The corporate lobbyists who want to pass the Simpson Bowles plan to lower the corporate tax rate and cut Social Security and Medicare benefits have far too many allies in Washington. But they also have found a powerful ally on TV: the network CNBC.
The station has given repeated positive coverage to the plan, and frequently features corporate CEOs to praise its features. Here’s one measure of just how skewed CNBC’s priorities have become.
I ran a media search on the term “poverty” during all of CNBC’s coverage during the past month. The term was mentioned 31 times, often in the context of international poverty (for example, talking about Mexico’s drug war). I then searched for “Simpson Bowles.” It was mentioned a whopping 116 times — almost 3 times as often.
CNBC is even more tilted than the traditionally right-wing Fox News. On Fox, Simpson Bowles was mentioned 59 times, and poverty was mentioned 100 times over the same period.
Out of all major cable news networks, MSNBC did the best in balancing out mentions of Simpson Bowles (70) with mentions of poverty (124). CNN had 72 mentions of the former and 111 of the latter.
Recall that CNBC stands for “Consumer News and Business Channel.” With its embrace of Simpson Bowles and its downplaying of the concerns of ordinary consumers — like poverty — it is failing to live up to its title, and is slowly simply becoming a channel of Big Business.
What is really disturbing is that progressive media today doesn’t do any better. At most, there will be the habitual call for job creation as the (sole) solution to poverty — the same call we’ve been hearing for over 30 yrs. How do you get a job when you no longer have a home address, phone, clean clothes, bus fare? You can’t buy a loaf of bread with promises of job creation.Beyond this, we ignore poverty, so we can’t have a legitimate discussion about US economic issues. (Consider the apparent middle class support for mandatory workfare, a super-cheap replacement workforce nudging out those still being paid middle class wages.)
“CNBS” is a joke. At any time of day, their viewership is around 92,000 (out of a country if 325,000,000+ million people) and falling. Of the 92,000, many are in brokerage firms and lunch time restaurants with the sound muted.
In the morning, the annoying Joe Kernan could not be any more rude to the rare Progressive Pol or guest that dares not tow the pro big business line. They feature Jim Cramer who is an utter joke. Tea Party “founder” Rick Santelli can always be relied upon for screaming histrionics where he blames the O administration fir all financial ills since the dawn if time.
I’m sure the final straw for most fair-minded viewers is the constant interviews with “expert” scum Jud Gregg. The ex “moderate” US Senator who waited about 5 minutes after his final Senatorial term to go join Goldman Suchs. The sight of him makes me ill.