-ago experience.
Closer to this area is an intermediate care facility at Lynchburg, home to a residual 457 severely and profoundly intellectually disabled individuals from across the commonwealth (over the years since 1975, 85 percent of this facility's population of more than 3,000 who were less severely disabled were moved to other quarters). The remaining 457 residents have received excellent care and treatment at Lynchburg for many years.
Geraldo's brother, Craig, on a recent visit to the Lynchburg Central Virginia Training Center, interviewed and filmed material for the Geraldo show. Members of Families and Friends United for CVTC were hopeful that Fox, when presenting the CVTC story, would intervene and live up to its promise of objectivity. However, the airing on Dec. 27 of "Geraldo at Large" can best be described as an electronic hatchet job on this critically needed facility and, by extension, on the 457 helpless individuals who reside there.
Conversely, the basic concept of The Arc of the United States, a national community-based organization that sees itself as an advocate for people with intellectual disabilities and their families, was very prominently and favorably presented in this Fox News program.
Since Arc's philosophy concerning care and treatment of the intellectually disabled coincides very closely with Rivera's predisposition in favor of community homes over larger intermediate care facilities, the bias shown on the show should not have come as a surprise to any of us.
The mindset of both Arc and Rivera is the same: Close all intermediate care facilities and move residents to small community home settings, irrespective of the severity of their disabilities. As an analogy, one might just as well advocate the closing of all hospitals while at the same time assuring patients and their families and friends that suitable care and treatment is available to them in small assisted-living quarters.
Lest I should be accused of over-reaching, there is a hospital with a doctor, dentist, nurses and other professionals at CVTC. Many if not most of the residents at CVTC are wheelchair and bed-ridden patients who need special and acute care on a 24/7 basis. I have no doubt that moving them to community home environments where their special needs could not be met would be devastating to them as well as to their families and friends.
It is most unfortunate that Fox News through the auspices of the Rivera brothers has, in this instance, failed in its quest for objectivity and has presented a completely unfair and unbalanced report, which, sad to say, places sensationalism over recognition of the needs of the most fragile and vulnerable among us.
