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CNN's Factcheck Failure on Occupy Wall Street
Former CNBC reporter Erin Burnett's CNN show OutFront debuted Monday night (10/3/11) with a failed attempt to factcheck the Occupy Wall Street protests.
CNN's Erin Burnett worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup before becoming a corporate business news reader. Last week she announced her engagement to Citigroup executive David Rubulotta, a managing director in high-yield sales. CNN's executives hope that Burnett's new show will help with CNN prime time's flagging ratings. The show kicked off with Burnett explaining that she:
...went to Wall Street today to see those protests for myself. I saw dancing, bongo drums, even a clown.... I asked several protesters what it was that they wanted. Now, they did not know.... They did know what they don't want.
Burnett added that "it seems like people want a messiah leader, just like they did when they anointed Barack Obama."
That segued into an interview with center-right CNN pundit John Avlon, a former speechwriter for Republican Rudolph Giuliani. Avlon dismissed the protests ("It's tough to get your demands taken seriously dressed when you're dressed as a zombie"), adding that "conservative populism has always played a major role in American politics. Liberal populist marches like this tend to alienate more people than they attract."
After that discussion, Burnett attempted to set the protesters straight on the facts. As she put it: "What are they protesting? Nobody seems to know. So, this afternoon, we went to Wall Street to find out."
Burnett quizzed one protester: "So do you know that taxpayers actually made money on the Wall Street bailout?" When he says that he was unaware of this, Burnett insists it is true -- and goes on to argue that it basically negates the whole point of the protest:
That's all it would take to put an end to the unrest? Well, as promised, we did go double-check the numbers on the bank bailout, and this is what we found. Yes, the bank bailouts made money for American taxpayers, right now to the tune of $10 billion, anticipated that it will be $20 billion. Those are seriously the numbers. This was the big issue, so we solved it.
The TARP program is not, in fact, the "big issue" of the Occupy Wall Street movement; the concerns about inequality and lack of democracy go far deeper than that. When the Wall Street bailouts are discussed by protesters, the point they seem to be making about it is that banks benefited from generous bailouts that the vast majority of Americans would never enjoy. (As one popular chant puts it: "Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!")
And the fact that the loans were repaid does not mean that they were not a subsidy to the banking industry. How much would it have cost the banks to get the money they needed to survive from private sources? The difference between those terms and what the government actually charged was a gift to the bankers--one that will never be paid back.
The assumption that society as a whole benefited from helping out the banks is debatable, though you rarely if ever see it debated in corporate media (Extra!, 10/10). As economist Dean Baker wrote (9/20/10):
We are also supposed to feel good that the vast majority of the TARP money was repaid. This is another effort to prey on the public's ignorance. Had it not been for the bailout, most of the major center banks would have been wiped out. This would have destroyed the fortunes of their shareholders, many of their creditors, and their top executives. This would have been a massive redistribution to the rest of society--their loss is our gain.
And the Wall Street bailouts are about far more than TARP. As Bloomberg News recently reported (8/22/11), Federal Reserve lending programs to the banking industry topped $1.2 trillion.
These government policies went a long way towards protecting the interests of Wall Street giants. Working people got very little, and the unemployment and foreclosure crises continue to wreak considerable damage on the economy. This is why people are protesting.
The economists and analysts who have criticized these policies could explain this to Erin Burnett's audience. MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, for instance, interviewed Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz last night (10/3/11) after he made an appearance at the protests.
Burnett used to work for the same financial companies that profited from the bailouts--Goldman Sachs, Citigroup--and she is engaged to be married to a Citigroup executive (Business Insider, 9/30/11). Burnett's journalistic career includes plenty of attempts to promote Wall Street interests, earning her praise from the likes of Rush Limbaugh (FAIR Blog, 10/3/11). She even tried to defend Wall Street giants from criticism over using TARP funds to pay giant bonuses (FAIR Blog, 2/3/09).
If CNN is interested in factchecking claims about Wall Street, they might want to start by taking a look at those made by their new host. At the very least, the show should invite the economists and policy experts who could set the record straight.
ACTION:
Please tell CNN's OutFront that Erin Burnett's factcheck of Occupy Wall Street needs factchecking.
CONTACT:
CNN OutFront
Comment Form:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/show/?s=erinburnettoutfront&hdln=2
You can also send your comments to the show on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/OutFrontCNN
And on Twitter:
@ErinBurnettCNN
@OutFrontCNN
Please post a copy of your letter on the FAIR Blog.
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70 Comments so far
Show All"Burnett used to work for the same financial companies that profited from the bailouts--Goldman Sachs, Citigroup--and she is engaged to be married to a Citigroup executive (Business Insider, 9/30/11). Burnett's journalistic career includes plenty of attempts to promote Wall Street interests, earning her praise from the likes of Rush Limbaugh (FAIR Blog, 10/3/11). She even tried to defend Wall Street giants from criticism over using TARP funds to pay giant bonuses (FAIR Blog, 2/3/09)."
Kind of explains her biasis doesn't it? Perhaps she'd like to explain why taxpayer money was used to buy "toxic assets" and phony ":commercial paper"? How Wall St. profitted more than those that bailed them out.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/04/business/20090205-bailout-totals-graphic.htmlm
Not sure why how anyone is dressed plays into that? Except bullies always love to deride their targets first, before they proceed to victimize them.
We made 10 million on a 2.5 trillion dollar bailout, how much did Goldman Sach's and the other companies that were bailed out make? Enough to issue bonuses while the rest us face "audsterity" and "entitlement" cuts. And we are committed to 12.5 trillion to make sure these fat cats don't fail. Ask yourselves why?
I think these nascent occupying demonstrations go way beyond "howling in the wind" and do represent an amalgamation of many ethnic, religious, cultural, economic, environmental and political movements. Take a look at Michael Moore’s recent interviews on 'Democracy Now' for more insight and discussion.
We are the 99% and have the advantage of instant audio, graphic and video communication. Now remember what the mostly uneducated, isolated and much-maligned American farmers accomplished in the late 1700's, in what is called Shays Rebellion, even without our instant communication. They revolted against economic unfairness in what has been called the second Revolutionary War. It's worth researching the remarkable parallel of the post-revolutionary Shay's Rebellion to today’s class warfare struggles. Many of these simple farmers were Revolutionary War soldiers who were told that they were fighting for economic and social justice and then after the War discovered that they couldn’t pay their farm mortgages because they were never paid for their war efforts and some maintained that they were lied to about their farm mortgage payback terms. Though the farmer’s rebellion against the plutocracy of the Boston, Ma-based elitist bankers, merchants and lawyers, was defeated by a monied militia, it wasn’t long before the US Constitution was developed. Be inspired by what these farmers achieved when you tell the plutocracy that you are ”mad as hell and won’t take it anymore”.
I am inspired by the farmers, like I am inspired by the early unionist and dress workers, civil rights marchers, the peace marchers of the sixities, the environmentalists and the migrant workers of the seventies. I will never forget their sacrifices or allow my friends and famiy to forget them. Some may think that we will forget them for a vague promise that we might someday join the ranks of the rich and mighty. But I think we're smarter than that. We remember what we sacrificed and worked to protect.
Although TARP repayments may end up being no less than the amount loaned to the banks, it is a stretch to say the the US Gov. or taxpayers profitted from the TARP.
TARP loans required the borrowing banks to comply with a few token conditions that the banksters didn't like, so the US Treasury and Federal Reserve soon started handing out 0% interest/unconditional loans to the TARP recipients.
The TARP recipients quickly used the 0% interest/unconditional loans to pay back the TARP loans that came with token conditions.
The TARP funding has been so co-mingled with other corporate welfare programs that nobody can prove what the ultimate cost of the TARP to US taxpayers.
CNN and all the mainstream media is a cesspool of CIA, FBI, NSA, NRO and pentagon pro-war, anti-democracy newspeak. This bullshit is par for the course from them.
They are a sort of thermometer. You can tell how worried the predators-in-charge are by the media tone:
1) Ridicule - not too worried or concerned.
2) Lament that protesters are "misguided" - getting nervous about losing profits.
3) Indignant about protester "lack of patriotism" and "irresponsible citizenship" - profits are being hit hard.
4) "Warning" the American public that the protesters have been inflitrated by "radicals and terrorists that hate America for our freedoms" (subtext is that it is now officially unamerican to support the protesters) - economy is crashing and the political whores are going down so it's time to squash the "bugs".
5) Announcement that a "terrorist attack" by members of the protest group has killed "various needy orphans in a charitable foundation's premises" - lie like a bastard to demonize the protesters.
6) Announcement that anyone participating in the protests is subject to indefinite detainment (subtext is that it is now officially unamerican AND illegal to support the protesters) - all the fascist fangs come out.
A few seconds checking the MSM daily propaganda can tell you a lot if you know how to decode their propaganda.
whore (hôr, hr)
n.
A person considered as having compromised principles for personal gain.
I would say that pretty well sums up things quite well in Burnett's case.
If Burnett had the tiniest thread of decency she would say she couldn't report on these demonstrations due to a conflict of interest. Oh yea, and Liberal media my ass...
The corporate media is one big conflict of interest. A corporation that has a duty to earn profits can never be a legitimate news organization. The obligation to truth (journalism) and profits (corporations) are wholly incompatible.
This Burnett character should never be accused unfairly of being a journalist. I've been a journalist, I know real journalism. This woman is no journalist.
"The moral attitudes of dominant and privileged groups are characterised by universal self-deception and hypocrisy."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr ("Moral Man and Immoral Society")
Haven't seen the programme, but, you know, we're talking about TV. I'm pretty sure they spent time asking a few people and selected the least knowledgeable person as representative.
People's issues with Wall Street are pretty well documented and go far, far beyond TARP, but CNN and big TV in general are not forums that can be possibly engaged in meaningful discussion - they will always look for ways to discredit people and trivialise the issue and never ever engage in meaningful debate. It's not even worth trying, they're absolutely disingenuous and their approach is ill willed and will only abuse people.
Discrediting without really answering the real questions is what this is all about.
"It's tough to get your demands taken seriously dressed when you're dressed as a zombie"
WTF? But dress like a 1700's colonist or staple teabags to your hat and we will take you "oh, so seriously". Gimme a fuckin' break.
So true!
They don't really hire wind-up dolls like this one for the piercing analytical capabilities. Her purpose is to be "cute" in a business-like sort of way and be snarky and shallow, in order to reinforce complacent veiwers's resentments and prejudices. When the apparently successful eyeliner model on the screen seems to agree with you, you feel better about your ignorance.
CNN's execs think they can compete with Fox News by doing this kind of thing, which shouldn't surprise or shock anybody, but in a society with no memory, everything and nothing is new and everything and nothing is both shocking and utterly banal.
After occupying Wall St, maybe we should occupy CNN.
Why bother? I've haven't tuned in to CNN for at least five years. What would anyone accomplish by that? Draw attention to them? Not sure I want to do that.
I did the same thing as you. I got sick of looking at all of them..
Thomas Gilbert-
"Burnett added that "it seems like people want a messiah leader, just like they did when they anointed Barack Obama.""
And that explains why Wall St. hasn't been held accountable? What accounts for the fact that Wall St. has come out the big winner? I am thinking Barack lived up to his hype for them.
Obama has proven to be Wall Street's messiah. Soon after moving in to the White House, Obama pushed to get unilateral authority to approve future bank bailouts, with no approval of Congress required. Obama was disappointed when Congress shut him down on this one.
As if she couldn't guess and didn't have a clue.
Hey as long as the market is rallying and her class is thriving I guess she doesn't have a clue about the serfs in the 99%.
CNN has become so half-assed and right-wing in its attempt to lure away Faux News dupes that I'm surprised Ted Turner doesn't divest himself of any remaining stock in it and excoriate it once a month for kicks.
Here's the crux of CNN's sophistry against Occupy Wall Street: "Burnett used to work for the same financial companies that profited from the bailouts--Goldman Sachs, Citigroup--and she is engaged to be married to a Citigroup executive ..."
"The difference between those terms and what the government actually charged was a gift to the bankers--one that will never be paid back."
That is the really big question isn''t it?
"That segued into an interview with center-right CNN pundit John Avlon, a former speechwriter for Republican Rudolph Giuliani. Avlon dismissed the protests ("It's tough to get your demands taken seriously dressed when you're dressed as a zombie"), "
Was that Rudy's problem last election? He didn't know how to dress for success?
I watched Erin Burnett on her first show last night. She seemed to have a flippant attitude toward the protesters. This angered me and I will avoid her show from now on.
The actual bank bailouts amount to far more than the publicized 700 billion.
See: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/economy/the-true-cost-of-the-bank-bailout/3309/
"The actual bank bailouts amount to far more than the publicized 700 billion."
See: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/economy/the-true-cost-of-the-bank-bailout/3309/
Yes they do, don't they? Funny how our adminstrative and our legisative bodies never point that out.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/04/business/20090205-bailout-totals-graphic.html
No real secret why Wall St. issued bonuses, and the rest of us are facing austerity and cuts to things we paid into. "Entitlements"?, what's a bigger entitlement than the money that was funnelled into Wall St.?
You and I have been contributing for many years to fund OUR entitlements,
The Democrats and GOP continue taking our contributions and handing them over to corporations that have made no contributions. Bailouts cannot be called entitlements...they are just one more corporate welfare program.
Erin Burnett dissed the protestors as dressing like zombies. But check out her picture above - she looks like a zombie in an expensive dress. Seriously, CNN...
Wallstreet created a system of globally linked debt that NEEDED bailing out, and then acted aggressively to prevent the regulations needed to keep this from happening again. Its not the last TARP people are protesting. Its the next one.
1. Its trivially obvious that once the Fed made up a trillion dollars and gave the finance sector first crack at it (zero interest loans), that the TARP was going to be repaid. You could see that one coming from a mile away.
2. Obama dispatched Geithner to Europe the other week. Why? To make European Central Bankers pull a 'Bernanke' and make up trillions in euro to bailout Greek creditors. Or? Or the entire global finance system would once again be placed at risk!!
Again. Its not the last TARP people are protesting. Its the next one. Everyone knows that the system, as currently designed, will crash again. In the wonderful world of 'perverse incentives', it actually pays the banksters to run it that way (by taking money from everyone else: Disaster Capitalism at work).
"Burnett began her career as a financial analyst for Goldman Sachs[8] in their investment banking division, where she worked on mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Burnett
Says it all doesn't it? "Fact check" anyone?
Odd... the ruling elite can't find a 'nobody' so one of the employees from Goldman Sachs has to step up, go on the tube and attack OWS! Hilarious. It's getting to be a small world. On one side of the barricades, the 99 percent, on the other side, Goldman Sachs, the US government, and the corporate media...
Trouble has come to America. The Wall Street Occupiers got it right. Go to
the Source of the trouble. Wall Street is the mechanism that is used to fleece the bottom and insulate the top. Somebody, Anybody who understands that greed has corrupted our economic system and the catharsis we are beginning to experience will require the Spirit and Will of the Citizenry is a Patriot. Those who have the courage to face the powers that be are the seed of the real change that will be forged in America. Trouble has come, but "Trouble don't last always". We have entered the "night" of America, The Force inherent in the Wall Street protesters is attractive. I hope I live to see the "Morning".
FAIR sez: "Burnett used to work for the same financial companies that profited from the bailouts ..."
***
"used to"??
No. Still does.
Anybody who says "messiah leader" is an unschooled bozo. And it's more productive to put lipstick on a pig than to put eyeliner on stupid.
VERY good. Contrast US anchors to say those on Al Jazeera or even BBC and it becomes obvious that the USA is Mickey Mouse Land.
"It's tough to get your demands taken seriously dressed when you're dressed as a zombie"
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you, then you win," Gandhi.
yeah, but in Fox News America, it is not tough to get your demands addressed when you are dressed in a 3-cornered hat, plastered with tea bags, holding a plastic blunderbuss and a sign reading "govt hands off my medicare".
Erin Burnett is deceitful.----
I'm also upset at FAIR for not doing a better job of exposing her deceit.----
First, the banksters extorted the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Thus the accounting rules were changed so that securities on the bank's balance sheet did NOT have to marked to market. These virtually worthless assets are now, laughably, being valued at 100 cents on the dollar. If they were valued properly EVERY LARGE BANK WOULD BE INSOLVENT. None of these banks would be in existence today without these distorted accounting rules and their share price would be at zero. (Google William K. Black, who helped indict over 1,000 bankers during the S&L crisis.) -----
Second, much of the profits Erin Burnett claims came from using free Fed money to purchase U.S. Treasuries and pocketing the spread. How much money could you make if the Fed lent you $100 billion at .05% interest and you turned around and bought U.S. Treasuries paying 3%? When that spread isn't large enough for banker appetites they take the free Fed money overseas and buy other currencies taking advantage of discrepancies in the carry trade.-----
Third, the big banks and hedge funds have High Frequency Trading computers on the floor of the stock exchange. This privilege, along with legal immunity from insider trading, is how many of these banks recorded perfect quarters. That's right, they make money almost every trading day, an absolute impossibility. Some days they make profits of over $100 million dollars by sneaking and peaking at incoming orders (insider trading) and shaving a penny off the price on tens of millions of trades each day. Because their computers are closest to where the trades are executed this millisecond advantage guarantees them profitable trades. The public does not enjoy this privilege-----
All these activities, illegal and dishonest, come at the expense of the real economy. Money thrown into the wall street black hole to gamble on derivatives and the stock exchange is taken out of the productive economy. If you wonder why your checking or savings account is pay only .2% interest it's because that money is being used instead to bail out the banks who then engage in utterly destructive and useless gambling (producing the "profits" Erin Burnett claims). Additionally, if you wonder why the dollar is down 30% since 2000 it's due to the Fed's easy money for banskters policy.-----
Wall Street has NOT made any profits Mrs. Burnett. They've only produced pain and suffering and siphoned from the real economy.
Good post... please provide more sources next time so we can verify this and read more about it.
Get your points out to the media where you live to help fan the flames of the movement.
Mainstream media; they who own it get to select what is "news."
On some level, you have to admire Burnetts chutzpah. Consider that the most recent 'bail out' of WallStreet happened just last week. As happened in 2008, one small part of the global financial house of cards (Greece, this time) threatened to fall and take a lot of 'Too Big to Fail' banksters with them. So the solution is for the euro zone to make up a bunch of money, and take on a lot of public debt (aka leverage this disaster on MainStreet) so that the finance sector (aka WallStreet) can keep pretending its solvent. We literally sent 'our' treasury secretary to Europe to insist on the expansion in European public debt to support private bankers (and, of course, the all important stock market).
Here's a European take on the latest WallStreet 'bail out', which you'd never even know happened if you watched Burnetts show: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,789624,00.html
If Erin had bleached blond hair, she'd have been a candidate to be one of Bill
O' Reilly's 'muses' on Faux News.
She has about as much cred in economics and financial issues as any random Zombie she might chose to interview.
She had to talk to regular people on the street? Her friends must have been appalled. I hope she wasn't to terribly traumatized, poor thing!
So you've been watching Faux Noize, CNN, Ya-whoo ... and all you saw was a bunch of clueless freaks and pizza eaters, huh?
Big surprise, that.
Nurses know a lot more about what is coming down the road with healthcare and we should listen to them.
Scroll up and look at the photo of ~Erin Burnett~
When someone's mouth is wide open and their eyes are half closed, they are probably lying.
Yep.....It does look that way
Thomas Gilbert-
Then maybe when the camera lens' clicked she had just popped a fluffy?
"The assumption that society as a whole benefited from helping out the banks is debatable"
Not only debatable but easily refutable. While das kapitalists claim taxpayers are reaping a windfall with an "8.5% return" on the TARP bailout, much of the returns are based on projections which are not real (see TARP Bailout Payback: "Drop in the Bucket"). Even if the banksters really do pay back the munny, the damage is still done. First, the turmoil they created in the housing market and the wild speculation bonanza they unleashed on commodities, including energy, threw the financial and basic security of hundreds of millions upside down, and the bansters' reaction to the crisis they created added insult to injury. Not only did they resist re-regulation, they worked to further erode regulations after paying themselves record bonuses, and racking up record profits AFTER the bailouts. Further, the bailouts dilute the value of the people's productivity. Grotesquely unproductive mega-enterprises are kept on life support to continue their grotequely destructive agendas, to create yet another mega-crisis tomorrow, to further confuse/exploit/oppress/enslave the people!
Thanks for the good insights will use them in letter.
Erin Burnett is part of the Financial Aristocracy that is destroying America.