An Ethics Dunce, in ten easy steps
- General Electric Co. earned $14.2 billion in worldwide profits last
year, including $5.1 billion in the United States, and paid exactly zero dollars in federal taxes. - This especially interesting because Jeffrey Immelt, G.E’s CEO, is also the Obama’s administration’s link to corporate America.
- The story was widely reported by the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and thousands of lesser media outlets.
- NBC is owned by General Electric.
- NBC could not find room in its news broadcasts for the tax story.
- This was especially stupid and futile, since the story was well-reported anyway.
- Not reporting the G.E. tax story raised the natural suspicion that the network was burying other stories unflattering to its corporate overlords.
- It also raised legitimate questions about the network’s objectivity, news judgment, professionalism, integrity and competence.
- By extension, NBC’s outrageous omission raised the same suspicions regarding other networks’ trustworthiness where negative stories involving their corporate owners (ABC, Disney; CBS, Viacom) are involved.
- The failure to report the G.E. tax story is either grossly negligent or an outright cover-up. Either way, it is an ethical disgrace.
Ethics Alarms 
How many posts until you get accused of being a socialist who wants corporations to pay 99% of their income as taxes? I mean, they won’t be able to accuse you again of being an apologist for the rich until this hits page 2.
No, it’s that darned liberal media trying to manipulate the news.
That too.
Actually, if the media is willing to manipulate the news like this, that demonstrates enough integrity deficit to bolster the case that it manipulates the news for other objectives.
Remove the word “liberal”, and I’ll agree with you.
My dream is to be attacked by the Left as biased Right, and by the Right as biased Left, and by the middle as both. The analysis here often has political implications, but I work really hard to make sure it is not determined by politics. And STILL I don’t always succeed.
Don’t kid yourself. Your dream is to be NOTICED by anyone other than us fringe nutcases. That hasn’t happened yet.
It ain’t gonna, either. I’m a realist.
I happen to be a mainstream nutcase, I’ll have you know….
–Dwayne
And here I thought Comcast was the new overlords. But apparently, while Comcast has a controlling 51% interest, the other 49% interest is retained by GE.
Nevermind.
Oh yes, by all means call Jack Marshall a socialist. What tax bracket are you in? Shouldn’t GE be in SOME tax bracket? Playing favorites with corporations by newscasters is unethical; by the government, illegal.
You morons. Read the story again, and maybe you’ll understand it.
Poe or no?
You mean ‘Nation Poe who formulated Poe’s Law’ Poe right? Then no, Elizabeth’s a fairly sincere person, I think.
I meant Nathan, argh.