Wendell Potter came to the Center for Media and Democracy in May as an admirer of our work exposing corporate front groups, lobbyists and PR manipulators. He should know, he was one of the best PR executives in the health insurance business, CIGNA's Vice President of Corporate Communications until he had a major change of heart.

Today Wendell is CMD's Senior Fellow on Health Care, testifying before the US Senate Commerce Committee. His passion is health care reform and his expertise is exposing how the powerful industry he once helped run is manipulating and managing the health care reform debate raging among policy makers, the public and in the media.

The economic recession has been brutal to our Center for Media and Democracy, bringing a drop in individual and foundation funding that forced us to reduce our staff and cut our budget. Despite the stress and turmoil we stayed the course in conducting a national search for my replacement, our next executive director. We simultaneously appealed to past supporters for financial help, and we developed new programs with new supporters. I hoped that by this summer we'd be able to both announce a new executive leader and the turn-around of our economic crisis.

After months of difficulty and with hard work by our board and sacrifice by our staff, I'm elated to report that we have succeeded. An extensive search led by our consultant Susan Egmont has brought us a dynamic new executive director who despite her youth has years of national leadership in both government service and with prominent public interest and civil liberties groups in Washington, DC. We'll introduce her to you soon in early July. At the same time, we've obtained new financial support to launch a major program focused on analyzing the massive new government spending on corporate bailouts, economic stimulus and health care reform.

The health care component will be led in part by Wendell Potter, a former industry insider who is working with us to examine the role of the powerful insurance industry in undermining, manipulating and thwarting reform.

Media Advisory for June 24, 2009:

HEALTH INSURANCE INSIDER TO TESTIFY BEFORE SENATE

Contact: Page Metcalf, Center for Media and Democracy
Phone: (608) 260-9713
Email: editor AT prwatch.org

Former Executive Warns Congress: Don’t Be Fooled by For-Profit Industry’s Misleading Campaign

Washington, DC – Wendell Potter, a former health insurance industry insider, will testify before the full Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday June 24, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. EST, exposing the health insurance industry’s resistance to needed health care reform.

Mr. Potter spent more than 20 years as a public relations executive for two large health insurers - Cigna and Humana - but left the industry after witnessing practices he felt harmed American health care consumers.

Thanks to everyone who responded to last month's funding appeal. Our Center for Media and Democracy has been hit very hard by the recession. Donations from individuals and foundations, our lifeblood, are down significantly. As a result, we've been forced to cut back our staffing. CMD needs your support to keep our work alive and well. Only a small fraction of the 25,000 people who receive our Weekly Spin actually contribute money to support our work. Please, be one of them. If you haven't given yet, do so now by clicking here and contributing online. Please, show you care and give now.

Recently the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice asked me to write an article for them with my ideas of how grassroots activists could better use the Internet for real change. As a member of the group, I was happy to tackle that assignment, and here are my thoughts.

Barack Obama owes his election in no small part to his brilliant use of social networking websites, email, cell phone texting and blogs, all utilized in unprecedented ways by his campaign staff to promote, organize and fund his unlikely victory. He employed techniques pioneered by online groups such as MoveOn and took them to an entirely new level. Thanks to Obama's use of the Internet, politics in America will never be the same. It's crucial that peace and social justice activists at the state and local levels understand and harness these new technologies in organizing for fundamental social change.