Vote to preserve our democracy
Why ConvergenceRI is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President in 2024
This calculated rewiring of the public’s consciousness will require an investment of at least $10 million, according to three different sources high up on the totem pole in the corporate communications world. The question is: How does that investment translate into tangible results in measuring how successful the state’s largest private employer will be in providing better care for its patients? Is there an algorithm that will be employed? What are the metrics? Who will do the measuring? Stay tuned.
PROVIDENCE – We live in dangerous times. We are all witnesses. It is scary, not entertaining, to watch former President Trump descend into madness. His declining mental faculties are on full frontal display.
More disturbing is the way in which the mainstream media keeps attempting to normalize his constant lying and calculated misinformation. They keep reporting on his name-calling and bullying in a third-person objective style, in the “he says this, she says that” format.
Perhaps the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came last week, when the oligarchic owners of both The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post declined to run editorials supporting Vice President Harris in the 2024 Presidential election.
In response, ConvergenceRI is proud to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for President in 2024, and to urge readers to go to the polls on Nov. 5 and to vote for her.
As editor and publisher of ConvergenceRI, I am not afraid to stand up and to speak out and to voice my opinion.
We have all been witnesses to the way that the news narrative has changed for the worse as the ownership of the news media has been transformed into the voice of oligarchy in this new age of surveillance capitalism.
The problems with nuclear power.
ConvergenceRi was extremely disappointed by the recent article published in ecoRI News, taking that same “he says this, she says that” objective reporting style. The story, written by Colleen Cronin, “Could Nuclear Energy Power the Ocean State?” was woefully short on facts about nuclear power. Indeed, the subhead pushed the unspoken bias of the reporter: “Improvements in technology and a push to decarbonize should make nuclear more pervasive."
Editor’s Note: The reporter at ecoRI News, Colleen Cronin, has requested that ConvergenceRI make a correction regarding the what she says was the inaccurate reporting of the headline to her story, changing the verb from “should make” to “could make,” so that the corrected headline should read: “Improvements in technology and a push to decarbonizes could make [emphasis added] nuclear more pervasive.”
ConvergenceRI is happy to make that correction . However, ConvergenceRI’s criticism of the alleged biased reporting still stands.
The biggest disappointment in her reporting has to do with Cronin’s apparent misunderstanding of how the New England electric grid works, in ConvergenceRI’s opinion.
One of the biggest omissions in her story was the absolute lack of reporting on what the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center in Holyoke, Mass., its university partners, Boston University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, the University of Massachusetts and Yale University, and its corporate partners, Dell EMC and Cisco, are involved with regarding new research on developing new high performance computers that require less energy consumption.
The Computing Center's existence and its research undercuts the arguments being made by the nuclear industry about the alleged need for nuclear power to provide the electricity needs for data centers. A visit to Holyoke might prove illuminating.
Nuclear power has always been uneconomic, unsafe, and unnecessary. The corporate dream that nuclear energy could produce electricity “too cheap to meter” has always been a nightmare.
If you look at the New England grid, the biggest driver of lower costs of electric power is the rapid growth of “behind the meter” or rooftop solar installations, consistently lowering the grid’s demand for electricity. But the story by Cronin makes not attempt at analyzing the forces driving the grid’s demand.
Further, the import of hydro electricity from Hydro-Quebec is the best, least expensive, cleanest source of power for the New England grid. Cronin does not discuss the role that Hydro-Quebec will play in the future of New England’s grid future power demands.
There is no mention of the ongoing boondoggles dogging the former nuclear power plant in Plymouth, Mass., where the current owner keeps trying to dump radioactive wastewater into the waters surrounding Cape Cod. Or, for that matter, the breakdown of infrastructure of the Millstone nuclear reactors located in nearby Connecticut.
While nuclear power is being championed by those who decry wind power as environmentally challenged, backed by corporate dollars, and by those who seek to restart the damaged Three Mile Island nuclear power reactors in Middletown, Penn., to meet the alleged needs of corporate research data centers, Cronin would do well to investigate the solution that a collaborative group of universities and colleges arrived at in Holyoke, Mass., before swallowing the propaganda being foisted by the nuclear industry flunkies.
STAT attack
The enterprising reporters at STAT have undertaken numerous stories looking into the questionable corporate practices of UnitedHealthcare – including the for-profit behemoth’s attempts to squeeze extra payments out of the federal government from its Medicare Advantage patients, and by the questionable practices of its wholly-owned, for-profit subsidiary, Optum, in how it manipulates its pricing as a pharmacy benefits manager. To which ConvergenceRI says, “Bravo!”
But STAT recently published an op-ed by three Rhode Island authors – Brandon Marshall, Dennis Bailer, and Justin Berk, “How to make sure that the opioid settlement money isn’t wasted.” My sources indicate Berk was the principal author.
Beyond the factual errors contained in the op-ed, there is the lack of full acknowledgement that both Brandon Marshall and Dennis Bailer were recipients of awards from the Opioid Advisory Committee. Bailer’s employer, Project Weber/Renew, received the largest investment to date, some $2.7 million, to launch Rhode Island’s Overdose Prevention Center. Good for them and for VICTA, which will serve as the Center’s clinical partner.
But not to come clean and acknowledge that the authors were recipients of large investments by the Advisory Committee is a serious breach of journalistic, research, and scientific ethics. Further, the biggest failing is that the authors failed to acknowledge the huge role that AG Peter Neronha and his legal team played in winning lawsuits that held the corporate bad actors accountable for their corrupt deeds and, most importantly, for creating the innovative Advisory Group approach to distribute some 80 percent of the money won in the courtroom.
Finally, there is the apparent failure to acknowledge the coverage provided by ConvergenceRI in the writing by Ian Knowles, whose recent stories offered a detailed, comprehensive analysis of the current landscape of what is known as the opioid OD epidemic and the role that fentanyl has played.
Initially, ConvergenceRI complained to STAT that their op-ed seemed to cover much of the same ground that Knowles had already plowed through – without crediting Knowles or ConvergenceRI. It seemed difficult to believe that members of the recovery community would not have been influenced by Knowles’ insightful reporting in ConvergenceRI, given that the work was shared far and wide within the recovery community.
But, in retrospect, it may be that the three writers – and STAT’s editor in charge of op-eds, were simply too myopic, all wrapped up inside of their own protective plastic bubble wrap. So it goes.
One last observation. Speaking of oligarchs. John Henry is co-founder and owner of STAT. [His wife, Linda Henry, is the CEO off Boston Globe Media Partners and heavily involved with STAT.] John Henry is also publisher and owner of The Boston Globe and the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Being upfront
ConvergenceRI is now in its 12th year of publishing its digital news platform covering the convergence of health, science, innovation, research, technology and community in Rhode Island. It has survived and thrived within the very disrupted media landscape, and has earned the label by a top hospital communications director as the “arbiter of truth.” In June of 2024, I was awarded the “Advocacy in Action” award by the Community Care Alliance, “in recognition of accuracy in reporting health care, social services and behavioral health concerns related to neglected and marginalized populations. For dedication in directly addressing policy matters on behalf of people that often feel unseen and have no voice politically.”