Networks Ignore New Request for $15 Billion Bailout for Fannie Mae

Mortgage-backer has bled taxpayers for more than $75 billion, but is rarely criticized by the news media.

By Julia A. Seymour

Business & Media Institute

3/3/2010 1:47:06 PM

A business partly responsible for the economic downturn requested another $15.3 billion bailout last week.

It wasn’t one of the news media’s usual suspects, like the banks or insurance giant AIG – the ones they have repeatedly scorned and scrutinized for needing bailouts. It was government favorite and Democratic donor Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association, created as a public-private hybrid in 1938 but taken over by the federal government in Sept. 2008.

There was no media outrage; in fact there was almost no coverage. Fannie Mae’s Feb. 26 request for more than $15 billion made few print headlines and was ignored entirely by ABC, CBS and NBC – despite the billions of taxpayers’ dollars that have gone to bail Fannie out in the past year and a half.

“The new request for aid will bring Fannie Mae’s total to more than $75 billion,” according to an Associated Press report that ran in the Los Angeles Times Feb. 27.

The only hint in that article about improper conduct leading to Fannie’s downfall was in the last sentence: “The two companies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) loosened their lending standards for borrowers during the real estate boom and are reeling from the consequences.”

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