It's incredible. Just as 20,000 viewers signed an open letter to CNBC telling them to listen to Jon Stewart and hold Wall Street accountable instead of mindlessly repeating Wall Street talking points, NBC doubled down.
This morning, Meet The Press host David Gregory repeated what CNBC's Erin Burnett has been saying all along: The public is ignorant. If only the simpleton public understood what the Wall Street "experts" understand, we wouldn't be so populist and angry. See for yourself:
In these economic times, NBC needs to stop blaming the public and instead focus like a laser on holding Wall Street accountable. David Gregory, instead of calling the public stupid, how about saying on the air that there are, in fact, no "best and brightest" at AIG worth giving bonuses to if they threaten to leave?
That being said, CNBC is still the center of the fight to get the media to do their job. If we can get CNBC to truly start holding Wall Street's feet to the fire, that will have ripple effects throughout NBC and the entire financial news industry.
You can join leading economists, journalists, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and over 20,000 members of the public in signing the open letter to CNBC here.
One of the big journalistic lessons of the Iraq War was that "embedded" reporters who get one side of the story are not well suited to give accurate information to the public.
Americans now depend on the media for accurate information about the financial crisis. This Sunday's Meet The Press made something absolutely clear: Journalists who are "embedded" on Wall Street and depend on Wall Street execs for access on a day-to-day basis are ridiculously unqualified to give the public good information about the economic crisis.
Indeed, NBC has an Erin Burnett problem. Watch and see for yourself how Burnett consistently serves an an apologist for Wall Street's worst practices:
NBC even (accidentally?) admitted Burnett's pro-Wall Street bias. Just look at the headline they put up after the show, summarizing her main message: "Erin Burnett: We must help banks." Really?
At the end of this post, I'm going to ask you to email Erin Burnett (erin.burnett@nbcuni.com) and ask her to reform her ways.
Some of my fellow Kossacks got their knickers in a twist the other day over the news that David Gregory's set to become the new host of NBC's Meet The Press. Why the outrage? Well for one thing, they can never forgive Gregory for dancing with the devil, aka "MC" Rove. Plus, as one unkind Kossack noted, "I think he looks like he's from Planet Of The Apes" (admittedly, the photos offered as evidence made a compelling case).
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