For those of you who are not complete geeks, WV Public Radio has been doing a very good series recently on the VA hospital in Beckley. (See the WVPR News page, but go quickly as the articles probably won’t stay up long.)

Apparently Senator Rockefeller has been complaining about the VA facility in Beckley for some time, but it was only with the the revelations of what was happening at Walter Reed that people have started to pay attention.

A brief synopsis is that the VA facility on Beckley cannot keep doctors, and Senator Rockefeller believes that these problems are due to the administration at the hospital.

The hospital administration, of course, denies that there is a problem.

I do take issue with one thing that was brought up by the reporters–they were kicked off hospital property by security, who claimed that reporters were not allowed on federal property. (I think that is correct.)

Okay, I understand that reporters should check out these places, to make sure that patients are being treated correctly. But. This isn’t just federal property. This is a medical facility. Patients have privacy rights, and I am not certain that bringing a TV camera (and my understanding was that she had video recording equipment in addition to audio recording equipment) into a medical facility meets with those privacy standards. How can you guarantee that you are not accidentally getting someone on camera who does not want to be on camera?

I don’t know.

And let me make it clear that I very much appreciate the work that WVPR is putting into researching this issue, but I can also understand why video equipment could be a problem.

So, I hope that bringing this issue to light helps veterans. And I think making the public aware of the care our veterans are receiving should be a priority for all news organizations. But I don’t think that bringing to light these problems should trump a veteran’s right to privacy.