Media Fail
Remember Tiger Woods and his many sordid affairs? The media ate that up. It only took two weeks for our media sources to have “investigated,” found him guilty and hung him out to dry. Meanwhile, it has taken months for the media to “officially” report that former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards had a child out of wedlock, denied it…and did both while a major candidate in the 2008 race. Too, remember that it was the National Enquirer that broke the Edwards story wide open. The NATIONAL ENQUIRER. Not The New York Times, which had this profile about Cindy McCain in 2008, or the Washington Post, which had a front-page story about Governor McDonnell’s thesis from two decades or even Drudge, which only last week had a picture of Senate Majority Reid (D-NV) and a story about his alleged facelift as the leading story.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- our professional media has failed us. However, in the age of the Internet, we have zero excuses. Let’s hold the professional media responsible by using the free market choices we have via the Internet, TV, newspapers, radio and magazines to show them Michael Jackson, facelifts, the Balloon Boy and other non-stories won’t cut it anymore.
Big News of the day or BIGGEST News of the day?
Read the article below and let me know what you think in the comments section:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. taxpayer profits from bank bailout investments are being offset by estimated losses from American International Group and automakers and mortgage payment cuts for struggling homeowners, a U.S. Treasury report showed on Monday.
The Treasury estimated net losses on its $700 billion bailout program at $68.5 billion for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2009.
The December report for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, showed that the fiscal 2009 net loss included estimated losses of $30.4 billion for AIG and $30.4 billion for automakers, with $27.1 billion in losses from the Home Affordable Modification Program.
These were much larger than a $15 billion profit registered from the Capital Purchase Program for banks and $4.4 billion in profits from other bank investments, asset guarantee and lending programs.
A senior Treasury official said the bank investments will ultimately produce a positive return for taxpayers. But the department was not yet ready to update its estimate of the final taxpayer costs for the bailouts.
The official said the Treasury would update its cost estimates on a quarterly basis as the bailout program shifts its focus toward small business lending and housing relief in its final 10 months of operation.
The Treasury in November said TARP’s ultimate cost estimate had been reduced to about $141 billion from $341 billion earlier in the year. Further reductions in the final cost estimate could aid the Obama administration as it faces pressure to produce a new budget that starts to show deficit reductions.
(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Unfortunately, this story was not the lead anywhere today, though Fox did have a related one on their top three stories. Drudge’s lead story today is about Scott Brown, the candidate for former Senator Kennedy’s seat (okay, that one’s fairly important). Yesterday, he had an accusation that Senator Reid (D-NV) had a facelift or something. Drudge did have this story, but buried several stories down. Meanwhile, cable news is failing as badly as usual to provide important news. Fox has the “tell-all” story about Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) as their lead story, and CNN has David Frum’s newest column as theirs. MSNBC actually has the most important lead story of the three, with an article about the death of an Iranian opposition leader. ABC is also not doing their job, with a massive lead story about President Obama allegedly playing favorites regarding the race card.
Once again, I’ll ask Americans to look at the important news. Who really cares if Sarah Palin is on Fox? Is anyone surprised? Reid has said two racial statements in recent weeks. Why are we letting our elected officials waste our taxpayer money over his comments? (Note- every time they go after or defend Reid instead of doing their job they are wasting taxpayer money.) We are losing billions of dollars to corrupt government, business and other officials and executives…and we care about something stupid Reid said or the common-sense career move of Sarah Palin? Give me a break. Let’s worry about the troops dying overseas, our sovereignty, the education of our youth and the other critical issues facing this country. Our mainstream/professional media certainly won’t do it, obviously, but in the age of the Internet and other technologies, we the people have no excuse.
