"It's déjà vu all over again"

Julie Rovner, health policy correspondent for NPR, tackles the debate over health-care reform with a segment looking at the use of scare tactics during past attempts to change the system.

Says [Jonathan Oberlander, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina], "The opponents have changed over time; the tactic of relying on fear and scaring Americans has not."

As did Yogi Berra, Oberlander notes “it’s… déjà vu,” with fear playing a major role in defeating reform efforts in 1915 and in the 1940s and 1990s.

Today’s Tip: Research whether similar events happened before and how today’s news differs. Adding context aids reader understanding.

Matt Thompson created www.columbiatomorrow.com to provide context to the debate over development in Columbia, Mo., while a Reynolds Fellow at the University of Missouri. His post on www.newsless.org, “The 3 key parts of news stories you usually don’t get,” discusses how to grow audience “by making it easier for more people to understand the longstanding facts behind each story.”