Fall behind on your mortgage? These days it's anyone's fault but your own according to the mainstream media.

The March 9 "CBS Evening News" found another way to fault home lenders instead of one borrower who took on an ill-planned mortgage that was more than he could pay: the race card.

"[Michael] Wiggins, a city bus driver, was one of millions of Americans caught in the subprime mortgage crisis," CBS correspondent Randall Pinkston said. "His mortgage lenders' network loan gave him an 11-percent interest rate with a payment of $3,900 a month. But that jumped to $4,200 a month because of delinquency fees and penalties. Knowing he was sinking fast, Wiggins looked for refinancing at commercial banks."

‘Tis the season for lackluster holiday sales and prosperous debt collectors. Fa la la la la, la la la la...

Everything is a little downbeat according to the economic news leading into the holiday shopping season reported on the November 18 "CBS Evening News" - that is of course unless you're in the debt business.

"It happens to be pretty good," said Brandon Bradshaw about this shopping season. "So, we're one of the lucky ones."

But, CBS Correspondent Randall Pinkston trotted him out for a reason.

"Brandon Bradshaw's business? Debt collection," concluded Pinkston. "Russ, retailers are counting on shoppers like him because this is the make-or-break season. Fourth quarter - stores depend on holiday shoppers for 25 to 40 percent of their annual profits."

If you watched the October 28 CBS “Evening News,” you would probably have been expecting a rough ride today based on their reporting.

The likely ousting of Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O’Neal prompted CBS correspondent Randall Pinkston to tell viewers to expect the worst as far as the stock market goes.

“O'Neal's likely exit sets the stage for another rough ride on Wall Street this week with more dramatic peaks expected in crude oil prices which hit nearly $92 a barrel last week and further uncertainty in the housing market,” Pinkston said.

However, in the short-term, that’s not the case. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 64 points to close at 13,869 one day after his gloomy report. And, investors even welcomed the news of the shakeup at Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER), as its stock finished up 2 percent.

For a change, the media gave the government a hard time about air travel, instead of bashing the airlines. The media reported on new Federal Aviation Administration guidelines for better runway safety and on ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson" and CNN's "American Morning."

Lisa Stark said, "The FAA commission admits that runway collisions are an increasing threat," and cautioned that new rules could "lead to some more delays," but the report did not indicate that the airlines were a part of the problem.

This is in contrast to CBS's Randall Pinkston, who said August 12 that it would cost airlines more money to provide more services to passengers but charged: "airline analysts say [the airlines] can afford it," pointing to Northwest Airlines' $2 billion profit and neglecting to point out their bankruptcy status only a few months prior.

Don’t the airlines have plenty of money for extra food and passenger perks? Oh wait, they’ve been in bankruptcy.

Reporter Randall Pinkston’s “CBS Evening News” story August 12 charged that airlines should be providing better service to passengers, citing “torturous delays” and “forcing passengers to board when they know the plane will be sitting on the tarmac,” both problems rooted in an out-of-date air traffic control system.

Aviation reporter and analyst Jim Tilmon suggested that airlines should provide passengers with a “designated parking area” with water and food served until the airline knows that the plane will be ready to take off.

Republican Congressman James Saxton is not exactly an endangered incumbent, as CQ and C-SPAN rate him as safe. But, you wouldn’t know that from watching Thursday’s "Early Show" on CBS. Correspondent Randall Pinkston, who offered some wishful thinking, narrated a two and half minute piece on New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District where Congressman Saxton is being challenged by Democrat Richard Sexton. Apparently, the fact that the two men have similar sounding last names is enough to warrant a full story. Pinkston highlighted that the similarity in names could cause confusion at the polls, then proceeded to offer a shameless plug of another Viacom channel, Comedy Central, and its star of fake news, Stephen Colbert.

How ever will we break the news to Tweek?

South Park's resident juvenile coffee addict would find little solace in today's "Early Show" where CBS's Rene Syler trumpeted a "shocking" report that found decaf coffee contains <gasp> caffeine.

Well, duh. Decaffeination removes most, not all the caffeine that naturally occurs in a drink such as coffee. And medical experts have known it for years. But that didn't stop Syler and correspondent Randall Pinkston from hyping the University of Florida study or to play up caffeine's health risks.

“Thousands of people do drink decaf because of health issues,” for medical reasons “but if you drink decaffeinated coffee because you think you’re eliminating” the stimulant, “think again,” cautioned Pinkston, pointing to a recently published study from the University of Florida.

In a Wednesday CBS Evening News story on shortcomings in FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina, reporter Randall Pinkston cited “frustrations that reached as far away as the state of Maine, where officials received ice that was supposed to go to the Gulf Coast." Pinkston touted how “former President Jimmy Carter, who created FEMA, criticized the Bush administration's decision to strip the agency's independence." Viewers then saw a clip of Jimmy Carter from a Tuesday night forum at the Carter Center in Atlanta: "This obviously lowered FEMA's status so that they would have to go through four or five levels of bureaucracy even to reach the President, whereas FEMA used to deal directly with the President." Of course, that decision -- good or bad -- had bi-partisan support in Congress. (Neither ABC or NBC found Carter's remarks newsworthy.)

Full transcript of the story follows.