Fox News buries significance of its own scoop implicating Bush administration on AIG bonuses
SUMMARY: In reporting on emails obtained by Fox Business Network revealing discussions involving the Treasury Department about AIG bonuses, Fox News' Jon Scott at no point noted that the emails implicate the Bush administration in approving a $40 billion bailout for AIG without requiring AIG to nullify its employee bonus contracts.
During the March 20 edition of Fox News' Happening Now, co-host Jon Scott and correspondent Brian Wilson discussed email documents obtained by Fox Business Network regarding the AIG bonus payments by referring generically to "when the White House knew" and "traffic between the Treasury Department and folks at AIG" about those bonuses. At no point did Scott and Wilson make clear that President Bush's administration was running "the White House" and "the Treasury Department" at the time that the "traffic" occurred. Nor did Scott or Wilson explain that the "traffic" concerning AIG's bonuses is significant because it preceded a November 25, 2008, stock-purchase agreement between the Bush Treasury Department and AIG through which the Bush Treasury Department injected billions of dollars in aid to AIG without requiring that the bonus contracts, which AIG had signed with employees, be nullified.
Scott teased an upcoming discussion by stating, "You think the outrage over those AIG bonuses couldn't get any worse? Wait till you hear what Fox Business documents show when the White House knew about a potential problem." During the subsequent report, Scott said to Wilson: "Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd [D-CT] put the language in the bill that allowed those AIG bonuses to go forward. He says he did so at the request of the Treasury Department. Anything new on that?" Wilson responded in part by stating that "there was a lot of traffic between the Treasury Department and folks at AIG and the Fed about the bonuses, and the concern about the bonuses and how it was going to be a sensitive issue "and that "we know enough that even back in September, when the first payments were being made, there was serious concern about this issue." But in generically referring to the "White House" and "Treasury Department," Scott and Wilson did not make clear that while Dodd has said the Obama Treasury Department asked him to limit a provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that restricted the ability of companies receiving money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to award bonuses, it was the Bush Treasury Department that was involved in the email "traffic" that FBN uncovered regarding employee bonuses and that it was the Bush Treasury Department that signed the November agreement giving AIG bailout funds while not requiring that it abrogate its employee bonus contracts.
On March 20 FoxBusiness.com reported that in a November 1, 2008, email, a Treasury Department official wrote, "Have your benefits team made any progress on the 'soft' issues, or heard anything from the fed [sic] on the bonus situation?' " The article further reported, "Despite their deliberations at the time, the Treasury and Fed officials, which were part of the Bush Administration, eventually decided to restrict compensation on just the top 75 company executives -- and some of them may still have received hefty bonuses." But in his Fox News report, Wilson did not make clear that the documents central to his report indicate that the Bush administration was aware of the employee retention bonuses prior entering into the November 25, 2008, stock-purchase agreement and signed the agreement without requiring that AIG nullify those contracts.
Indeed, Neil Barofsky, a Bush-appointed special inspector general for TARP, noted in March 19 testimony that the executive compensation section of the Treasury's TARP agreement with AIG limits compensation for "Senior Partners," including "all retention payments paid or payable to such Senior Partner under any retention arrangement between the Senior Partner and the Company for any period ending on or prior to March 31, 2010." But the agreement does not affect retention payments for other AIG employees.
A subsequent on-screen graphic asked, "AIG hurting Dems?"
From the March 20 edition of Fox News' Happening Now:
SCOTT: You think the outrage over those AIG bonuses couldn't get any worse? Wait till you hear what Fox Business documents show when the White House knew about a potential problem.
[...]
SCOTT: Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd put the language in the bill that allowed those AIG bonuses to go forward. He says he did so --
WILSON: Right.
SCOTT: -- at the request of the Treasury Department. Anything new on that?
WILSON: Well, yes. Our good friends at the Fox Business Network, I mean, they did something that is called a FOIA request -- Freedom of Information Act -- and they said we want to know exactly what was going on at the Treasury Department when all of these billions of dollars were being handed out. And that has paid off in a lot of different ways and a lot of different stories.
One of the things that they have found is that there was a lot of traffic between the Treasury Department and folks at AIG and the Fed about the bonuses, and the concern about the bonuses and how it was going to be a sensitive issue. Now a lot of this information is redacted; we don't have the entire story there. Some of the information is being held back. But we know enough that even back in September, when the first payments were being made, there was serious concern about this issue.
So for folks to say, "Oh, we didn't know it was coming. We didn't know this was going to be an issue," is sort of disingenuous.
fixed noise comitting the sin of omission and getting caught?! Blasphemy!
You don't even know what the omission is here, do you?
The omission is saying the word "Bush". Anyone who is dumb enough to not understand that Bush was a horrible President that is in my view responsible for this crisis should not even be discussing or watching programs related to the current AIG fiasco.
all beside the point. the purpose of news is to inform. trying to omit the very relevant fact that it was the bush administration doing these things is what this is about.
the question is why do they just refer to the "white house" in generic terms, but they can use dodd's name, a democrat, specifically and not the name of bush or any of his officials. anyone not paying attention is going to just hear this and think the obama white house. this is a network that already got caught a few days ago editing a film clip of biden from last september and presenting it out of context and as if he said it now.
and wilson says "folks" are saying: "oh,we didn't know it was coming. we didn't know it would be an issue" but that makes it clear that they're attempting to deceive here, because the obama people could not have known what the bush people were doing last year, nor the emails they were sending. fox is making it look as if the obama people, "the white house" and "the treasury", knew last september. clearly fox propaganda.
Not being able to see this as pure propaganda is amazing. Could you imagine if your first instinct was to defend this crap, post first, read later, and then stick to your guns? Amazing.
In answer to your question, ",,,,are the viewers that stupid?", the reply is "yes". How do you think Faux frames their entire operation? Stupidity is something they count on, otherwise they would not be in business. Limbaugh, et al, would never have a chance where it not for stupidity. The most accurate statement ever made was, "Nobody ever went broke overestimating the stupidity of the public!"
It is always amusing when an ignorant person who missed the relevance of a posting here, despite a clear explanation by MMfA, talks about other people not being too ignorant to understand the facts.
The most accurate statement is "Nobody ever went broke overestimating the stupidity of Caseysprings."
Fox was trying to deceive people. The report that they made would have deceived someone who hadn't read the full info about this scoop. They were inexplicably interweaving something that happened last fall with things that are going on right now and conflating the two events.
It looks to me that what has happened here is that the Bush Treasury department failed to put any restrictions on the first TARP fund. Then, Dodd tried to add an amendment to the Stimulus Bill limiting such bonuses, but was urged to weaken it by the Obama Treasury department.
I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but that seems to be the essence of the matter. In other words, there's plenty of blame to go around. Nobody foresaw the firestorm this would become, and now they're all trying to cover their a$$es while the Republitoads try to twist it into a major failure of the Obama administration.
Just remember; these are the same Republitoads who rubber stamped everything Numbnuts Bush wanted for 6 years. Their credibility is miniscule.
you seem to have it right. there are plenty to blame, but Bush is gone so to keep going back to him any longer serves no purpose. I don't blame Obama either on this, to me it's Geithner and Dodd who are to blame. whatever, it serves little purpose anyway, what it does show is the irresponsible expediency and recklessness the way these bailout deals are put together with billions of dollars of our money being railroaded out to these companies with scrutiny only after the fact. And then the powers that be are all publicly outraged when the public gets wind of it. phonies, all of them.
what are geithner and dodd to "blame for"? it's also serves very much of a purpose to examine what the bush administration did, because the republicans are trying to put this on obama. and the "phonies" are the republicans for pretending that they are somehow in favor of capping executive compensation.
Sure. And Hitler's dead and gone, too, so, by your "logic", that would get him off the hook for the Holocaust.
"The Fuhrer is dead, there's no point in holding him historically accountable for the Holocaust. Blame it on the new guy."
Nice try, little factually-challenged fella, but shrub and the gops screwed this pooch, caused this toxic waste spill, trashed the joint and burned the place to the ground.
You gops aren't gonna be able to just make slop up, omit key facts and throw gop-slop at the wall to see if it sticks.
Look around ya, little fella. Take note of your surroundings.
Seeing that clueless cons and gopologist trash don't get away with makin' slop up to throw at the wall and see if it sticks is kinda the whole point behind MMFA.
The lunatic-fringe likes of you are gonna get called on your horsebrit every damned time, so either get yourself a case and a clue or get used to it.
Capice?
This slop happened on shrub's watch because of his brain-dead policies and criminal incompetence. His Treasury Secretary dictated the terms of the AIG bailout under his authority and on his behalf. Bush left those bonuses in there. Gop scum wanted no limits on compensation. They still don't.
The gop slop hit the fan on shrub's watch. It's still his fault. It's always gonna be his fault. Those facts aren't gonna change.
If ya make stuff up, you're gonna get called on it. Get used to it.
Exactly history, MSNBC is the same Democrats good, Republicans bad. I turned on MSNBC at 8pm and could not find one story about Dodd. Yet I switch over to FOX and all they talked about was Dodd. CNN seems to be the best choice to get a fair view , or maybe PBS. It is sad , the state of news in America.
kind of a general statement. this is a specific instance of fox shenanigans.
and yes history made a general statement, but that's backed up by overwhelming evidence. yours isn't.
Please show where MSNBC has been dishonestly skewed to the left, either by omission or otherwise, in their coverage of this issue.
perhaps if Casey had a staff and interns and a website and big bucks to monitor every word out of MSNBCs mouth, he could come up with few of their own.
If you can't back up an assertion, then perhaps it's not a very good one.
Perhaps if Casey wasn't always going after MSNBC, going after the messenger instead of the message, he would see that he has no point in trying to allege that FoxNews and MSNBC are two sides of the same coin.
Any fair look at the evidence wouldn't allow anyone to come to that conclusion. Either Caseysprings doesn't understand how to be fair, or doesn't want to be fair. I suspect it's the latter, but it's not a good thing if it's the former either.
MSNBC has two liberal shows. They also have Tucker Carlson and "Hardball" (which isn't) and Morning Joe. I don't think the two networks are anywhere nearly equal in their bias, but actual liberal news shows (as opposed to the myth of the liberal media) are so rare that MSNBC automatically gets called the "liberal" network.
"I turned on MSNBC at 8pm and could not find one story about Dodd."
Hmm, to be fair, you don't say how long you actually watched, but still I wonder... which MSNBC are you watching?
Here's Chris Matthews interviewing Dodd about the AIG mess.
Here's David Shuster's story about the AIG blame game, which makes substantial mention of Dodd and his conflicts of interest.
Not MSNBC, but form the same company...at CNBC, there's a story about the "AIG Call of Shame." Dodd tied for #5 on the list.
Sorry, bad link on the Shuster story. Here's it is.
Doing it again, I see.
Attacking the messenger instead of attacking the message I see. For the most part, Democrats ARE good, and Republicans ARE bad. On MSNBC you will see stories about bad Democrats and good Republicans. On Fox, you'll see lies about good Democrats, you'll see an overemphasis on a few bad Democrats, and you'll see them sweep bad Republicans under the rug and and idol worship of those Republicans who toe the Limbaugh line.
Reality has a liberal bias.
Can't you hear the voice of Boris Karloff as "the Monster" in "Bride of Frakensetein", saying, "Republicans, gooooooddd. Democrats, baaadddd."
That's unfortunately the way the media works. Notice there's been little to no coverage or updates about Iraq even though today and yesterday mark significant anniversaries of the war?
It is a shame that Geithner and Dodd are getting the blame for all of this, because you know they don't want to say "but it started under Bush" because the MSM will just whine about how they blame it all on him.
/sigh, Just can't win with the media anymore.
David Brock's, "The Republican Noise Machine", is a good place to start. It's a long and on going story. We can call it various things that identify it correctly. Corporate Media is good. What is the corporate view of humanity? Current views can change, but not without help which to me means, visible and intelligent opposition.
It is true that the Bush admin was at the helm when the first AIG deal went through for past bonuses that were already promised to employees through contracts. I saw the show and Fox did admit this. I really can't agree that President Bush's admin is whitewashed though. The President uses Pres Bush as an excuse for his own failures at every corner. Problem is that the Congress passes a bill to bail out AIG without reading it, which escalates the bonuses, and then they completely lie about the whole episode. The grandstanding is ridiculous. Dodd and Pres Obama are in charge and have to accept some responsibility. I expect that of Privates in the Army and should expect that of so-called upper echelon bureaucrats like the Congress and the White House.
the "grandstanding" is by the republicans, who are pretending they have a problem with any bonuses being paid. the fact is there are many quotes of republicans railing against limiting executive compensation in these companies, and yet fox and a lot of the rest of the media are unable to come up with those, which clearly show the republican hypocrisy on this issue. just like they're opposing the tax on these bonuses now. and it's really amazing what obama's "failures" are supposed to be at this juncture. bush came into office at the beginning of a small recession, nothing compared to this, and we're had eight years of excuses why his administration didn't really produce any jobs overall for that eight years.
Maybe you should stop listen to FOX and get you facts straight. First the ammendment from Dodd was in the stimilus bill not a bailout for AIG. This Economic mess is 100% Bush's fault, Obama is only trying to salvage our economy. Third Obama has not been in office long enough to have made any real mistakes and yet is taking responsibility for the Bush admins. screw up on these bonuses because Bush knew about them before AIG received a penny of taxpayer money and left them in place. He did so knowing that they would not be paid until after he left office. If that isn't dirty and sneaky, I don't know what is!!!
This from the same gopologist slime who continues to blame Clinton for eight years of brain-dead bushleague incompetence.