Dan Gainor on Fox Biz Discussing Media’s Coverage of Subprime Mortgage Problem

Business & Media Institute Director Dan Gainor appeared on the Fox Business Network December 6 to discuss how the media is choosing sides in the subprime housing problem.

"All throughout this whole year and actually if you go back in the last year and before [the media] have been pointing out that the lenders are the bad guys...CBS News who actually did an okay report last night, then the example they use is someone who has a 6.6% adjustable rate adjusting up to 9.6%, they've got a house the size of a mansion and they've got horses."

Gainor said the important thing that journalists fail to do is to get both the lenders and the home buyer's viewpoints.

In the special report "Debt: Who'$ Responsible?," the Business & Media Institute and Culture and Media Institute pointed out that the media consistently blames business while ignoring the role of personal responsibility.

BMI and CMI examined 156 stories and found that ABC, CBS and NBC overwhelmingly blamed business for "luring" consumers into making bad decisions. At the same time, the three networks ignored personal responsibility and portrayed borrowers as helpless victims who had no hand in their own financial failures.