GBO NEWS: Ethics in Dementia Reporting; Marketplace on Financial Abuse & Brain Science; Reveal on Massive Assisted Living Fraud; Opioids & Grandparents; Post-Prison Health Care; Media at Silicon Valley Boomer Summit; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Celebrating 26 Years.
May 28, 2019 — Volume 26, Number 7
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBONews Editor Paul Kleyman. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: The Most Transparent News Ever on Aging in America!
1.ETHICS DEMENTIA Reporting: ONE REPORTER’S QUESTIONS? Kiplinger Retirement Report’s Mary Kane Raises Critical Concerns
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Journalists to Speak at 16thAnnual Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit in Berkeley, Calif., June 5-6;
*** Considerable.com Lays Off News Staff;
*** Robert Pear, NYT Health Policy Reporter, Dies at 69;
*** New San Francisco Senior Beat Site Launched—Stories by Seniors on Aging in The City by the Bay;
*** WERU 89.9 Maine Public Radio Inaugurates “All About Aging”;
*** Series on Racial Disparities in End-of-Life Care by Producer JoAnn Mar;
*** ASA CEO Stein to Depart
3.EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** Finalists Listed: 2019 Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism
4.THE STORYBOARD: *** “Brains and Losses” Series and Hourlong Special by host David Brancaccio and Marketplace Morning Report staff;
*** “Caregivers and Takers,” by Jennifer Gollan, CIR’s RevealNews.org (video produced with PBS NewsHour) on Rampant Caregiver Abuse in Assisted Living;
*** “Many Americans Will Need Long-Term Care. Most Won’t be Able to Afford It,” by Paula Span, New York Times’ “New Old Age” column;
*** “Dementia and Gun Ownership Are a Dangerous Combination. One Gun-Range Owner Has a Solution,”by Hilary Hylton, Memory Well;
*** “Side Effect Of Opioid Epidemic? Grandparents Raising Grandkids,”by Lisa Gillespie, WFPL-FM (Louisville,Ky.);
*** “What Second Chance? The Uncertain Future of Post-Prison Health Care,” by Cassie M. Chew, The Crime Report;
1.ETHICS IN DEMENTIA COVERAGE: ONE REPORTER’S QUESTIONS?
*** “Kentucky Has Highest Rate of Food Insecurity for Residents in Their 50s,”by Rhonda Miller, WKU Public Radio.
Mary Kane, an associate editor atKiplinger Retirement Report, contacted GBONews after attending the recent National Press Foundation seminar on dementia coverage, as an NPF Fellow. That program sparked important questions for reporters covering the generations beat, and this editor asked Kane to bring her thought to our readers. Here’s what she wrote, and we’d welcome your responses.
By Mary Kane
As the population ages, more adults will be living longer with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Advocacy groups such as the Dementia Action Alliance (DAA) believe strongly that the voices of people living with dementia need to be heard in news and feature stories about the disease. In their view, too many news stories are written from a stereotypical point of view, sometimes focusing on relatives looking for care or medical experts.
On its website, DAA has videos with people living with dementia talking about issues like organizing medications or recording memories in a journal. The site also has partnered on a documentary about person-centered care for people living with dementia.
Some news organizations already are taking a different approach. The Washington Post, for example, recently featured Tara Bahrampour’s story on changing the tragedy narrative and finding the joy in Alzheimer’s.
The downside of that tactic is that reporters would be talking only to people who are advocates: Do they represent the majority of people living with dementia, or just a subset? If you want to talk with people who have dementia whom you find through your own contacts, how should that work in practice? Should you have them or a relative sign a permission form? What if someone with dementia decides later that they didn’t give consent, or didn’t mean what they told you?
While covering dementia from new angles is an important development, it also raises new questions for reporters. Including the voices of people living with dementia in stories is unexplored territory. DAA advises going through their group or other advocacy organizations like the Alzheimer’s Association, who can recommend people living with dementia who are speaking publicly about their diagnosis.
These are difficult questions just beginning to emerge with more reporting on dementia from a non-medical point of view. At the recent National Press Foundation training workshop on covering dementia, reporters began hashing out this issue. There aren’t clear answers yet. But as you report on dementia, keep in mind questions like these, which you’ll need to discuss with your editor, and with experts. If readers have any thoughts or suggestions of your own, or any ideas for how journalists can come together to address this question, please let us know. Drop a note to GBONews Editor Paul Kleyman at pfkleyman@gmail.com.
2.GEN BEATLES NEWS
Also read Kane’s May 1 cover story in Kiplinger’s, “Dementia: How to Find the Right Fit for Long-Term Care,” written with support by a Journalists in Aging Fellowship from the GBONews publisher, the Journalists Network on Generations, and the Gerontological Society of America and funding from the Silver Century Foundation.
*** 16th Annual Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit, in Berkeley, Calif., June 5-6, will include a panel on “Media” to feature as its moderator Richard Eisenberg, PBSNext Avenue’s managing editor and senior web editor of their Money and Security and Work and Purpose Channels. Speakers will include Chris Farrell, senior economics contributor to Marketplaceand author of the new book Purpose and a Paycheck: Finding Meaning and Happiness in the Second Half of Life(Amacom/Harper Collins Leadership); Julie Halpert, author and journalist (Newsweek, The New York Times, etc.); and GBONews Editor Paul Kleyman.
The conference, created and run by Mary Furlong, author of Turning Silver into Gold: How to Profit in the New Boomer Marketplace (2007 with a new edition in the works) includes the $10,000 Boomer Business Plan Competition with finalists making “Shark Tank” pitches of their products or services to an onstage panel of venture capitalists and veteran entrepreneurs in the maturity market. For reporters, it can be a worthwhile conference to attend. It can not only help journalists identify stories and sources, but also get them updated on current trends and developments in aging-related technology and its marketplace applications. For instance, one of four keynote speakers, Laurie Orlov, founder and editor of the influential website, Aging in Place Technology, will encapsulate her 10 years of critical market analysis of home technologies and products promising to keep premature nursing institutionalization at bay.
Reporters can request a complimentary press registration from Lori Bitter, 415-652-9884.
*** Considerable.com Lays Off News Staff, including Editor Diane Harris. One disappointed freelancer who worked with them let GBONews know that the Connecticut-based website, owned by Grandparent Partners, LLC, decided “to swivel more to . . . branded content rather than this news-you-can-use/Next Avenue style.” They continue sending e-mails offering bylined features and lifestyle pieces signed, “By ConsiderableStaff.” So far, no staff box.
*** “Robert Pear, Authoritative Times Reporter on Health Care, Dies at 69,” by Sam Roberts, New York Times (May 8, 2019): GBO’s editor was saddened to see this obit; what a loss. One could always rely on Pear’s detailed reporting and sharp explanations of health policy developments in Washington. He always reflected the impact on patients, not merely the budgetary tradeoffs among politicians and lobbyists. Pear, who succumbed to complications following a stroke, was well known in the DC press corps as something of a loner, a trait Roberts’ article captures both well and sensitively.
I recall another reporter complaining to me about 20 years ago that he and others resented Pear for somehow ginning up scoops for page 1-A, thus forcing those at other news bureaus to scramble to get new angles on that story. I took it as a backhanded compliment of Pear, and in the ensuing years found myself always stopping even more diligently at his byline to read, ink-stain and clip his incisive reporting.
Roberts wrote that Pear, during his 40 years at Times, “influenced the public discourse most by mastering the details of health care delivery. He would then explain those complexities to readers with unusual clarity, as well as the impact of proposed legislation to revamp the system.”
*** San Francisco Senior Beat is a new website with stories on aging in the City by the Bay written by older reporters. According to the announcement from sfseniorbeat.com Editor Robin Evans, “This e-zine aims to challenge negative notions of aging with stories of seniors and senior life in all its diversity.Seniors are all around us but often invisible.”
Many of the feature articles also appear in some of San Francisco’s neighborhood newspapers. One recent story, by Judy Goddess (“It’s a family name,” she says, “not one I made up”) profiles distinguished San Francisco State design professor June Fisher, MD. Another, by reporter Jan Robbins, profiles Dorothy Quock, 85, featured in the documentary Chinatown Rising, shown in early May at the Asian American Film Festival.
Goddess, Robbins and reporter Mary Huntare new to reporting thanks to the San Francisco ReServe program, the local project of the national ReServe nonprofit that matches seniors and people with disabilities with part-time, paid jobs at local nonprofits and public agencies. The journalism project, begun in late 2017, is an initiative of the local Community Living Campaign, which runs the city’s ReServe program.
According to Evans, “There are few other sources, outside of eldercare-institution newsletters and websites, for stories about the lives of seniors.” Evans is a veteran journalists who spent years at the San Jose Mercury News and other papers, as well as being a fine artist. She recently retired as marketing manager/graphic designer for the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships program at Stanford, where she continues as special projects coordinator.
*** “All About Aging” is a new monthly show hosted by Margaret “Peg” Cruikshank, running every third Wednesday on Maine public radio station WERU 89.9, based in the presumably scenic Blue Hill. The editor of the anthology Fierce With Reality: Literature on Aging (Hamilton Books, 2016), Cruikshank has been a leading feminist and LGBTQ advocate in gerontology on both coasts, and she unretired to Maine some years ago.
Her hourlong programs, to be archived by the feisty little station, started in May with her interviews with University of Maine clinical psychologist Rebecca MacCaulay, PhD. June will have Elizabeth Johns, PhD, who focuses on the economic well-being of older adults and related public policy issues. July will have women who created the Age Friendly Communities in Maine project.
*** Bay Area Public Radio’s JoAnn Mar recently continued her ongoing series, “The End of Time: Aging in America,” with a pair of reports examining racial disparities in end-of-life care. Originally aired on KALW, where Mar is an announcer and reporter, the segments were then aired nationally on the Making Contact program. Click here for the audio link.
3.EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** The American Society on Aging (ASA) Announced the Departure of CEO Bob Stein after 12 years. The San Francisco-based association will conduct a national search for his replacement. Meanwhile, ASA board member Cynthia D. Bankswill step in as Interim CEO. Stein will continue in an advisory capacity with ASA through the end of 2019. Recently Banks retired as long-time director of Community and Senior Services for Los Angeles County. Begun in 1954 as the Western Gerontological Society, the organization evolved with national participation, eventually becoming ASA in 1985, under the leadership of Gloria Cavanaugh, who headed the group for 31 years.
*** Finalists for the 2019 Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism include several stories on aging. The awards banquet will be in New York City, June 27. Here’s a link to a complete list of 2019 Finalists.
Those chosen for their stories related to aging include:
Audio Category: Liz Essley White, Joe Yerardi and Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak for “Medicaid, Under the Influence” of Big Pharma, driving high drug costs – Center for Public Integrityand NPR.
Beat Reporting: Peter Gosselin, Ariana Tobin and Ranjani Chakraborty for “Age Discrimination” series– ProPublica and Vox.
Local Category: Jack Dolan, Ryan Menezes and Gus Garcia-Roberts for “Gaming the System: How Cops and Firefighters Cashed In on L.A.’s Pension Program” – Los Angeles Times; and Charles Ornstein and Katie Thomas for “Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Crisis” – ProPublica and The New York Times.
Personal Service: Liz Szabo for “Treatment Overkill” series –Kaiser Health News; and Heather Gillers, Leslie Scism, Michael M. Phillips, Janet Adamy, Anne Tergesen and Paul Overbergfor “The Retirement Precipice” – Wall Street Journal (Series included many stories blocked by paywall).
4.THE STORYBOARD
*** “Brains and Losses,” a radio series and one-hour special by host David Brancaccio and colleagues Sasa Woodruff, Eliza Mills, and Daniel Shin, Marketplace Morning Report (May 16 and 21-24, 2019): The Marketplace crew outdid themselves with the deep dive into not only the what of financial scams against older adults, but also the why of it. This includes brain research aiming to understand why otherwise normal, rational and educated elders are so often easily taken, sometimes for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Brancaccio is careful throughout the programs to quality that although some studies have identified neurological changes with age that may help explain increased susceptibility among seniors (besides loneliness and depression), people of all ages get defrauded, while many seniors do maintain their skepticism. (I get robocalled every day, such as with threatening phone calls that the IRS will lock me up if I don’t pay immediately.)
In general, far from being merely journalistic recorders of test-tube authorities, reporters inquiring into any such scientific examination linked to a social-behavioral concern need to eyeball the magical dazzle of breakthrough discoveries and question potential over-reaching by those in white lab coats.
Marketplace’sexposure of revelations about medical research showing diminished size and, perhaps, reduced capacity of brain regions associated with certain behaviors should raise a red flag. Neuroscientists are attaining fascinating findings about discrete functions among the hills and valleys of our little gray cells. At the same time that science is increasing our understanding and eventual ability to develop targeted therapies, journalists are charged with the skeptical task. Discoveries can be too often taken at face value, and even a well-meaning scientist may suggest implications that step beyond what the data actually determine.
As the history of unintended consequences and misguided interpretations has shown in only the past century (think of the horrors of eugenics), personified readings of biological findings have been used prejudicially to attribute undesirable behaviors to particular groups, especially those with low incomes.
It’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which, say, a probate court in a guardianship hearing orders an MRI for an older adult who was swindled to see whether a diminished neurological structure would rationalize removing the otherwise healthy senior’s civil rights, and the place control of the person’s finances in the wrong conservator’s hands. To be clear, this editor is unaware of any such misuse of brain science. I expect that some GBONews readers may well offer more plausible scenarios.
Meanwhile, question and qualify we must, even the well-meaning authorities of the data. In their final segment, the Marketplacecrew did well by voicing concerns about the potential for ageist attitudes that may impinge on the free choices of people who happen to be elderly, versus precautionary monitoring of and interventions with older adults who may be financially vulnerable.
More fundamentally on this concern, though, is Louise Aronson, MD, in her new book, Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life, from Bloomsbury, which GBONews featured in our March issue.
Aronson wrote, “Science and technology can only ask and answer certain kinds of questions. Those instruments, although now considered synonymous with progress in both medicine and life, will only become socially and morally responsible when they are paired at the outset with equal consideration of their origins, intent, and impact on the people of all ages and backgrounds.”
Journalists can request a review copy of Elderhoodfrom sarah.new@bloomsbury.com,(212) 419-5371.
*** “Caregivers and Takers,” by Jennifer Gollan, RevealNews.org (May 23, 2019): The Center for Investigative Reporting, also with video produced with PBS NewsHour, and an audio version: “A growing number of aging Americans are turning to board-and-care facilities, often as an alternative to pricey nursing homes.. . . These are the caregivers working in board-and-care homes across the United States. Many are poor immigrants earning about $2 to $3.50 an hour to work arduous hours, while their employers earn healthy profits from their labor.”
The investigative report underscores the widespread exploitation of direct-care health workers in the largely unregulated assisted-living industry. The program spotlights glam millennial, Stephanie Costa, owner of six care homes, who appeared on Bravo’s reality television show “The Millionaire Matchmaker.”
In the video version Costa is shown exiting her black Ferrari convertible with “her Christian Louboutin stilettos glinting in the sunlight,” claiming on camera, “My net worth is $3 to $4 million, probably.” As the written lede states, “About half of Costa’s net worth was threatened when she and her company initially were cited for about $1.6 million for labor violations, including wage theft – not paying 11 employees for working much of 24 hours a day, six days a week. They later would settle for pennies on the dollar.”
Gollan teamed up with Reveal’s data reporter Melissa Lewis and editors Narda Zacchino, Matt Thompson, Ziva Branstetter and Robert Salladay.
*** “Many Americans Will Need Long-Term Care. Most Won’t be Able to Afford It,” by Paula Span, New York Times’ “New Old Age” column (May 14, 2019): “A decade from now, most middle-income seniors will not be able to pay the rising costs of independent or assisted living.”
The article continues, “’This group gets ignored and underserved in today’s long-term care market, and it’s a problem that’s going to explode over the next 20 years,’ said Caroline Pearson, a health researcher at NORC (formerly the National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study. ‘When you see the numbers, it’s sobering.’”
She quotes Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and veteran journalist, “’Though a very large percentage of older adults own homes, the amount of equity they have isn’t as much as they think. . . They’ve used home equity for other things, including health care.” Span adds, “Gleckman looked into housing equity as a member of the Long-Term Care Financing Collaborative, a group of policy experts. . . . The collaborative found that among 65- to 74-year-olds, the median household had about $100,000 in home equity and an equal amount in other assets. ‘It doesn’t go very far,’ Mr. Gleckman said.”
*** “A New Approach To Dementia,” Fresh Air with Terry Gross NPR (May 21, 2019). Gross interviewed Tia Powell, author of Dementia Reimagined and director of the Montefiore Einstein Center for Bioethics and is a professor of psychiatry and bioethics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. The Fresh Air site, which links to the audio (36 mins) and includes a full transcript, says, “While caring for her mother, who had dementia, [Powell] began imagining a different way to approach the disease.”
*** “Dementia and Gun Ownership Are a Dangerous Combination. One Gun-Range Owner Has a Solution,” by Hilary Hylton, Memory Well(May 10, 2019): “John Phillips is the owner of one of California’s largest shooting ranges and a full-throated advocate of gun rights. But he joined his family in persuading his grandmother to relinquish her guns when she was in her 80s. She had been a strong, independent woman and had single-handedly raised her family in the rugged Pacific Northwest, where guns were part of community life. As she began to suffer from dementia, though, Phillips believed her guns had to go. . . . Some 45 percent of Americans over the age of 65 live in a home with a gun, according to the Pew Research Center. . . .
“A 2018 study by Kaiser Health Newsfound 100 cases in just a four-month period across the U.S. in which people with dementia used guns to kill or injure a loved one, a caregiver, or themselves. There were also several incidences over that period of police shooting a gun-wielding dementia patient who seemed to pose a public threat.”
But wait – there’s more! Here are recent stories from Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, theproject of GBONews.org’s parent organization, the Journalists Network on Generations, in partnership with the Gerontological Society of America, and with our thanks for grants from the Silver Century Foundation, AARP, the Commonwealth Fund, the Retirement Research Foundation and the John A. Hartford Foundation.
*** “Side Effect Of Opioid Epidemic? Grandparents Raising Grandkids,” by Lisa Gillespie, WFPL Public Radio (May 13, 2019): Gillespie found that “across Kentucky . . . in 2017, some 63,000 children were in the care of grandparents; that’s 6 percent of kids statewide. And of those grandparents, 38 percent were age 60 or older. . . Until 2013, a Kentucky program gave these relative-caregivers $300 a month for each child. That program was discontinued because of cost. . . . Child advocacy experts say that since that program went away, the state hasn’t always told grandparents about other available resources — like daycare assistance, which gives caregivers a smaller amount of money, among other programs.”
The story adds, “The state is also working on what’s called a ‘child-specific’ foster care program — for children who have a relative or community member who wants to foster them. The process, the state says, will be less rigorous than the traditional foster care system. That program provides $700 a month per child. But Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said the state isn’t going far enough. There are more things the state could do, like training for caregivers on how going through trauma can influence a child’s behavior, and how grandparents can help a kid cope and also manage their own stress.”
“What Second Chance? The Uncertain Future of Post-Prison Health Care,” by Cassie M. Chew, The Crime Report(May 1, 2019): “In the months since President Trumpsigned the First Step Act, the product of a landmark bipartisan effort that many have called one of the most important justice reforms in years, about 500 individuals have been released from federal prison. . . . But for many of those returning citizens, “redemption” may prove a mixed blessing. Thanks to White House policies that may effectively reduce access to post-incarceration health coverage immediately upon release, returning citizens aged 50 and over could face special hurdles in obtaining care.”
The story continues, “In a pointed irony, the president’s stance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) may stymie reentry efforts for older individuals who need medical and mental healthcare to successfully reintegrate after they leave prison, effectively undercutting this new and promising era of ‘decarceration.” . . . If more states add restrictions, advocates suggest, it may be more difficult for an influx of older, early-release inmates to receive needed medical care.”
*** “Kentucky Has Highest Rate of Food Insecurity for Residents in Their 50s,” by Rhonda Miller, WKU Public Radio (May 14): “Two new reports on hunger among older Americans show Kentucky has the nation’s highest rate of food insecurity for those who are in their 50s, and it’s also a major issue for Kentuckians over 60. In the Green River region alone, more than 300 elders are on a waiting list for a daily hot meal.” (GBONews wonders whether Sen. Mitch McConnell might press for more nutritional funding were he placed at No. 301.)
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2019 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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