Posted on 09/25/2008 5:20:56 PM PDT by Zakeet
The two mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — seized by the government September 7 before they went completely bankrupt, at a potential cost to taxpayers of more than $25 billion — have been in obvious trouble for much of the past five years — with criminal investigations, accounting scandals, firings, resignations, huge losses and warnings from the Federal Reserve that their huge portfolio of mortgage securities posed a risk to the overall financial system.
But prior to this year, the watchdogs at ABC, CBS and NBC found time for only 10 stories on the financial health and management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A review of the three networks’ morning and evening news programs from January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2007 found nine anchor-read items or brief references to the companies troubles, plus one in-depth report by CBS’s Anthony Mason on the May 23, 2006 Evening News, after Fannie Mae was fined $400 million for accounting fraud.
It’s not that the networks eschew business news. A 2005 report from the MRC’s Business and Media Institute found heavy coverage of the scandal surrounding Enron, but no interest in the growing scandal surrounding Fannie Mae: “A LexisNexis search of ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN on the term ‘Enron’ from the nine months around when the story first broke – Oct. 1, 2001, to July 1, 2002, produced 3,017 hits....A similar LexisNexis search was performed for the term ‘Fannie Mae’ for those same media, from June 1, 2004, to March 1, 2005, again during the time the story was breaking. This search discovered a paltry 37 matches.”
But the networks should (presumably) be more interested in monitoring these mortgage behemoths, since they’re not normal private companies but rather Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) chartered by Congress to promote the specific cause of promoting home ownership. This special status, along with the presumption that taxpayers would bail out the firms if they got into trouble, amounts to an implicit federal subsidy that the Federal Reserve in 2003 calculated was worth between $119 and $164 billion a year.
Article continues HERE.
ABC, CBS and NBC News -- sterling examples of broadcast journalism excellence.
>>The two mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — seized by the government September 7 before they went completely bankrupt, at a potential cost to taxpayers of more than $25 billion — have been in obvious trouble for much of the past five years<<
Like $25 billion is on the list of our top ten problems at this point....
But seriously, Fannie and Freddie are gonna cost a whole lot more than that before its over... and the Bush administration tried to reform them and the Dems killed it.
Whooooose dese people?? Dem dere WallStreet Eagle-eyed Newspaper peoples?
Where were they supposed to get the time to report this?
They were too busy actively avoiding the John Edwards adultery story.
question: are democrat scu&bags more like scu&bags than mainstream media scu&bags or is it vice-versa? or, are they more like low-life swine than scu&bags? or, maybe badly toilet trained, ill-mannered, puerile, psychopathic, adolescent, lying, thieving scum?
the choices are very difficult.
IMHO
Just curious. Do you think its important that the media investigate accusations of infidelity by Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates?
I think it is important to fairly and even handedly investigate and report any significant act or action that relates to honesty and trust of a candidate.
Especially so because candidates today are prone to use their families to portray themselves as loyal and loving parents and spouses as proof of their integrity, ethics, morality and honesty.
John Edwards is a good case in point as he used his wife and family to sell himself in that way and, even more, his wife herself actively promoted him in rallies and campaign appearances of her own, knowing he and she both were lying to us.
But I don’t think we need the voyeristic details.
It is important to know a man who tries to sell himself as someone we can trust cannot, in fact, be trusted.
It is not important to have the DNA analysis of the motel sheets.
At the time Edwards was running for the Presidential nomination the media purposly ignored reports of his infidelity.
After he dropped out of the primaries we were told the media avoided investigation because it would have been a violation of his privacy as he was no longer a candidate.
But at that time he was still reported to be on the short list for VP, had not renounced further pusuit of political office, and seemed likely to be a candidate again sometime in the future.
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