Wednesday, August 11, 2010

GE to CNBC: Protect the President

GE is one of the top beneficiaries of government contracts ("The government brings good things to GE") and they apparently don't want anything to happen to those contracts, even if it means distorting the news.

Charles Gasparino, formerly with CNBC (a wholly owned subsidiary of GE) and now with FOX Business told Bill O'Reilly that, in  a meeting, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt told senior CNBC staff that they were too anti-administration. Even a casual remark from a chairman at a corporation such as GE is taken as a marching order. This appeared to be more than a casual remark. CNBC got the message. There has been a decided shift away from criticism of Obamanomics. Here's the tape.

2 comments:

  1. GE has a history of meddling with NBC and its siblings as far as news coverage goes. During Election Night in 2000, GE's then-Chairman Jack Welch was in the NBC control room and declared "you better report 'Bush Wins'." This tidbit was published by a now-forgotten trade publication ... on September 11, 2001.

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  2. Don't forget how NBC refused to grant former Sen. Mike Gravel participation in the Democratic Party's 2008 Presidential primary candidate debate at Drexel University. After the first refusal, his campaign wrote to say, "Um, we meet those criteria" whereupon NBC wrote back to say, "Oops, we changed the criteria. Sorry." Warmonger firm ejects peace candidate. No big surprise there.

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