CBS Revels In "Corporate Catfight" Over Gas Prices

While ABC and NBC presented viewers last night with many of the reasons for the rising cost of gasoline, CBS ignored the link between Iran’s push for nuclear power and rising oil prices. Instead, the network cheered on a “corporate catfight” between automakers and oil companies.

“I won’t be able to afford either rent or gas,” CBS News’s Anthony Mason showed a woman complain on the April 11 “CBS Evening News.” Warning of $3-a-gallon gas this summer, the CBS correspondent sought a culprit in American business, and highlighted a war of words between corporate executives.

Mason pointed to a blog posting by a DaimlerChysler executive blaming oil companies for high prices, and an ExxonMobil advertisement blaming SUV makers for fuel inefficiency.

But oil industry experts put the blame on international events, not American business – from Venezuela to Nigeria to Iran.

Beginning the April 11 “World News Tonight,” anchor Elizabeth Vargas noted that “the market got a jolt when the president of Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, announced his country had achieved a troubling nuclear milestone.”

NBC’s Kevin Tibbles cited “the struggle with Iran over nuclear arms, the powder keg in Iraq, sabotage and instability in Nigeria, and trouble in the Venezuelan oil industry, not to mention OPEC is already maxed out when it comes to capacity.”

CBS ignored those. (For more, see my story at FreeMarketProject.org, click here).