CBS ‘Early Show’ Touts Obama’s ‘Olive Branch’ to Business, Ignores Administration’s Expansion of Regulation
At the top of Tuesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Erica Hill cheered President Obama's supposedly pro-business move of speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday: “Obama's olive branch. The President reaches out into hostile territory and meets with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urging the private sector to start hiring.” Introducing the later report on the speech, co-host Chris Wragge touted the event as Obama's continued “effort to make peace with big business,” despite the Chamber being “a group that he has battled ever since he took office.” Senior White House correspondent Bill Plante noted how “Mr. Obama pledged to work on lowering federal spending, revising the corporate tax code, and eliminating some federal regulations.” What the coverage failed to point out was that 43 major new regulations were imposed by the Obama administration in 2010. Interestingly, a report from congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes on Monday's CBS Evening News did feature criticism from the business community over excessive government regulation: “In nearly 2,000 pages of letters to Congress, U.S. businesses unloaded on everything from anti-pollution rules, to new pilot rest requirements, to workplace noise standards, complaining they all kill jobs.” Plante left those details out of his Early Show report. Cordes also featured sound bites of Republican members of Congress calling for less regulation, again something absent in Plante's coverage. What Plante did manage to include was Obama's attack on businesses for not spending enough of their profits on hiring new employees: “The President's message to business? It's time to put their mountain of extra cash to work.” Following Plante's report, Wragge spoke with business and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis and promoted the same criticism: “Now companies, they've done extremely well. They've cut a lot of jobs, as we've seen over the years, but their balance sheets are showing record profits. Wall Street's doing very well. So can a speech like this have any impact on these business leaders to go out and then hire more people?” While Plante and Wragge fretted over businesses not hiring enough, they seemed to forget that in early 2010, CBS News itself fired close to 100 staffers . No word yet on many of those people the network news organization has hired back with its own “mountain of cash” ($15 million per year of which goes to CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric). Concluding his report, Plante argued that “as the President looks forward to his re-election campaign, dissension aside, he stands to benefit from any perceived move toward business – benefit with independents and Republicans.” Here is a full transcript of Plante's February 8 Early Show report: 7:00AM ET TEASE: ERICA HILL: Obama's olive branch. The President reaches out into hostile territory and meets with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urging the private sector to start hiring. But did Wall Street buy his message? We have reaction from big business. 7:02AM ET SEGMENT:
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on February 8, 2011. Filed under