As Trans-Pacific Partnership Debate Rages, Broadcast Evening News Stays Silent

[KamaAina]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/05/11/as-trans-pacific-partnership-debate-rages-broad/203603

Broadcast nightly news programs have remained silent on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) over the past three months of weekday programming, even as Congress is scheduled to vote this week on whether to grant President Obama authority to finalize the terms of the massive trade deal. The coverage blackout continues a trend extending back to 2013.

On May 12, the Senate plans to vote on legislation that would grant "fast-track" trade promotion authority to Obama as he attempts to complete negotiations among the 12 member nations that comprise the TPP. "Once Congress grants a president trade promotion authority, lawmakers have the ability to vote up or down on a final trade agreement, but they forfeit the right to amend the deal or filibuster it," The New York Times explained.

Debates over the merits of the deal itself and of granting the president trade promotion authority have erupted among Democratic and Republican members of Congress, but coverage of the negotiations has been largely absent from evening news programming on the major broadcast networks.

A Media Matters analysis of ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC's Nightly News from August 1, 2013, through May 10, 2015, found that the programs completely ignored the trade negotiations and related policy debates. Only PBS NewsHour devoted substantive coverage to the TPP, with 14 total segments:

Surprise, surprise! </gomer-pyle> And nobody watches the NewsHour anymore.

[cali]

1. how disgusting.

[Rex]

2. Corporate apologists and authoritarians are one and the same. Money trumps information.

The M$M has no desire to actually report any news that could hurt their paycheck. Been that way for decades now.

[cali]

3. Who owns these media outlets? hmm. And what are their positions on the tpp?

take a wild guess.

[pa28]

4. Yeah, I made the mistake of watching NBC nightly news one day last week.

They featured two very long pieces on terrorists (be very afraid), Pope Francis meeting the Harlem Globetrotters and something about animals.

Their job is to distract you from the news NOT report it.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. NBC Nightly News is just a shell of what it was

during the Huntley-Brinkley days

[hifiguy]

5. Those who stand to benefit are not going to tell you

how they will be robbing you.

[think]

6. Can you hear the crickets?.....

[FlatBaroque]

7. You know who else is silent?

the presumptive nominee who wishes to be a champion for the people.

[woo me with science]

8. Huge K&R. We live in a corrupt propaganda state.

What a sick indictment of our politics and media...not only that our major media outlets avoid this information, but that the ostensible "front-runner" on the Democratic side also avoids mentioning it or taking a side.

Such contempt for voters and for the very concept of a representative political system. This is the corruption and arrogance of oligarchy.

[Wilms]

9. ^

[Cheese Sandwich]

11. If TPP is in jeopardy, then the MSM will jump in to save it, like they did with NAFTA...

They will call organized labor and citizens groups "special interests" or worse. Ignoring of course that owners of then media themselves have extremely narrow special business interests and are not neutral in the fight.