The truth about journalism

Editor's Notes

I used to think that journalists were labeled as cynics because of our training. Professors and editors teach budding reporters to sneer at public relations wizards and propagandists. Pity the poor PR students who learn to spin the news for their future clients.

But that’s a little harsh. Most of the time, press releases, calls and tips lead to good stories. But not always.

A few weeks ago, a local woman called the newsroom to see if someone would write a story about her plight: Young mother suffers from brain tumor.

My cousin died after suffering from a brain tumor diagnosed when she was just her age. I know about brain tumors.

Brain tumors don’t usually become newspaper stories, though, unless the story is unusually heart-wrenching. In this case, the story is that a 25-year-old woman has a malignant vascular tumor on the right side of her brain. Doctors give her three months to live, but Medi-Cal, her only health insurance, will pay only for standard surgery, one that could destroy her ability to form new memories.

“I would rather die than not be able to remember my children,” the woman told reporter Malcolm Maclachlan. Her children are 1, 5 and 8 years old.

An alternative surgery, she said, would allow doctors to enter her brain through her ear rather than her skull. It could leave her deaf in one ear but wouldn’t harm her memory. Because it is considered experimental, she said, Medi-Cal won’t pay the full cost.

She needs $17,983 for her portion.

“They might as well have told me it was a million,” the woman told Maclachlan.

She’s a high school dropout and too sick to hold a job, she said, and her husband, a West High graduate, supports the family on his $11-an-hour job at Home Depot.

The story passes the heart-wrenching test. However, good journalists are trained to talk to other sources. It’s one way to sort out the truth. Or not.

Maclachlan called Les Brooks, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services, which oversees Medi-Cal. She confirmed that the woman who talked to us has been treated for migraines and back pain but said her department lists no brain tumor in the woman’s records.

“What information we have is very different,” she said.

Dr. Khanh Do of Tracy Family Practice said he has treated the woman at his office for the conditions Brooks identified. But when Maclachlan showed him the medical forms that the woman provided — with his name scrawled at the bottom — he said the signature was not his. And he said he didn’t know about a tumor.

At this point, the reporter went back to the woman and told her that the medical professionals have contradicted her story. But she stuck by her claims.

Who is telling the truth?

Sylvia Drew Ivie, project director with the California Endowment, a private group that gives grants to community-based healthcare centers, said it’s not entirely out of the question that doctors would try to limit care to a destitute Medi-Cal patient.

As a managed care institution that takes Medi-Cal patients, Tracy Family Practice could be under tremendous pressures to limit costs.

Ivie’s own husband died in March of a brain tumor, she said, and navigating his care was incredibly difficult, even though they were fully insured, middle-aged and well-versed in medical matters. So for someone like the woman who called us — young, uneducated and, perhaps, heavily medicated and suffering memory loss from a tumor — navigating the Medi-Cal system could be nearly impossible.

But too many details don’t match up. The woman said she had a CAT scan. Patients with brain tumors are usually scanned using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIs. A neuroscientist who commented on the woman’s description of the surgery option said it doesn’t make sense. She also said she only has four pages of medical records. I had more pages than that for an impacted wisdom tooth.

If the woman falsified medical forms, possibly with the goal of getting out of welfare obligations, she could face charges. A check of San Joaquin County Superior Court records shows she already has convictions on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and narcotics.

So amid the waving red flags, I ask myself: Am I ethically obligated to report this woman to legal authorities? No. Should the reporter testify against her, if it comes to that? Never. Will others be duped by this woman? Maybe.

Call me a skeptic, but for now, her plight is a warning to others and a reminder to ourselves that the truth is worthy of pursuit.

And that’s the story.