After nearly three decades of watching this sector, I’m still astounded by two bizarre aspects of general media coverage.

The first, frankly, is how blasé many operators are about the constant flow of negative stories. It’s the rare headline that elicits a collective response from this sector.

As for why that is, I think there may be several explanations.

One is that many operators are of the mindset that their particular chain/facility is doing just fine, thank you very much. There may be rascals and incompetents elsewhere in the field, but not on my ship. If a media report lights one of those other guys up every now and then, so be it.

Other operators have so much disdain for the motives and abilities of media outlets, they have taken on a sort of “so-what-else-is new?” mindset. Should anything better be expected from incompetents with a hate-filled agenda?

Still other operators are a bit more philosophical. They realize that in a business as large and fraught with peril as long-term care, bad things are occasionally going to happen. Some of it will take the form of unfortunate accidents or cruel acts of fate. Some of it will be the result of operators not making quality care their top priority. There have always been bad things happening in this sector, and there always will be. That’s the way it goes.

So for whatever the reason — and perhaps there are others as well — this field does not generally deal with bad news with much of a reaction. Or for that matter, stealth.

Which brings me to the second amazing thing about media coverage of this field: how consistently unfavorable it tends to be.

One could say that’s the result of skilled care being such a high-risk business where bad things happen. And that is undeniably true.

But it’s also true that a lot of people die in hospitals each day. Many patients are misdiagnosed, have wrong limbs amputated, get the wrong medicine or get carved up by surgeons who shouldn’t be allowed to touch a butter knife, much less a scalpel. But it’s not like Google is full of stories blasting hospitals and the bad things that frequently happen inside them. The reality is quite the opposite. Overall, hospitals are regularly treated as great places where miracles happen. Do skilled care operators get anything resembling a similar benefit of the doubt? As a general rule, no.

One obvious solution here is for skilled care operators to step up their PR efforts and care delivery. And to be sure, those things will help and are advisable.

But the problem seems to run a bit deeper. Old prejudices usually die only when their holders expire. And there are still a lot of people in this country who rightly or wrongly believe skilled care is a flawed business.

We can deny the credibility of their assumptions, but there’s no denying that such folks are out there in large numbers.

It appears we are going to keep seeing negative coverage about skilled care in various media outlets. As an editor once told me, it’s not like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s like shooting fish in a drained barrel.

It also appears that many in this sector will continue reacting to such coverage with a shrug of the shoulders, as if nothing can be done. And maybe they’re right.

John O’Connor is McKnight’s Editorial Director.