Join the PTSD After Childbirth Yahoo Group
Powered by health.groups.yahoo.com

Monday, January 11, 2010

PPD Legislation: Katherine Stone's Support Letter Among Time Magazine's "Letters of the Year" | EmpowHER - Women's Health Online

Sponsored By

Susan Dowd Stone

Susan Dowd Stone
More From This Member
Send Message

Expert Bio HERWriter

In case you missed it, Time Magazine has made some modest amends for the biased article that appeared last year regarding The Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act by selecting Katherine Stone's brilliant letter to be included among its letters of the year! (December 28, 2009 issue).

If you recall, the original article failed to reference the main legislative sponsors and organizational representatives, (like Posptpartum Support International) for this major "research" piece. In addition, they misconstrued the context of remarks made by respected researchers and completely ignored the substance of their interviews with pro MOTHERS Act PPD survivors in an apparent effort to support a biased view.

Had TIME exerted more impartial editorial control (a good start is actually READING THE BILL), they could have avoided the negative publicity and boomerang responses from America's mothers which immediately followed.

Fortunately, like the old Tom Cruise one-two punch that ultimately resulted in his apology, the rebound of support for the bill and challenges to the article's objectivity evoked unprecedented response from the bill's supporters, groups, individuals, advocates and mothers. A deluge of correspondence objecting to the slanted content arrived at Time via emails, phone calls and letters. Given an opening, the truth will always, always rise above agenda driven distortions to reveal itself with unimpeachable clarity.

And the most comprehensive contribution to this effort was the letter organized by Katherine Stone, author of Postpartum Progress, the most widely read PPD blog in the United States (and probably the world given her recent site stats).

Time published a summary of Katherine's letter in the weeks that followed, but declined to post the whole letter or include the impressive list of endorsing signatures…

PPD Legislation: Katherine Stone's Support Letter Among Time Magazine's "Letters of the Year" | EmpowHER - Women's Health Online

No comments:

Post a Comment