Pension Crisis: Networks Targeted Gun Investments 4 Times More Than Detroit Before Bankruptcy

When Detroit
declared bankruptcy in June, broadcasters acted like it was a shocking turn of
events. NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams told the “sad news from Detroit, the
largest U.S. city
to file for bankruptcy.” CBS’s Mark Strassman explained the scope of the city’s
problem with $18 billlion in debt and “city workers owed $9 billion.”

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 Detroit’s
pension problem once – in 24 different stories about the pension industry from Aug. 1, 2012, to July 31, 2013.

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 Dec.
18, 2012, made sure that the issue of pensions was
hyperbolically linked to gun control. “With
each body buried, calls for change,” Chris Cuomo dramatically
began the report. He then told viewers how investment managers at Cerberus
Capital Management had announced they were selling their stake in the gun
manufacturer Bushmaster Firearms.

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 May 13,
2013, CBS
“This Morning” gave any indication that things looked bad for Detroit’s pension system and its pensioners.
That brief told of a “new report” that “paints a grim picture of the city’s
finances” and “doubts about the financial health of its pension funds.” That
was it.

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 Detroit on March 12, 2013, and
what that might mean for pensions. “This city was already sinking under
hundreds of millions of dollars in bills that it could not pay when a municipal
auditor brought in a veteran financial consultant to dig through the books. A
seasoned turnaround man and former actuary with Ford Motor Co., he was stunned
by what he found: an additional $7.2 billion
in retiree health costs that had never been reported, or even tallied up,” the
paper reported.

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 July
22, 2013, “Nightly News” by saying Detroit might
be the first of many cities in such straits. “According to the Pew
Research Center, 34 states have pension fund shortfalls of at least 20
percent. The worst, Illinois, which has less than half what it needs,”
he said.

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.

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