On the heels of the lost opportunity
to generate a breaking news story
after last weeks hearing at the
House Veterans Affairs Committee
on Artificial Intelligence and claims
automation, it behooves the Associated
Press to appoint a permanently stationed
HEARING REPORTER at both the
House and Senate Veterans Affairs
Committees to sit in on every hearing
and provide news coverage on any
testimony that comes out of the same.

Permanent "court reporters" are stationed
at all courts to provide the publishing
side of trial cases, so it stands
to reason that a Hearing Reporter on
Capitol Hill would be just as well
suited for the occassion.

The gripping testimony of Veteran
John Roberts who almost single handedly
outted the entire VA claims system
in a single few minutes of appearance
last week at the Artificial Intelligence
review was probably, more than what
anybody in the room expected to get
for what started to be a technology
based discussion to solve some of
the problems faced by today's Veterans.

As a sidenote, those Veterans like
me who have been trapped in the system
for entire lifetimes are virtually
excluded from representation at any
of the House and Senate hearings as
their appears to be an ongoing effort
by Congress itself to downplay the
fact that the national VA disability
backlog was sitting at 300,000 BEFORE
the Iraq War started.

John Roberts could have easily generated
a headline story all by himself and
that alone held potential for several
"feature stories" in follow up thereafter.

A huge part of the crisis we are
faced with at the VA has to do with
the lazy and incompetent press almost
never getting it right in the news.
Perhaps 2 times a year a story actually
emerges that we would describe as
a home run.

Either the Washington Post or the
Associated Press needs to close it's
ranks and assign a permanently stationed
Hearing Reporter at both the House
and Senate Veterans Affairs Committee
and bring an end to the Hit-And-Miss
reporting that we now have where
only those reporters who are specificially
called in for only specific stories
to do any kind of news coverage at
all on Capitol Hill.

Both Committee's have their entire
Hearing Schedule and calendars posted
on their official websites so there
is no valid excuse for reporters to
NOT be covering these nationally
compelling hearings for Veterans.