What Is Wrong With Local And National News Media?

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What Is Wrong With Local And National News Media?

posted October 23, 2008

As a Libertarian I have sat back in the past few months and taken a hard look at the news media. The bias being shown rivals that of a country with a single party. It is much like the Russian news or that in China, where a single slanted viewpoint is taken on every topic.

(snip)

What I am referring to is the local and national news media. I am talking about the local news outlets in Chattanooga. I am talking about the big three, ABC, NBC, and CBS. From the sidelines I have noticed an attack on the conservative candidate by this group that has never been seen. Has any one candidate ever gone through a campaign with so many issues not even being mentioned? As a former journalism student, I quickly learned that you do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

The housing crisis was not created by the Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans. What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay. The goal of this rule change was to help the poor, which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house, along with their credit rating. They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, led by John McCain tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them. Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. Who were the top two recipients, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama.

Is there not a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce the Times Free Press tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending? If these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain or Sarah Palin as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed. And they had been warned. Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury. These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was the Republican Party.

There is more. When Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, the press; from the smallest newspaper to the largest news channel; did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, everyone criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout.

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame? Now let's follow the money, right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing. If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was. But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice, you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

If you who produce our local news at WRCB, WTVC, WDEF, WDSI, WGOW, Chattanooga Times Free Press and others actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama. (snip)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

As journalists, your job is to tell the truth. But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie, that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth; even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate or makes you seem a little less glamorous.

You ask why would I do that? Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naiveté time after time - and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing. He appears to be "untouchable".

Meanwhile, you have participated in the constant bashing of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter - while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months. You have ignored the gaffs of Joe Biden, and that fact that he says we will have an immediate conflict or that he thinks a three letter word is J-O-B-S. You have decided to ignore Mr. Obama not coming up with a valid birth certificate, or disclosing school records and other items covering up his past. You have hidden Obama's ties to Acorn, and the large donation his campaign made to the organization recently in the amount of $800,000. You have also covered up his breaking of ethics violations while in the Illinois state government, by accepting speaking fees totaling $50,000 that he claimed on his income taxes.

(snip)

Then you will disclose them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door. You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion. If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats - including Barack Obama, and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans - then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper and honest news in our fine city.

Scott Callahan

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_137605.asp

Who tricked these people? Politicians?

I don't know why anyone would want to enslave the American people with debt.