All this week 鶹ý has been covering the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, something that regular users would find hard to miss since the articles by Joyce Frieden and Shannon Firth have been showing up in the Daily Headlines email delivered to your inboxes every morning.
We've also featured the coverage in a special alert email sent to users who sign up for breaking news.
In addition to text articles, coverage has included a number of video reports done by Frieden and Firth, and produced by Greg Laub. One of the video reports featured Bryan Hambley, MD, a critical care medicine fellow who is an organizer of anti-Trump demonstrations.
The video appears to have struck a nerve with many 鶹ý users: healthcare professionals as well as consumers voiced their objections, objections that accused 鶹ý of having a pro-Democratic agenda.
Among the comments was one from a physician who said he planned to unsubscribe from 鶹ý because the site was covering news outside of medicine.
To quote that user exactly: "... Let's keep politics out of it. This should be on MSNBC, Huffington Post or any other POLITICAL commentary web-site. When the topics return to medically related issues, I will consider subscribing again."
That struck a nerve with me, so I decided to share the reasons why 鶹ý covers politics, and why we have a Washington bureau with reporters who are fully credentialed to cover Congress, the Supreme Court, Health and Human Services, and the White House.
Ever since the passage of Medicare – followed by Medicaid – it has been impossible to separate medicine from politics, because decisions made by the overseers at those programs (first called the Health Care Financing Administration, now known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) affect medical practice every day, in every setting.
We don't serve our users well if we ignore that simple fact, but we can serve them well by bringing the informed voice of 鶹ý to that coverage.
It is our job to cover all aspects of an issue, all sides of the question, even if doing so may sometimes make us or our users uncomfortable.
Many commenters pointed to the Hambley video as an example of our bias, but the opposite charge could be made by left-leaning users who view our video with Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who makes the case for getting government out of healthcare. Or this video with a former Congressional Budget Office director who thinks President Trump is tailor-made to strike deals with Congress and end legislative gridlock.
Next week the same team will be in Philadelphia covering the Democratic National Convention and already they are lining up subjects for interviews -- the first one booked is a Bernie Sanders supporter.
We've been asked if we would cover a doctor organizing a "docs against Clinton" rally. The answer is "yes," and if someone knows doctors who are doing that, we want to know.