This seems like good news:

BBC to premiere an American newscast

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer Sun Sep 30, 12:17 PM ET
NEW YORK - They speak English at the BBC, but CBS News veteran Rome Hartman still faced a language barrier when he was hired to create a newscast specifically for American viewers.

Almost all of the TV terms he was accustomed to were different. The American anchorman is a "presenter" at the BBC. The producer works in a "gallery," not a control room. And a voiceover is known as an OOV — an acronym for "out of vision."

"I'm not so arrogant that I think the entire BBC should adopt my lingo," Hartman said, "but it does make my head hurt."

Nearly four months of planning bear fruit Monday when the hourlong "BBC World News America" debuts at 7 p.m. EDT on BBC America, a network available in about half of the nation's TV homes. Parts of the newscast will also be seen on PBS stations that regularly air news material from the British Broadcasting Corp.

The value of the BBC News in America is that we can see the news as others see it, and see world news without the now-standard "But how does this affect Britney Spears?" viewpoint present on all the US networks. But it remains to be seen if news "for Americans" means news that the BBC thinks is important worldwide but presented with an American accent, or if it's the BBC's attempt to emulate American news, with all its faults. If it's the former, it may become must-see TV. If it's the latter, who cares?

See, the thing about having really bad policy ideas is that, when you first articulate them, you usually don't realize how awful they truly are. That's why President Bush made clear his real objection to the S-CHIP insurance for less-privileged kids in July when first ratcheting up his threatened veto:

"I support the initial intent of the program," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post after a factory tour and a discussion on health care with small-business owners in Landover. "My concern is that when you expand eligibility…you're really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government."

As it turns out, the idea that millions of lower-income kids should do without health insurance to preserve the profits of the health insurance industry really didn't resonate well with the American public. They realize, more or less, that 86% of SCHIP families had no insurance when they enrolled in SCHIP, that scary talk about "giving insurance" to families making $82,000 per year is just bunk, and that the real motive is to protect insurance industry profits even if children die.

After two months of making arguments that basically amount to "poor people don't deserve medical care" have made the GOP look like the robber barons that they are at heart, they've decided to try one last, desperate gasp at making health insurance for kids look like a bad idea: saying that the Democrats want the "poor and uneducated" to pay for it.

Whaa?? The Senate version of the SCHIP reauthorization pays for the insurance now (rather than the GOP-preferred method of "add it to the national debt and let poor people pay for it once we eliminate all taxes on rich people") by increasing the Federal Excise Tax on each pack of cigarettes by 61¢, to a total of $1 per pack (independent of any local or state tobacco taxes).

The GOP, always a tobacco-friendly lot, are now arguing that since more poor and uneducated people are smokers, the Democrats are asking them to pay for "middle-class welfare." It's a rhetorical trifecta for the party of death: protection for tobacco, protection for insurance companies, and more dead kids. There's literally nothing in there the GOP doesn't love.

(Ooh, waah waah, GOP whiny-ass titty babies who regularly call those who oppose their wars 'traitors' and call for the violent death of those who disagree with them might be offended that their policies that consistently promote the death of Americans might show that this is an actual policy goal. Actions speak louder than words, folks. If you don't want to be the party of Killing Americans, stop promoting endless policies that kill Americans. I'm just saying.)

NPR covered this story on Thursday when the GOP started switching heavily to its spin of "SCHIP is a tax on working people," something that's never bothered the GOP in the past. The story contains viewpoints from people for and against SCHIP renewal, as well as those pro-SCHIP who are for and against funding it from tobacco revenues. For example, one expert says that every time the price of cigarettes goes up 10%, consumption declines 4% among adults and 7% among teens. Less smoking means better public health, so it's a double win. Others say that the tobacco industry will respond by manipulating prices and promotions to keep consumption just as high, but don't cite figures to prove it. (They may have them, for all I know—it was a 3:30 report.)

And yet those three and a half minutes are still far more comprehensive than this 769-word AP article by Charles Babington:

Poor smokers would pay for health bill

WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats have chosen an unlikely source to pay for the bulk of their proposed $35 billion increase in children's health coverage: people with relatively little money and education.

The program expansion passed by the House and Senate last week would be financed with a 156 percent increase in the federal cigarette tax, taking it to $1 per pack from the current 39 cents. Low-income people smoke more heavily than do wealthier people in the United States, making cigarette taxes a regressive form of revenue.

Democrats, who wrote the legislation and provided most of its votes, generally portray themselves as champions of the poor. They do not dispute that the tax plan would hit poor communities disproportionately, but they say it is worth it to provide health insurance to millions of modest-income children.

There is one sentence about how the higher tax would "discourage smoking," with no figures. We find three quotes from Republicans who oppose SCHIP and the tobacco tax increase, and only two from Democrats who support SCHIP and the tobacco tax. Several paragraphs about how smokers are poor and how reducing consumption might reduce state tax revenue (both GOP points), but nothing on the benefits of reduced consumption.

This article might as well come from Fox News with a headline like "Poor smokers would pay for health bill." All smokers pay for it; the GOP has only become concerned that more smokers are poor and uneducated because their true motivation of protecting the insurance industry is massively unpopular. So, in a Rovian move, they're instead accusing their opponent of doing what they themselves are doing—targeting the poor because they are poor.

And, once again, the AP has fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.