While 20 Million Americans Lost Their Jobs In 2020, US Billionaires' Wealth Grew By $931 Billion

If you still need proof that the world is built for the wealthy to succeed, just take a look at how fortunes diverged this year.

Venessa WongBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on December 27, 2020,


BuzzFeed News; Getty Images

As millions of Americans end 2020 sick, jobless, hungry, indebted, or at risk of losing their homes, it’s unimaginable that at the other end of the spectrum, the wealthy, shielded from much of this misfortune, became even richer this cursed year.

But this is the reality of 2020. The same forces that made this year so awful for most people helped a select few add immense wealth.

As more than 20 million people were receiving unemployment benefits and Congress held back too long on passing a second round of stimulus, American billionaires’ wealth had increased by $931 billion by the fall — more than the entire economy of the Netherlands. This divergence underscores just how drastically financial, political, and corporate systems are built to benefit those who already have so much, even in times of widespread loss, and exclude the have-nots. People with money, assets, and stocks saw their wealth and savings rise this year while those excluded from the year’s stock market rally were too often left in dire circumstances; some tech companies powered by low-paid contract labor thrived while their workers became sick or injured; and the widespread collapse of small businesses bolstered the success of competitors with greater access to resources and capital.

Meanwhile, existing economic structures almost ensure that the benefits of any financial recovery next year will continue to be spread unequally without some deliberate intervention. “Looking ahead to the next decade, investors face a world that is more indebted, more unequal,” according to a report by UBS. While top-line metrics about an improving economy will capture all the wealth held by the richest, it is important not to overlook the fallout experienced on the other side.

Consider, for example, who has benefited during the pandemic so far and who has lost.





Samuel Rigelhaupt / Sipa USA via Getty Images, Smith Collection / Getty Images
Left: Grubhub delivery bicycles in Manhattan. Right: a restaurant in California advertises its DoorDash delivery option.

It’s hard to imagine food delivery companies thriving when their partner businesses — restaurants — are hanging by a thread, but that is how things have shaken out.

Delivery services like Grubhub and DoorDash saw a huge jump in demand as shelter-in-place orders were issued around the country and restaurants were forced to close or limit indoor dining capacity. Small, local restaurants struggling to survive the pandemic turned to these services as a lifeline, despite unsustainably being charged high fees and commissions for orders placed through these platforms. Low-paid “gig workers” delivering for these companies were arrested and assaulted during the pandemic. “We have experienced strong growth in both new consumers and increased orders from existing consumers” during the pandemic, DoorDash stated in a company filing. The company is not profitable, but its revenue more than tripled during the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same period a year ago. This trend fueled DoorDash’s successful IPO this month, making billions for executives including CEO Tony Xu. DoorDash listed at $102 on Dec. 9 and ended the day with shares up 85%. As Wall Street enjoyed this windfall, 100,000 small businesses have closed so far.

A DoorDash spokesperson said, “Our three founders are also deciding how they want to personally give back to their communities and are each finding their own ways to do so.” She added the company has committed over $200 million to help restaurants and local communities.


Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images Jeff Bezos

Amazon shareholders have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic as brick-and-mortar stores shut down; Amazon workers less so.

In the first nine months of the year, as local businesses around the country went out of business, Amazon’s profit increased by about 70% to $14.1 billion. “Prime members continue to shop with greater frequency and across more categories than before the pandemic began,” an Amazon executive told investors. The company’s rising stock price, which has nearly doubled since March, helped CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth rise by $74 billion this year to nearly $190 billion. Meanwhile, about 20,000 Amazon employees have tested positive for COVID-19, and thousands of workers protested for higher pay, paid sick leave, and better protections during the pandemic.

The company has said it spent $750 million in additional pay for its front-line workforce, $500 million on a thank you bonus earlier this year, and established a $25 million relief fund for workers facing financial hardship or quarantine. Bezos has made donations this year as well, including $791 million to fight climate change, and $100 million to Feeding America.


Mykal Mceldowney / Reuters
The Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Logansport, Indiana.

Food companies continued to produce meat despite outbreaks of the coronavirus at their processing plants.

Tyson, for example, which makes chicken, beef, and pork, saw profits rise this last fiscal year to $2.15 billion while thousands of its workers tested positive for COVID. Tyson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


View Press / Getty Images
A Walmart store in North Bergen, New Jersey.

Walmart’s revenue increased 6.5% to $407 billion from February to October compared to a year ago, with considerable growth in e-commerce, and its profit was up by about 45% — but many employees still lost their jobs.

The company laid off hundreds of corporate workers “in units including store planning, logistics, merchandising and real estate,” Bloomberg reported in July. Walmart also recently confirmed it will lay off 1,200 people in Arkansas and New Jersey in January as part of a reorganization. The company said it has hired 500,000 new associates since March across its stores and supply chain locations to meet demand. The company said in a statement that it has issued $2.8 billion in special bonuses this year, offered paid leave for workers affected by COVID-19, and increased the starting salary for some positions.


Andrew Harnik / AP   Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel.

Some pharmaceutical companies developing COVID-19 vaccines have pledged not to profit from the pandemic (like Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca) — but not all.

Moderna struck a $1.5 billion deal with the US for 100 million doses of the vaccine, which it also developed with $955 million from the government, bringing the government’s total investment to $2.48 billion. Pfizer developed its vaccine without government funding and reached a nearly $4 billion deal for the purchase of 200 million doses. Both companies stand to make billions from the vaccine, which has drawn criticism. Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Massachusetts-based Moderna, gained $4.8 billion in wealth this year as the biotech company’s share price skyrocketed. Neither Moderna nor Pfizer responded to requests for comment.


Mike Blake / Reuters UnitedHealth Group offices in Santa Ana, California.

As people were not getting routine and elective medical care during the pandemic, insurers saw their profits rise.

For example, UnitedHealth, the country’s largest insurer by members, reported an increase in net earnings of 27% to $13.4 billion in the first nine months of the year. The company’s share price has increased dramatically since March. A spokesperson for UnitedHealth said, “We have taken a number of steps to support those we serve, our employees, their families, our communities and the broader health care system. You can find a summary of those actions here.” As insurers continued to pay out fewer claims for care while collecting premiums, some people also reported trouble getting their COVID-19 tests covered — during a pandemic. It’s possible the insurance heyday may draw to an end if the economy doesn’t improve, however, with United warning that rising unemployment could reduce revenue from employer-sponsored plans next year.


Tami Chappell / Reuters Equifax Inc. corporate offices in Atlanta, Georgia.

Credit bureaus — companies that gather data about you and determine your credit score for lenders — are also doing well as inequality widened during the pandemic, with the wealthy spending their money while others lost their jobs.

Consider Equifax: On one end, Equifax has benefited from the 2020 homebuying spree. The company offers specialized credit reports to mortgage lenders, and its US mortgage revenue from the summer was up by almost 90%, Equifax CEO told investors. On the other end of the spectrum, the company also offers employers services such as unemployment claims management. The rise in joblessness was a boon to the company — with so many people newly out of work, Equifax’s unemployment insurance claims business earned $50 million in revenue in the third quarter, up by over 70%, Equifax CEO told investors. The data Equifax gets about people from such employer services has been valuable to lenders this year too, as recent pay cuts and furloughs do not immediately impact a person’s credit score, but do impact their ability to borrow. “Data is valuable in all times. But during this COVID crisis, it's become increasingly valuable,” the CEO said at a conference. Equifax did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


Jessica Mcgowan / Getty Images Sen. Kelly Loeffler.

The stock trades of wealthy politicians drew scrutiny this year when a number made transactions based on suspected access to privileged information.

The Justice Department did not pursue insider trading charges against Sens. Kelly Loeffler, James Inhofe, and Dianne Feinstein after its investigation did not find sufficient evidence that they had done anything illegal. The lawmakers all sold large amounts of stock, worth hundreds of thousands to millions, before the stock market crashed in the spring. Prolific trading by Sen. David Perdue has also raised eyebrows, as have trades by Sen. Richard Burr . As Fortune points out: “Although some suspicious trading activities have been widely condemned, the fact that no member of Congress has been prosecuted under the STOCK Act reveals the challenge in proving illegal insider trading by elected politicians. Those accused of such activity often claim that their transactions are based on public information or are managed by independent trusts. The difficulty arises from the lack of clarity in US securities law; indeed, years of legal practice in this area suggest that the boundaries of illegal insider trading are difficult to define. The fact is that the law ultimately fails to deter members of Congress from allegedly engaging in such activities.” All of the politicians deny any wrongdoing.



Amr Alfiky / Reuters  JP Morgan Chase Bank in Manhattan.

And while Congress sat on its hands instead of passing a second round of stimulus, the government paid banks billions of dollars in fees for processing PPP loans to businesses that were impacted by the pandemic.

Banks say the cost of handling PPP loans will wipe out any potential profit from the fees they’re receiving, and Bank of America, JPMorgan, Citibank, and Wells Fargo pledged not to profit from the program, the New York Times reported. While banks have laid off thousands of workers this year, overall they have remained profitable despite ongoing economic uncertainty that may affect banking customers’ ability to repay loans. They continued to pay dividends to investors and will also be able to resume stock buybacks soon, which have been criticized for enriching “shareholders, generally wealthier Americans, at the expense of workers, new plants and research, and broader economic development,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Sen. Elizabeth Warren in October said these payouts would deplete banks’ “capital buffers at a time when they should be preserving them to support lending to households and small businesses.”

A spokesperson for JPMorgan said the company has “delayed payments and refunded fees for customers on over 2 million accounts,” provided $50 million in philanthropic support, helped “business clients secure more than $45 billion in new credit and $950mm in new loans for small businesses,” helped “corporate clients raise hundreds of billions in capital,” among other efforts.

Citi said in a statement, “Throughout this crisis, we have continuously supported our customers, clients and communities while maintaining strong capital and liquidity positions.”

These are just a few of the organizations that made money during the pandemic — and as the financial crisis continues to affect millions of people across the country, 2021 is looking set to be another banner year for inequality in America.




Venessa Wong is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Cambridge becomes the 1st US city to require stickers warning the threat of climate change at gas pumps

ichoi@businessinsider.com (Inyoung Choi)  

© Richard T. Nowitz/Getty Images A view of Harvard's campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, will require yellow stickers that warn of the harms of climate change to be posted on gas pumps, The Guardian reported.

Other US cities like California's Berkeley and San Francisco have proposed similar ideas in the past, but Cambridge will be the first to put the mandate into action.

Reducing gas emissions by taking public transportation or even restricting the amount you step on the gas pedal is a key way to minimize your carbon footprint.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, will require area gas pumps to post stickers warning of the harms of climate change, becoming the first US city to implement such a mandate, The Guardian reported.

The Guardian reported Friday Cambridge will require all gas pumps in the city to display bright, yellow stickers that say "burning gasoline, diesel, and ethanol has major consequences on human health and the environment including contributing to climate change."

The stickers are intended to "remind drivers to think about climate change and hopefully consider non-polluting options," a city spokesperson told the outlet.

In 2014, California's Berkeley and San Francisco proposed a similar idea to put stickers on gas pumps, but the idea wasn't ultimately put into action.

Reducing gas emissions by taking public transportation or even restricting the amount you step on the gas pedal is a key way to minimize your carbon footprint.

A study published in Scientific Reports earlier this year showed that even if the public worked to stop all greenhouse gas emissions, the world will continue to face climate change and global warming, Business Insider's Aylin Woodward previously reported.

Last year, the US greenhouse gas emissions rate dropped by 2.1%, according to the Rhodium Group, a private economic data firm. Even so, the emissions rate did not see net reductions between 2016 and 2019, according to Rhodium.

Read more:
Any hope of keeping Earth habitable now requires sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere, a new study found
Painfully slow hurricanes, deadly heat, and cities without water: What the climate crisis will look like in the next 10 years, according to experts
A few climate models are now predicting an unprecedented and alarming spike in temperatures - perhaps as much as 5 degrees Celsius
What Earth might look like in 80 years if we're lucky - and if we're not

INDIA

Farmers resist reforms designed to destroy livelihoods

© Getty Images Farmers resist reforms designed to destroy livelihoods


America loves family farmers and ranchers. Over generations, the status of small business farming endures indelibly within our identity. Most Americans who live in major metropolitan centers and the bucolic heartland alike celebrate agriculture with a profound sense of national pride.© Getty Images Farmers resist reforms designed to destroy livelihoods

Images of Norman Rockwell's iconic Saturday Evening Post covers immortalize a bygone era, which agronomists and sustainable farmers yearn to preserve. Our farmers emigrated to America during colonial times and through frontier culture eventually becoming modern, rural growers and urban producers who regularly pay homage to their roots elsewhere.


However, Sikh Americans bear witness to the plight of India's family farmers who agonize today under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's draconian, anti-farm laws. Indian Americans' deference to the rights of farmers has inspired recent rallies of solidarity, traversing California, New Jersey, Michigan and elsewhere. Across the Indian subcontinent, they endure widespread human rights abuses, for which Modi has been responsible for decades. Government-imposed agricultural reform laws jeopardize Indian farmers' livelihoods and ostensibly authorize starvation for millions. The escalating situation imperils peaceful protesters who have been attacked by Modi government forces, which could spark a geopolitical civil war.

So, how did this happen? Agribusiness and its people in Parliament railroaded small and midsize agricultural producers. Their scheme resulted in manipulating predetermined outcomes by preventing farmers from earning consistent profits. Masquerading laws with seemingly innocuous labels, the so-called "Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act," "Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act" and the "Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act," farm-reform advocates and the Indian government alienated farmers from the legislative process by enacting deceptive reforms posing as enhancements.

Who believes Modi acted nobly to stop future threats of globalization and corporate farming? His free-market policies would undo economic norms. They burden family farmers with unnecessary risk or market uncertainty. Clearly, preserving India's Minimum Support Price (MSP) system would ensure price stability for local family farms. Purely ideological, the prime minister's deregulation unduly rewards agribusiness while laissez faire industry interests run amok. On the contrary, agribusiness credits the reforms as promising greater upward mobility for farmers.

These reform laws confirm that Modi's government favors agribusiness. By dissolving India's Mandi system, or farmers' auction, the reform laws could dismantle supply chains and yield farmers reduced incomes, blocking producers from earning guaranteed minimum prices at market, which eventually could allow coercive, private buyers to exercise complete discretion. Regulations previously safeguarded farms but now small producers and operators fear losing their businesses and lands to large, private investors. Some growers and fewer investigative journalists warned the Indian people against rising Hindu nationalism and corporations controlling the food industry.

Curiously, at a time of supposed deregulating agriculture policy, Modi's harsh reform laws spawned a domino effect that jeopardizes both the farmers' earnings and intimidates arhtiyas - the commissioned agents subsidizing farm loans and supporting adequate prices for crops. Small and large producers have enjoyed symbiotic dealings with these agents for decades. Yet, farmers are fighting to repeal austere reform laws and against returning India to its former, grim agrarian crisis. Meanwhile, farmers believe price assurances can protect them from exploitation at the hands of government-sponsored privatization. The new laws will ultimately force farmers to liquidate their products and lands to predator investors. Family farmers anticipate greedy, corporate interests waiting to easily seize control.

Indian farmers know prosperity starts with repealing biased laws to guarantee the MSP for crops and enacting more even-handed regulations. But the timing of the three anti-farmer reform laws is deceptive. COVID-19 helped the prime minister to endanger and coerce the Indian people, emboldening the government and Bharatiya Janata Party to force through reforms and render family farmers powerless to organize and resist them. Gone unchallenged, India's government insists its three new farm laws are vital to strengthen the agricultural industry. Modi's top economist obediently acquiesced.

Indian farmers' protest of agricultural reforms that became law in September is estimated to be one of the largest demonstrations in history. And Mondi's government countered by using water cannons and tear gas on supporters peacefully and lawfully marching against the new reform laws. Adding insult to injury, India negated democratic norms and violated citizens' basic rights while farmers marched towards Delhi. Rather than strengthening fairness for farmers, India's farmer protests expose Modi's anti-democratic values, anti-humanitarian policies and human rights violations intended to suppress the will of the people

Worse, India's news media operates like an arm of the government. Instead of acting as a watchdog and reporting impartially, the press rarely holds officials liable or exposes improprieties. On the UN's International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, 2020, when Sikhs demanded activists and academics detained at protests be released, reflexively, Indian reporting branded peaceful protests as a plot by terrorists, and called farmers "leftist intellectuals" and "extremists" infiltrating "to derail farm law improvements."

India's democracy should not wreak havoc on human rights in the name of capitalism. No farmer should tolerate the government subjugating their livelihoods for profit.

Jagdeep Singh is executive director of UNITED SIKHS a 501(c)(3) non-profit and nonpartisan organization championing civil and human rights for all. They recognize the human race as one.

Opinion

Britain stuck with the consequences of bungled Brexit and coronavirus response

Britain could have painlessly left the EU with deals like Norway’s and Switzerland’s, but the arrogance of its political class let fantasies flourish long after the referendum and set a high price for blinkered English nationalism

A quiet day for the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International station in London on December 23, as service from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam was suspended for at least 48 hours to try and control a new variant of coronavirus. The closures, a mere 10 days before Britain’s exit from the EU, was symbolic. Photo: Reuters


Disturbing though it was, the near closure to the world of the United Kingdom on December 21, a mere 10 days before its exit from the European Union, was symbolic. Some might even call it poetic justice.

The UK’s discovery of the mutation and increased velocity of Covid-19 has nothing directly to do with its departure from a group of 27 fellow European nations. However, it was a reminder of how vulnerable the UK now is, even assuming it survives as an entity given Scottish independence sentiments and Northern Ireland’s open border with the Republic.

There is likely to be some sort of deal before January 1, but even if free merchandise trade continues, the additional paperwork and uncertainties from exiting the single market will weigh heavily on exports, which were weakening conspicuously even before the pandemic. As for service exports and the freedom to travel and work, the loss will put the more successful UK firms, institutions such as its top universities and most talented individuals at a huge disadvantage.

As a Brit, I welcome the access now being offered to Hong Kong
British National (Overseas) passport holders, but it is sad that they might never enjoy wider European opportunities. 

UK unveils details of citizenship offer for Hongkongers with BN(O) passport holders

As for the tens of thousands of British workers dependent on Japanese and other car export manufacturers, the future of investment and jobs remains clouded.

It is fitting that Prime Minister Boris Johnson presides over this national catastrophe. It must be recalled that much animosity towards the European Union was driven by fake news of the sort that Johnson himself created as a supposed journalist writing for a supposedly serious newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, when he was its correspondent in Brussels. Similar nonsense appeared in media controlled by Rupert Murdoch and others pandering to English chauvinism and nostalgia for long-past glories.

Johnson’s post-Brexit Global Britain sounds good, but that’s about it
22 Dec 2019


Likewise, Brexiters would rather blame hardships of lower-income groups on Brussels than their own government’s policies responsible for huge income and regional gaps. In a minor way, the lead-up to Brexit was a reminder of how the slow drip of lies and exaggeration of a few genuine grievances enabled Adolf Hitler to convince many otherwise moderate, well-informed Germans of the justification for launching war against Poland.

Johnson crowed that with Brexit Britain could “have its cake and eat it”, imagining that there could be an equal treaty between one country and an EU whose solidarity seems to have been strengthened by British attitudes, with a population nearly seven times and an economy five times larger]

It was stupid enough to vote on Brexit without even discussing what kind of Brexit and its consequences. The vote was not even binding.

Activists hold up a placard during a protest organised by Border Communities Against Brexit on the border at Carrickarnon, Northern Ireland, on January 31. Photo: AFP

Once embarked, Britain could have done a painless exit with deals like those of Norway and Switzerland, but the sheer arrogance and ignorance of Britain’s political class enabled the fantasies to flourish for the 4½ years after the referendum. The price of blinkered English nationalism will be high.

Britain must live with the consequences of its illusions that it can somehow
do better deals than the EU with major trade partners such as China, India and Brazil, or that they will give it anything not available to Germany and France. Deals announced with Japan and Singapore add nothing to existing EU ones. The UK’s “special relationship” with the United States was always exaggerated and is now further weakened by London’s lack of influence in Brussels.

Post-Brexit Britain free to pursue trade deals, including with China
31 Jan 2020


Fellow Europeans now view the British either with pity or scorn for the final Brexit, an appropriate denouement to the world’s worst year since 1945.

On the brighter side for 2021, this column makes two predictions about vaccines and victory over Covid-19. However, one fight for progress is belatedly just getting under way – the battle of the world’s consumers against monopoly and intellectual property theft in the digital world, of which almost all of us are a part. The US Federal Trade Commission has at last moved
to break up Facebook on grounds of unfair competition.

This might yet prove a politically driven exercise, which will soon flag or be blocked by the money wall of lawyers who move between the commission and industry lobbies. The US has barely begun to protect privacy from voracious giants which it sometimes seems to regard as heroic national success stories, not the threats to competitive capital and democracy they have become.

Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple respond to Congress about whether China steals US technology

Meanwhile, the EU has some privacy rules and is developing new rules intended to rein in the power of the quasi-monopolists including Google and Amazon and their capture of personal and private information for their own profit, usually with neither the consent nor knowledge of the users. Google is so arrogant that it regards itself as superior to significant nation-states such as Australia, declaring internet war on efforts there to make it pay for stolen news content.

Even the Communist Party, arguably the world’s most powerful non-military organisation, seems to have noted the power of digital giants controlled by one or a few individuals which burrow and buy their way into all-seeing, indispensable tools of life. Just ask Ant Financial.

A post-vaccine agenda for the world: break up dominant monopolies and – to help cover Covid-19 costs – tackle the offshore island tax evasion pandemic which contributes so much to global and local income imbalances.


Philip Bowring is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator

Libya’s Peace Process
Doomed to failure without its women

Andrea Backhaus | Published: 00:00, Dec 28,2020


— Qantara.de

IT COULD just as well have been her, says Rida al-Tubuly, adding that she is simply lucky to still be alive, lucky not to have been killed like Hanan al-Barassi.

It has been six weeks since the assassination of Hanan al-Barassi. For weeks afterwards, many people in Libya continued to express their outrage. People like the human rights activist Rida al-Tubuly, who lives and works in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and fights for a society where Libyan women can live in safety. ‘People who question those in power in Libya are putting their lives at risk,’ she says on the telephone. ‘This is especially true if you are a woman.’


Lawyer Hanan al-Barassi was assassinated on November 10 in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. It was the afternoon, and the 46-year-old had gone out to do some shopping. She had just parked her car outside a shop when masked men stepped up to her car and shot her in the head. Human Rights Watch has described the assassination as a ‘cold-blooded execution’.

‘Hanan al-Barassi was brave,’ says Rida al-Tubuly. ‘She addressed even the thorniest topics.’ Al-Barassi was vocal in her denunciation of the abuse of power by the ruling militias in her country. She accused armed groups of sexual attacks and criticised the despotism of the warlords and those faithful to general Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army, which controls the eastern part of the country. In response, she received death threats. On the day she was killed, al-Barassi hinted in a video that she would soon go public with details about the corrupt networks of one particular armed group. Prior to that, she had said that members of Haftar’s family were involved in corruption.

Rida al-Tubuly explains that in Libya, men are elevated to the important positions because they promise their supporters benefits. Women, on the other hand, stand up for things like human rights and the rule of law. ‘And for that, they receive threats.’ All across the country.

A country disintegrating into chaos

SINCE the overthrow of Muammar al-Gaddafi, Libya has been split down the middle. On the one side is the UN- and EU-recognised Government of National Accord under prime minister Fayez al-Sarraj in the capital, Tripoli. The GNA is also backed by Turkey and Italy. On the other is general Khalifa Haftar, who has the backing of a number of countries including Russia and, to a certain extent, France. Add to the mixture dozens of militias, clans, foreign mercenaries and Islamist groups that are all jostling for power.

Haftar’s rebels control large swathes of the country, ruling with an iron fist. For just under a year, Haftar’s troops advanced on Tripoli; in the summer, his offensive collapsed. But this did not bring the country any peace.

For years now, the reports coming from Libya have been grim: not only because the country is disintegrating into chaos and lawlessness, but also because people who have fled there from southern Africa are being tortured, abused and enslaved. Little attention is, however, paid to the struggle of those Libyans who uncover wrongs, injustices and maladministration in Libya and want to see progress in their country — and who risk their lives to do so.

Branded a traitor

RIDA al-Tubuly knows what that means. The 58-year-old human rights activist is a professor of pharmacology at the University of Tripoli and has been working for equality for decades. In 2011, she and three female students set up the organisation ‘Together We Build It’, which seeks to empower women to get involved in society and politics.

For example, Al-Tubuly and her colleagues are pushing the Libyan government to implement Resolution 1325, which was passed by the UN Security Council in the year 2000. This resolution calls on countries to grant women in war zones an active role in peace-building and peace-keeping. ‘This resolution was the first time that it was officially acknowledged that although it is women who suffer most in wars and conflicts, they are generally excluded from the peace process,’ says al-Tubuly. She says that it is not easy to remind the government that it is bound by the resolution.

Last year, al-Tubuly spoke to the UN Security Council in New York about the precarious situation of Libyan women. In her speech, she criticised the men in positions of power in both the east and the west of the country. She told the council that the assassination of women politicians and activists was an everyday occurrence under both leaderships, and that women were being excluded from social and political life. For this, she received death threats in her native country. The Libyan television channel Alhadat even dismissed her as a spy and a traitor. Even acquaintances phoned her up and asked her whether it was true that she was an agent.

Death threats are an everyday occurrence

THERE is violence against women all across Libya. However, it would seem that in the east of Libya in particular, women are exposed to intimidation and violence when they take a stand against the powers that be.

In July 2019, Siham Sergiwa was abducted from her home in Benghazi by armed men, allegedly men with links to Haftar’s army. Sergiwa was a member of the House of Representatives in Tobruk. Human rights organisations consider her abduction to be a politically motivated act. Prior to her abduction, Sergiwa had openly criticised Haftar’s military offensive against Tripoli.

To this day, no one knows what happened to her. A few years previously, in June 2014, the renowned human rights lawyer Salwa Bughaighis was shot dead by unidentified men in her home in Benghazi. In the following month, July 2014, politician Fariha al-Barkawi, the representative of Derna in north-eastern Libya in the General National Congress, was killed. She had condemned the assassination of Salwa Bughaighis in the strongest terms.

Following the assassination of Hanan al-Barassi, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya called on the authorities in the east of the country to promptly bring the perpetrators to justice. But hardly anyone in Libya believes this will ever happen. Not one of the men who have killed or abducted women in recent years have been sentenced or punished. The crimes were never even investigated.

Complete impunity

LAILA Mughrabi, a human rights lawyer who had to flee Libya because of the threats against her life, once told Amnesty International in an interview that the Libyan authorities and society often attribute the assassination of women to things like theft, inheritance and honour killings. ‘Perceiving these women as equal political actors is not an option’ for the authorities, she went on to say, adding ‘their assassinations are then boiled down to criminality and nothing more.’

Marwa Mohamed, who works for the Libyan human rights organisation Lawyers for Justice in Libya, believes that there is a reason why such violence against women in possible: ‘There is complete impunity in Libya.’ Mohamed, who currently lives in London, left Libya in 2014. ‘When every aspect of the rule of law disappears in a country, this has a very real impact on the lives of the people who live there,’ says Mohamed on the phone. She goes on to say that while things have never been easy for women in Libya, it is now more dangerous than ever before. ‘We have seen the consequences it can have when prominent women are not afraid to voice their opinion.’

Mohamed says that many women have withdrawn because of the targeted violence and also because of the threats received on online platforms and the smear campaigns that are intended to destroy a woman’s reputation — both forms of violence that target women in particular. According to Mohamed, the security risks are real. But, she adds, the prevailing climate prevents women from expressing themselves in public or running for political office. ‘There is this narrative that says women don’t want to be in the public eye because they fear for their safety,’ says Mohamed. ‘But that’s not true. Women should have the opportunity to make this decision for themselves.’

Hopes dashed of more freedom

WHEN Gaddafi was toppled in 2011, many women held very high hopes for the future. They hoped that they would become more visible in a freer society; that they would be able to take up the places in society that their qualifications entitled them to. Many Libyan women are very well educated. Before the war, almost as many women as men held bachelor’s degrees or higher.

Nevertheless, it is traditionally very difficult for women to find skilled employment, because they live in a society where the work done by a woman is not held in the same regard as the work done by a man and because many of them live in rural regions where there is the strong conviction that a woman’s place is in the home.

In many families, there is no room for wives, daughters or sisters to voice opinions on political matters. For decades, the state required women to remain silent. While there was more security under Gaddafi, says Mohamed, and women could move freely about the country, ‘we had no civil society.’ Nor were they actively involved in public or political life. ‘That is another reason why there was a revolution.’

But the transition process after the overthrow of Gaddafi became increasingly overshadowed by violence that pushed women further and further to the sidelines, says human rights activist Rida al-Tubuly. Every one of the people who then took hold of the reins of power was men. Islamist extremists flooded into the country and tried to ban women from public life. Wherever they were in power, they launched campaigns to ban women from driving cars or travelling alone. At the same time, the number of militias grew. Some of them were more religious, others less so, but to this day, all of them continue to undermine state control.

There are too many militias and too many guns, says al-Tubuly. ‘And the militias rule like the mafia.’ Young men join the militias because they get paid by them and can do what they like with impunity. ‘If you are part of a militia, you have power,’ says al-Tubuly. ‘You are protected. You have a network.’ Women, on the other hand, she says, did not want to found militias or shoot at each other. Nor were they, in most cases, supported by the influential clans because the clan leaders preferred to see women at the kitchen sink.

On the road to peace?

IT IS hugely important that women are adequately represented in politics and administration, especially now when there is the prospect of something like peace in Libya.

In October, al-Sarraj and Haftar agreed to a ceasefire. According to the terms of the agreement, all foreign fighters have to leave the country. In addition, 75 representatives of Libya from the fields of politics, the military and civil society are currently negotiating the future of the country in a dialogue forum under UN leadership. So far, the delegates have agreed that elections will be held in December 2021. At the same time, negotiations in the Libyan port city of Sirte are being held to hammer out the details of the ceasefire.

Even if all this sounds like a massive improvement in the peace process that stalled for several years, many observers are only mildly optimistic. They are critical of the fact that the composition of the dialogue forum does not represent the Libyan people: the delegates were selected by the UN and not by Libyans themselves. What’s more, many of the delegates have no real influence on the balance of power. Many groups in Libya have already said that they will not recognise any agreements reached by the forum. It also remains to be seen whether the basic conflicts can be resolved so quickly: the clan feuds, for example; the fight for oil and money; the large numbers of militias and mercenaries that have not yet been willing to withdraw; the weapons that continue to be smuggled into the country.

No stability without women

THERE is one major perspective missing from these negotiations: the perspective of Libyan women.

Of the 75 delegates who are discussing Libya’s future, there are 17 women. This, says Marwa Mohamed, is ‘a good number, but not yet enough.’ Many of those who are currently steering the peace process are not interested in handing over more power to Libyan women. ‘It is not enough to have a few women sitting around the table,’ says Mohamed. ‘We must ensure that women are really involved in the political process and hold key positions in government.’

Moreover, she adds, key freedoms must be ensured if free and fair elections are to be held in one year’s time. These freedoms include freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of participation. Mohamed says that Libya is a far cry from all that at the moment. ‘Hanan al-Barassi was killed in Benghazi in broad daylight, while the UN-led delegation was discussing Libya’s future,’ says Mohamed. This shows the contradiction between what is being discussed in theory and what is happening on the ground in the country.

Professor Rida al-Tubuly agrees. Many politicians in Libya and representatives of international organisations are of the opinion that peace and stability in Libya should be ensured before talking about women. ‘But there can be no stability unless women are directly involved,’ says al-Tubuly. She says that she is constantly hearing people say that Libyan women are not qualified enough to assume positions of responsibility. Whenever she hears this, she gives the same reply: ‘If the men of Libya were so qualified, we would not have had this chaos for the last ten years.’

Qantara.de, December 23.

 

DUTERTE MURDER INC.

Filipino mother and son shot dead by policeman lad to rest

The family of mother and son Sonya and Frank Anthony Gregorio, who were shot and killed by an off-duty police officer, cries as they are buried at their funeral, in Paniqui, Tarlac province, Philippines, Dec 27, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Eloisa Lopez)

PANIQUI, Philippines: Hundreds attended the funeral on Sunday (Dec 27) of a woman and her son shot dead by an off-duty policeman in the Philippines, a week after a video of the incident went viral on social media, sparking public outrage over police brutality.

Members of the public joined as relatives and friends in Tarlac province, north of Manila, paid their final respects to Sonya Gregorio, 52, and her 25-year old son Frank Gregorio, who were shot in the head after a row over noise.

The shooting, which was recorded on a mobile phone by a member of the Gregorio family, triggered accusations from critics and human rights activists that President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs had created a culture of police impunity.

Police personnel carry the caskets of mother and son Sonya and Frank Anthony Gregorio, who were shot and killed by an off-duty police officer, on the day of their funeral, in Paniqui, Tarlac province, Philippines, Dec 27, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Eloisa Lopez)

READ: Family mourns Filipino mother and son shot by police over noise

Policeman Jonel Nuezca was seen in the video engaged in a heated argument with the Gregorios over the use of a homemade noise-making device typically used to celebrate the New Year, before he shot the mother and her son

Nuezca surrendered to police on the night of the incident and faces two counts of murder. The government has promised a thorough investigation.

The victims' family has forgiven Nuezca but is still demanding justice, said Avelina San Jose, a relative of the Gregorios. "He should face the consequences of the law", she said.

The family of mother and son Sonya and Frank Anthony Gregorio, who were shot and killed by an off-duty police officer, cries as they are buried at their funeral, in Paniqui, Tarlac province, Philippines, Dec 27, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Eloisa Lopez)

READ: Duterte's pick for top cop causes stir over drug war deaths, lockdown party

Duterte, who has talked of killing criminals and issued promises to protect law enforcement while waging a war on drugs and crime, has condemned the shooting and warned "there will be hell to pay" for rogue officers.

Source: Reuters/dv

HIDING COVID-19: HOW THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SUPPRESSES PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE PANDEMIC

The U.S. government has reinforced media restrictions at hospitals, reducing the flow of disturbing images of the pandemic.

A health care worker wears personal protective equipment as she speaks to a patient at a mobile testing location for Covid-19 in Auburn, Maine, on Dec. 8, 2020. Photo: Robert F. Bukaty/AP


Peter Maass
December 27 2020

AS COVID-19 TORE through the United States in the spring, a senior official in the Trump administration quietly reinforced a set of guidelines that prevented journalists from getting inside all but a handful of hospitals at the front line of the pandemic. The guidelines, citing the medical privacy law known as HIPAA, suggested a nearly impossible standard: Before letting journalists inside Covid-19 wards, hospitals needed prior permission from not only the specific patients the journalists would interview, but also other patients whose names or identities would be accessible.

The onerous guidelines were issued on May 5 by Roger Severino, who worked at the conservative Heritage Foundation before Donald Trump appointed him to direct the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. The guidelines made it extremely difficult for hospitals to give photographers the opportunity to collect visual evidence of the pandemic’s severity. By tightening the circulation of disturbing images, the guidelines fulfilled, intentionally or not, a key Trump administration goal: keeping public attention away from the death toll, which has surpassed 300,000 souls.

“The last thing hospital patients need to worry about during the Covid-19 crisis is a film crew walking around their bed shooting B-roll,” Severino said dismissively in a short press release accompanying the guidelines.

Severino speaks at a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 18, 2018.
Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

In the pandemic’s early days, when hospitals were first inundated with media requests, the prevailing HIPAA guidelines were quite restrictive, even on matters that had nothing to do with media access. Those guidelines predated the Trump administration and were not written for a pandemic. But the scale of the Covid-19 crisis quickly forced the Trump administration to loosen a wide range of privacy restrictions on medical providers — except, as it turned out, the ones that kept Americans from viscerally seeing the ailing and the dying.

For instance, HHS allowed hospitals to share Covid-19 information with first responders and with organizations involved in Covid-19 testing. Hospitals were told that they would not face sanctions for sharing information with the families or friends of Covid-19 patients. Doctors were freed to discuss or transfer patient information with technologies that were not secure, such as email, FaceTime, and Skype. As it relaxed these restrictions, the agency said that medical providers would not be punished for breaches of patient confidentiality if they acted in good faith during the pandemic.

The government’s permissiveness did not extend to journalists. The media guidelines announced by Severino in May reinforced HIPAA’s restrictions and warned hospitals that violations could bring fines in the millions of dollars. The announcement was not reported by general-interest publications, but news outlets for the health care industry noticed what had happened. The headline of one of those industry stories was blunt: “Patient Privacy Prevails Over Covid-19 Media Coverage.”

Severino’s guidance, little known outside the health care industry, may help solve one of the mysteries of the pandemic: Why have Americans seen relatively little imagery of people suffering from Covid-19? While there is a long-running debate over the influence of disturbing images of death and dying — whether they actually move public opinion — the relative paucity of videos and photographs of the pandemic’s victims might help explain why Covid-19 skepticism has thrived as the death toll in America reaches the level of a 9/11 every day.

“For society to respond in ways commensurate with the importance of this pandemic, we have to see it,” wrote art historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis. “For us to be transformed by it, it has to penetrate our hearts as well as our minds. Images force us to contend with the unspeakable. They help humanize clinical statistics, to make them comprehensible.”

Nurses tend to a Covid-19 patient in a Stamford Hospital intensive care unit in Stamford, Conn., on April 24, 2020.
Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

FROM THE MOMENT Covid-19 took hold, journalists in the United States experienced immense difficulty getting access to what amounts to ground zero of the emergency. This was not because they were not trying — they deluged hospitals with requests to document what was happening. Nor was it because doctors and nurses resisted — they clamored for more attention to the agonies endured by their patients. With infrequent exceptions, hospitals said no to the requests from journalists, often without explanation.

Lucas Jackson, a senior photographer for Reuters, recalls that at the start of the pandemic in March, he worked with a team at Reuters that called nearly every hospital and trauma ward in New York City. They created a spreadsheet of the hospitals and whether they had been contacted and what their response was. Only a few responded, and none granted access, even though Reuters offered Guantánamo levels of control to hospital staff, agreeing to get releases from patients and allowing hospital staff to look at all photographs to make sure no names or identities were disclosed. “If that’s what it takes, we were willing to do it,” Jackson told The Intercept.

“Photography has played such a key role in the civil rights movement, in ending the Vietnam War, and any number of key moments in American history — and it just seems missing in action on this crisis.”


Michael Kamber, a former war photographer who directs the Bronx Documentary Center in New York City, recalls security guards shooing him off the sidewalks in front of Lincoln Medical Center. “This is the greatest loss of life on the American continent in such a concentrated time, and we’re seeing almost no images that really convey the devastation and the death,” Kamber said. “Photography has played such a key role in the civil rights movement, in ending the Vietnam War, and any number of key moments in American history — and it just seems missing in action on this crisis.”

Kamber, like other photographers, accepts that safety and privacy concerns need to be upheld, but he believes that those concerns are used as excuses for the repression of journalism that is manifestly in the public interest. In the cases in which hospitals have allowed journalists inside during the pandemic, there have been no privacy breaches — which proves that reporters can work at the medical front line without violating patient privacy. “The government and nearly all health care facilities have banded together in the name of protecting the privacy of the sick and have done an excellent job of keeping photographers as far away from the grief and devastation as possible,” Kamber said.

There have been exceptions, of course. John Moore, an award-winning photographer for Getty Images, got inside a Connecticut hospital in the early days of the pandemic. A contact with connections to the hospital vouched for Moore, removing the obstacles that were keeping others out. Even so, Moore had just one visit to the intensive care unit, working in a hurry with a communications official carrying a stack of releases that everyone he came into contact with had to sign. Moore did not take pictures of patients’ faces. “We established ground rules ahead of time, and I stuck to those,” he said.

Getty Images is a major photo agency that has worked hard to get its photographers into hospitals, with only rare success. “For every thousand calls or emails, you maybe get three yeses,” said Sandy Ciric, the agency’s director of photography. “Sometimes we even had the CEO say, ‘This is great, yes, we want coverage,’ and then someone tells them no and they change their mind.”

The exceptions demonstrate that not all the blame can be placed on the government. There is enough wiggle room in the regulations for determined hospitals to let journalists inside and trust them to follow the rules. Journalists who spoke with The Intercept noted a similarity to embeds with the U.S. military: Just as embedded war reporters were privy to sensitive information that they were trusted to keep to themselves, journalists in hospitals can be counted on to not publish patient information that they are not supposed to publish.

A photographer who got access to several hospitals in the early months of the pandemic expressed quiet fury that most medical facilities in the country chose to keep their doors closed. “I was not happy that I had a scoop,” said the photographer, who asked that their name not be used in order to protect their ability and their employer’s ability to continue to work inside hospitals. “I was not happy that I had exclusive access. I felt that all my colleagues should have had the same access I had. … The dearth of images of death and dying directly contributed to the disinformation [about Covid-19] and the ongoing disbelief in our country, full stop. And the hospitals have to answer for that. The hospitals bear some responsibility.”



A Covid-19 patient lays in bed in the intensive care unit of Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago, Ill., on April 22, 2020.
Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters


THE WAR METAPHOR sheds light on why 300,000 coronavirus deaths have elicited a shallower national response than the loss of life in previous catastrophes. Domestic opposition to the war in Vietnam was shaped by imagery of U.S. soldiers as well as Vietnamese civilians in agonizing moments of injury or death. Americans were horrified to see the true face of war. Having learned its lesson, the U.S. government suppressed imagery of American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan: The embed program aimed at preventing journalists from roaming around battlefields on their own, taking pictures of whatever they wanted.

Eerily, the embed guidelines used by the Pentagon included a prior-consent clause similar to what HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, demands. The guidelines prohibited war journalists from publishing pictures or videos of wounded soldiers unless they had prior written permission from the soldiers (a practical impossibility on the battlefield): “Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without service member’s prior written consent.” The guidelines also enforced a ban on photography of the dead: “Images clearly identifying individuals ‘killed in action’ will not be released.”

The unifying principle between repressing photography of a war and photography of a pandemic is that a population that cannot see human carnage will not object as strongly to its perpetuation and will not care as much about the incompetence that brought it on. Hospitals and nursing homes may not have the mendacious intent of the U.S. military, but their actions have a similar effect of making it nearly impossible for ordinary Americans to be confronted with visual evidence of the true cost of the calamity that’s unfolding.

The Intercept reached out to a number of hospitals to ask about their media polices, including Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, Mount Sinai in New York City, and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The only one that responded was Massachusetts General in Boston, which provided the following statement:


MGH has been restricting outside photographers from working in areas of the hospital where staff care for COVID patients. This is for both for the privacy of our patients and also their safety and that of our staff. Throughout the pandemic, the hospital has taken careful steps to minimize the amount of people coming to campus to ensure that only those essential for patient care and hospital operations are working in the building. While we recognize the importance of telling the story of how this pandemic has affected our patients and staff, our top priorities must always be privacy and safety. Our team has taken additional steps to make our experts, caregivers and consenting patients available to journalists remotely, as well as images and videos captured by our staff photographers.

As the daily death toll reaches shocking new highs, there continues to be relatively little photography of patients in hospitals. The Intercept reviewed the front pages of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times for the past month and found no photos of hospital patients on all but a few days. When there is photography from inside hospitals, it is almost always of doctors and nurses. The pandemic certainly gets its share of visual coverage, but the pictures tend to be surrogates of suffering, such as people wearing masks as they wait for Covid-19 tests or go about their daily routines. Because it doesn’t happen often, when a powerful photo from inside a hospital happens to emerge — such as Go Nakamura’s photo of a doctor embracing a Covid-19 patient last month — it gets an enormous amount of attention.

Dr. Joseph Varon hugs a patient in the Covid-19 intensive care unit during Thanksgiving at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston on Nov. 26, 2020.
Photo: Go Nakamura/Getty Images

“Events on this scale are understood through abstractions, which is necessary and likely helpful in terms of psychological defenses, but also results in a disconnect between people who experience it firsthand, and those who do not,” noted Dr. Elizabeth May, a psychiatry resident at a hospital in New York City. “As a physician, I wish that those close to me could really picture and see what I have seen, that I could know that they have seen this, and not feel like I need to protect their abstractions when what I really need is their support and empathy.”

Willingly or not, some hospitals have turned themselves into apparatuses of silence — and staff inside them are upset.

In April, when the first surge of the pandemic decimated New York City, a nurse at Lincoln Hospital shared video footage of herself and other staff describing the difficulty of treating Covid-19 patients without adequate protective gear or lifesaving supplies. The video was published by The Intercept, and shortly afterward, the nurse, Lillian Udel, was informed by the hospital that she was being investigated for HIPAA violations. That prompted another nurse at the hospital, Kelley Cabrera, to speak out. “HIPAA is kind of being used to gag people,” she told The Intercept’s Akela Lacy. “We’re all experiencing the most difficult working conditions we’ve ever faced. And everybody who is speaking out is doing so to advocate for patients, ultimately. It looks like hospital administrations tend to run to HIPAA for their protection, not so much patient protection.”

May, the psychiatry resident, noted how some hospitals, even in a pandemic, are reluctant to show what happens behind their doors.

“Hospitals, as businesses, as profit-driven entities, do not want to be associated with death and suffering — it is very off-brand for them, I think,” said May. “So emerges an unfortunate dovetailing of HIPAA as a safeguard for civil rights and HIPAA as a vehicle for hiding off-brand aspects of medicine. … As a psychiatrist, I find myself thinking about shame and what role institutional shame has to play in the hiding of death and suffering.”

Dr. Elisabeth Poorman, a physician in Seattle, was particularly blunt on social media. “Americans do not respond to statistics,” she wrote on Twitter in June. “They respond to stories. Every hospital needs to let cameras in and show what dying of Covid looks like. Instead, PR depts silence us.” Responding to a commenter who said HIPAA was silencing the hospitals, Poorman shot back, “No, HIPAA is the excuse.” Earlier this month she told The Intercept, “I don’t really see things changing, because people don’t want to think creatively about this.”

Patient Michael Wright lies in bed in the prone position to increase oxygenation while in the intensive care unit at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., on Nov. 19, 2020.
Photo: Leila Navidi/Star Tribune/Getty Images

WHEN HIPAA WAS passed in 1996, the law did not include media guidelines. That changed after hospitals, seeking to increase their profiles and their revenues, opened their doors to reality TV shows. In 2012, one of those shows, “NY Med,” which starred Dr. Mehmet Oz, broadcasted an episode that featured a blurred-out patient in the emergency room who had been hit by a sanitation truck. The patient died, and when the episode aired, his widow happened to be watching and recognized her late husband’s voice. She was shocked. Neither she nor anyone in her family had given permission for her husband’s last moments to be filmed.

Four years later, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital agreed to pay a $2.2 million fine. HHS also announced strict new guidelines that required, before journalists could enter any patient area, “prior written authorization from each individual who is or will be in the area or whose PHI [protected health information] otherwise will be accessible to the media.” These guidelines in 2016 spelled the end of reality TV shows about hospitals and unfortunately turned them into no-go zones for reporters who, unlike reality TV crews, could be trusted to behave responsibly.

Read Our Complete CoverageThe Coronavirus Crisis


Severino, choosing to reinforce rather than relax the 2016 guidelines, was unequivocal in May. “The Covid-19 public health emergency does not alter the HIPAA Privacy Rule’s existing restrictions on disclosures of protected health information (PHI) to the media,” his guidelines stated. “As explained in prior guidance, HIPAA does not permit covered health care providers to give the media, including film crews, access to any areas of their facilities where patients’ PHI will be accessible in any form (e.g. written, electronic, oral, or other visual or audio form) without first obtaining a written HIPAA authorization form from each patient whose PHI would be accessible to the media.” (The italics are in Severino’s guidance.)

Severino declined an interview request from The Intercept, but his office released a short statement in his name that said his decision to relax some HIPAA guidelines “can help save lives during the pandemic.” His statement justified the reinforced media restrictions by saying that “hospitals allowing camera crews to film Covid-19 patients in distress without their permission is a breach of trust that violates patients’ privacy rights.” But this ignores the fact that the lessons of 2012 have been learned; nobody is proposing to broadcast videos or photos of non-consenting patients. In essence, Severino is all but barring journalists from hospitals because he says they will do something that they pledge they will not do and that hospitals would not permit them to do.

Adam Greene, an expert on HIPAA and a partner at the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, said it comes down to the amount of legal risk a hospital is willing to assume and the amount of time it is willing to devote to figuring that out. A hospital has to wade through a lot of regulatory questions before deciding to let a journalist inside, and that means tapping into legal resources that might be scarce or expensive. And if a decision is made to grant access, there’s always a chance that something could go wrong and a privacy breach could happen. “When you look at the incentives for hospitals, it is much easier to decline the request and avoid any risk of penalty,” Greene said. “There is not much in it for them to spend the time and resources to navigate HIPAA to find a way to do this.”