On Wednesday, January 29th WTAE News ran a story about the impact of the Affordable Care Act on Simonetta’s Collision and Car Care, a small business in McKeesport, PA.

Unfortunately, the story followed a troubling trend in news coverage of the health care law by using a strongly biased source whose prejudice is never revealed, relying on information from that source without fact-checking, and leaving out key information to create a selective and sensationalized account.

Stand with us to call on WTAE news to acknowledge on their broadcast that:

1. The numbers used were the broker’s alone and were not verified by any journalistic due diligence or checking;

2. The story’s source of the numbers is an extreme and public ideological opponent of the health care law; and

3. Due to key factual omissions by WTAE, viewers of the story were left with an overall misrepresentation of the law and its effect.

In addition, WTAE should encourage viewers to seek credible information from unbiased sources such as healthcare.gov, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Consumer Reports.