Z on TV: Go to C-SPAN radio for the hard truth on health care - Sun critic David Zurawik writes about the business, culture and craziness of television - baltimoresun.com

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by David Zurawik
In August, I wrote about C-SPAN's telecast of a town hall meeting in Virginia as one of TV's best moments of health care coverage. Amid all the confusion, here was one program that showed the warfare up close and personal and offered you the chance to get up from the TV set smarter than when you sat down. Read it here.

I didn't think C-SPAN could do much better than that, but last week it did with overrnight radio broadcasts of the Senate Finance Committee Mark-Up sessions. They started at 11 p.m., and ran almost all night. They are replays of broadcasts on C-SPAN radio, WCSP-FM (90.1), that aired during the day, and they will resume this coming week when the committee goes back to work on the legislation it is drafting.

What a fabulous inside look at the manuevering, compromising, character and politicking of the handful of men and women who to large extent are deciding the shape and scope of health care reform (or non-reform) for the nation by nature of the bill they will send to the floor of the Senate. I learned more in two nights of lying awake and listening than I did in two months of watching TV coverage of President Obama's smile-for-the-camera super-spin and oppositional "Death Panels" counter-spin. Finally, with C-SPAN radio, some clarity!
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