When
Sad news but not surprising, especially given the city’s
$3.5 billion in pension obligations that the network went on to describe. But
it was certainly news to network reporters. In the past year, ABC, CBS and NBC
had only mentioned
Journalists did find time to cover pension issues that fit
the liberal agenda. The networks reported on pension funds working against the
gun industry four times as much as the imminent collapse of Detroit. ABC’s
“World News with Diane Sawyer” on
CBS did three separate reports on the pension industry and guns. One ironically highlighted Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s push to limit that city’s pension investments in guns. The story didn’t question Chicago’s “$36 billion retirement-fund deficit.” That deficit has since led to Moody’s downgrading the city’s bond rating three steps.
A Dec. 19, 2012, CBS “This Morning” story went into detail about Cerberus pulling its investment from Bushmaster Firearms. During the report, co-host Gayle King did her best to make the pension investment in guns sound ominous. “Well, we know it’s big business. Listen, there’s more gun stores than McDonald’s, more gun stores than supermarkets. That says something.” CBS couldn’t even decide how much Cerberus had invested in Bushmaster, claiming it was “$600 million” on the evening news Dec. 18 and “$750 million” the very next morning.
Only the
Had journalists been less focused on spinning the pension debate toward a political issue, they might have noticed that a 700,000-person city was in desperate financial trouble and so were its pensions.
Apparently, network journalists weren’t even reading The New
York Times. The Gray Lady underlined how awful the fiscal “crisis” was
in
All three networks have focused heavily on Detroit’s pension
fiasco now that the city has filed for bankruptcy. NBC’s John Yang summed up
the problem nicely on the
Network journalists have taken a decidedly anti-gun stance, highlighted by the coverage following the Newtown, Conn., shooting. Between Dec. 14, 2012, and Feb. 22, 2013, the evening news shows on all three networks attacked the gun industry and gun businesses three times as often as they defended them.