Concern for Kindle I love Extra!, but I have a concern with the August 2010 cover. Having the titles of the three main articles appear inside the Amazon Kindle leads the reader to assume, as I did, that the articles are critical of Amazon’s book reviewing, Amazon stealing literature from the public and Amazon’s profits and propaganda. I love Amazon and was disappointed when I saw this cover. I went on to read the articles and was pleased that they were not an attack on Amazon. But I was then confused as to why you would have set the titles [...]
Search Results for: Mary Kane
Nov
01
2009
The Money Taboo in Health Reform Coverage
Industry donations to powerful players often go unmentioned
By Daniel Ward
As powerful lawmakers debate healthcare legislation of enormous potential impact, corporate media have largely failed to explore the problem of health and insurance industries attempting to influence many of these legislators with a flood of campaign contributions. Despite Deep Throat’s urging journalists to “follow the money,” there’s a longstanding media taboo against discussing the role of campaign contributions in healthcare initiatives (Extra!, 1-2/04). This reluctance is particularly striking this year, when health industry spending on lobbying efforts and political contributions is unprecedented. In what the Washington Post (7/6/09) referred to as “a record-breaking influence campaign by the healthcare industry,” $1.4 [...]
Jan
01
2009
Scapegoating Minorities for Failures of Banking
Blaming CRA makes little sense, but gets finance industry off the hook
By Mary Kane
It seems, on the face of it, a theory too absurd to even be taken seriously: A ragtag band of anti-poverty activists pushes the White House into forcing lenders to make bad loans to poor and minority borrowers, setting off a subprime loan crisis that puts the entire global economy at risk. Yet in the frenzy of coverage as a financial markets collapse loomed in mid-September, the idea that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was somehow responsible took off in the media—in the mainstream press as well as on the conservative fringe. One of the most prominent proponents of the [...]
Nov
01
2008
Busted Bubble
The press fell down on the job on housing prices
Over the summer, the country's two mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, collapsed, marking the definitive bursting of the housing bubble that began in the mid-1990s. Although it was the second major economic bubble in less than a decade, most in corporate media ignored the warning signs. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) and author of the American Prospect blog Beat the Press, told Extra!: "It continues to be this sort of bad-event story," with corporate media and the select group of economists on whom they rely acting as though "a hurricane came [...]
