AIG, CNBC: Poster Demons for a Bigger Problem

by Tula Connell, Mar 17, 2009

It took awhile, but now the public is angry—reeaaalllly angry—over the economic wreckage Wall Street has wrought on our nation. Much of the outrage is directed toward AIG, the insurance giant that’s giving billions in taxpayer money in the form of bonuses to the same egregiously overpaid wretches who brought the company to its knees. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just revealed that AIG paid 73 employees bonuses of $1 million or more; 11 of whom are no longer there.

But the “messenger” also is getting its comeuppance, with questions now raised about why CNBC acted as cheerleader for major financial wizards even as they were summoning chaos in our financial markets.

At FixCNBC.com, you can sign an open letter to CNBC asking the financial news station to

publicly declare that its new overriding mission will be responsible journalism that holds Wall Street accountable. As a down payment, we ask you to hire some new economic voices—people who have a track record of being right about the economic crisis and holding Wall Street executives’ feet to the fire.

The problem, of course, is bigger than AIG and CNBC. Both have exhibited abhorrent behavior, but both are only poster demons: AIG is a stand-in for the many large corporations that elevate greed above public good—and continue to do so—and CNBC representative of journalists who years ago became too star-struck with the elite and its lifestyle to hold truth to power.

National reporters attend the same dinner parties as the political and financial rulers, their kids go to the same ritzy private schools and they go home each night to the same posh neighborhoods. The rise of the business and political reporter elite has accompanied the dwindling numbers of reporters assigned to a labor “beat” (there are fewer than five in the country now) and coverage of such nontrendy issues as low-wage workers and the impoverished.

Channeling anger at a few well-chosen targets is good. Fixing the nation’s political and economic structural bias, now weighed heavily in favor of the rich at the expanse of everyone else, is a lot better.

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