Recently, the Trump administration told hospitals to stop sharing data on COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Instead, hospitals were to share information with a private company contracted by the Department of Human and Health Services. The company, TeleTracking Technologies, won its HHS contract in a noncompetitive process in April; around the same time, the department also contracted Palantir, the data-mining company founded by Peter Thiel, an early ally of Trump, to take on other data-collection functions from the CDC. The administration’s order, which took effect on Wednesday, seems a blow to transparency: the CDC published the patient data it collected from hospitals, but the TeleTracking database is private. Researchers and reporters who use the data are worried that vital information is being withheld for the sake of politics. Administration officials insist that bypassing the CDC is an efficiency measure, and that adequate data will remain available to the public. In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, of Gray TV, on Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence said that “the American people can anticipate full transparency.” The same day, however, journalists noticed that the CDC’s website had taken down data on hospital capacity that it had previously shared. Online, experts reacted with dismay. “I had hoped it was a glitch, but no,” Charles Ornstein, a healthcare reporter and editor at ProPublica,... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-07-17 11:55:45 UTC ]
Author of Morrissey Dr Gavin Hopps and former literary editor of The Times Erica Wagner, discuss the decision made by Penguin to classify Morrissey's new autobiography as a classic. Continue reading at BBC World
[ BBC World | 2013-10-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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