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Press Silent on G.M.'s Recalls

Discussion in 'News & Current Events' started by Bro. Curtis, Apr 1, 2014.

  1. Bro. Curtis

    Bro. Curtis <img src =/curtis.gif>
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  2. thisnumbersdisconnected

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    Five million vehicles recalled and counting, and that's in less than a month. Where'd our unrepaid bailout funds go, again?
     
  3. Crabtownboy

    Crabtownboy Well-Known Member
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    Not really, there has been a fair number of articles on the GM recall:

    GM Recalls Older Model Vehicles to Fix Power Steering
    media.gm.com/.../us/.../gm/.../0331-power-steering.html‎
    General Motors
    22 hours ago - DETROIT – General Motors informed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today that it would recall more than 1.3 million vehicles ...
    Ignition Switch Recall: Understanding the Safety ... - General Motors
    www.gm.com/ignition-switch-recall.html‎
    General Motors
    This page is designed to help you understand the recent ignition switch recall for affected GM vehicles: Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Saturn. Read more here.
    GM recalls 1.3M vehicles to fix power steering - USA Today

    www.usatoday.com/story/.../gm-recall.../7127117/‎
    USA Today
    by Chris Woodyard - in 21 Google+ circles
    19 hours ago - General Motors announced another whopping recall Monday on the eve of its CEO's testimony to Congress over safety lapses. This one covers ...
    GM recalls more than 1.3 million vehicles for faulty electric power ...
    www.clickondetroit.com › Money › Automotive‎
    WDIV‑TV
    8 hours ago - General Motors announced Monday another recall, this time for more than 1.3 million vehicles in the U.S. which may have a sudden loss of ...
    What's going on with GM's big recall of 2.2 million U.S. vehicles ...
    money.cnn.com/2014/03/30/.../general-motors-recall-faq/‎
    CNNMoney
    2 days ago - It seems like things keep changing with GM's recall of 1.4 million cars for ignition problems. Here's where things stand now.
    GM Recalls 1.5 Million Cars for Steering Defect - ABC News
    abcnews.go.com › MoneyABC News
    21 hours ago - General Motors Co. said Monday it is recalling 1.5 million vehicles worldwide because the electronic power-steering assist can suddenly stop ...
    GM recalls 1.3 million cars for steering defect - CBS News
    www.cbsnews.com/.../gm-recalls-13-million-cars-for-steering-...‎
    CBS News
    20 hours ago - DETROIT - General Motors (GM) is recalling 1.3 million vehicles in the U.S. because the electronic power-steering assist can suddenly stop ...
    GM to recall 1.5 million vehicles to fix electric power steering issue ...
    www.reuters.com/.../us-gm-recall-electric-power-steering-idUSBR...‎
    Reuters
    19 hours ago - (Reuters) - General Motors Co (GM.N) is recalling more than 1.5 million vehicles because they may unexpectedly lose power steering, the ...
    GM recall: Many victims were young drivers - Yahoo News
    news.yahoo.com/gm-recall-many-victims-were-young-driv...‎
    Yahoo! News
    16 hours ago - From Yahoo News: DETROIT (AP) — As the deaths are tallied from General Motors' delayed recall of compact cars, one thing is becoming ...
     
  4. Bro. Curtis

    Bro. Curtis <img src =/curtis.gif>
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    If you read the information in my link, you would have run across this link….


    http://www.nationalreview.com/campa...verage-washingtons-role-gms-mess-jim-geraghty

    …The federal government is complicit is more ways than one.

    GM, you’ll recall, had to be rescued by the taxpayers in 2009, and the federal stake was so large that the company was dubbed Government Motors when it went through bankruptcy. But bankruptcy rules require a disclosure of all liabilities as well as assets. By hiding the defect in its cars, GM may have committed bankruptcy fraud.

    Beyond that, the utter failure of the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency to crack down on the defective ignition switch is an embarrassing failure. But regulatory agencies are a journalistic backwater, drawing a fraction of the coverage lavished on the White House, Congress and politics.

    Allow me to submit another motive in the media’s disinterest: The massive GM recalls – now more than 6 million vehicles – would require the media to revise a major storyline from a few years ago — the near-collapse, bailout, and resurrection of General Motors, which has largely been covered as an unvarnished success story for the Obama administration. He writes, “You can’t single out President Obama because the government’s failure to act stretches back to the Bush administration, so it doesn’t make for a left/right slugfest.” That’s true enough as it goes, but the Obama administration somehow missed these multiple massive safety issues while putting together the bailout, which ultimately poured $49 billion into GM, and cost taxpayers $10.5 billion once the last share of stock was sold. Hammer the NHTSA, but at what point does the President’s Auto Industry Task Force look negligent? How did they miss so many consequential lurking safety issues in what was allegedly a thorough review of the company?

    In another example of the phenomenon discussed in this piece, a wide variety of voices who are quick to lambaste “corporate greed” and “evil businessmen” – be it Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Tobacco, health insurance companies, or any one of many others – are strangely quiet about a car company that manufactured and sold cars with a fatal defect. Why? Because progressives don’t begin from the principle, “a company must make safe products to be a good company.” They begin with “Barack Obama is the good guy.” Barack Obama supported and enacted the bailout of GM, thus that bailout must be a good thing. Thus, GM must be a company worth helping. Acknowledging that GM made dangerous cars, lied about it to the public, and then had the audacity to ask the taxpayers for money while keeping the danger of the cars secret would disrupt the “GM is worth helping, and Obama was right to help them” narrative, so it must be ignored, shoved aside, eyes averted, and so on….



    The media is silent on the cover-up, and the government's role in this. I should have been more specific, but you only have so much room in the title line.
     
  5. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    First of all, it's not the press' responsibility to print anything. They aren't the government's watch dogs, though we may wish they were. They don't have to cover it if they don't want to.

    Secondly, the linked article's main thrust is to question where the press was in 2005-2006, when Bush was President.

    Third, the article went on to say that there was a conspiracy between the press' lack of coverage and Obama's GM bailout program, even though the defects being talked up occurred in 2005 year model vehicles. Now, some blame might be assigned to the Obama administration for not doing their due diligence and uncovering these defects prior to the bailout, but the OP was about the press ignoring the recalls.

    Fourth, there is plenty of press coverage.

    https://www.google.com/search?hl=en...us&hl=en&q=GM+recalls+in+past+3+years&tbm=nws
     
    #5 InTheLight, Apr 1, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 1, 2014
  6. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    Not to GM executives. As part of the bailout there was a moratorium on executive pay and bonuses. That led to the CEO and other executives to quit prior to the bailout. If you want to find something that stinks, just link up the lack of GM's ability to pay top talent with the increase of recalled vehicles. Now THAT might be a story.
     
  7. Bro. Curtis

    Bro. Curtis <img src =/curtis.gif>
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    The press isn't the watchdogs ? Since when ? I guess, since Obama was elected ?

    The O/P states quite clearly that the defects before bankruptcy are not GM's problem, anymore. This is all since the bailout. It is also quite clear there was a cover-up, during and after the bailout.
     
  8. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    No, only to the extent that it will sell newspapers, magazines, web subscriptions.


    Since never.


    This is true. The O/P also states that the press was silent back then. This seems to be the bulk of the anger directed at the "press disappearing".
    ----------
    Seven years ago, a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration manager recommended investigating the reason for the non-deploying airbags in General Motors’ 2003-2006 Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion cars. This was revealed in a memo issued by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

    Geraghty asks: Where the hell is the press? This is not just a GM story; this is a government story. So where the hell are the stories?

    --------------

    As to the recalls since the bailout, esp. the last several months, it's been all over the news.


    Sorry, but I've read the stories. I don't see a coverup.
     
    #8 InTheLight, Apr 1, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 1, 2014
  9. thisnumbersdisconnected

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  10. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    Yes, being a watchdog is a traditional role of the press, but it's not a mandated role. It's not required of the press to criticize government, it's up to the press to show a profit and serve the needs of its shareholders. Thank goodness they have taken on this role and citizens should demand that they keep doing it (and Fox News ratings are an indication that the people want watchdogs), but there is no compulsion for them to be watchdogs.
     
  11. thisnumbersdisconnected

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    It is not a "mandated" role for me to take on a profession wherein I help others, either, but I choose to do it. Jobs aren't just "jobs." There is a certain amount of nobility and character that a man, a profession, a nation should adopt as its own. Otherwise, there is little point to any of it.
     
  12. Bro. Curtis

    Bro. Curtis <img src =/curtis.gif>
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    What's the opposite of a "watchdog" ? An "enable kitty" ?


    That's what today's media is. And you are right, FOX is probably the only source that regularly holds his feet to the fire, though I haven't watched any TV news in years.
     
  13. Revmitchell

    Revmitchell Well-Known Member
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    This could not be more wrong. This is what happens when we either forget or are not taught out nations history correctly. The press has always from the beginning of this country been a watchdog on the government.
     
  14. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    I know my history. If the press is a watch dog entity it's because the citizenry wanted them to be and the press chose that role. If the press chooses not to fulfill that role they do so on their own prerogative. The flip side of freedom of the press is the freedom to not print things critical of the government.

    Why does People magazine exist? Tiger Beat magazine? Because there is a demand for that kind of stuff, not because they're supposed to be a watch dog.
     
  15. poncho

    poncho Well-Known Member

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    Why is there a demand for that sort of thing? Billions of dollars have been spent in advertisements and promotions in movies, tv series, magazines and the music industry to create a celebrity worshiping consumer culture. Why?

    To increase profits.

    Have you read that book I gave you ITL? The one by Edward Bernays the "father of modern public realations"?

    The name of it is "Propaganda". Here it is again if you lost it. http://www.whale.to/b/bernays.pdf

    It's a good book, sort of a primer on social engineering through the use of the mass media to manage our perceptions and opinions and create our desire to want things we don't need and it was published in 1928.
     
    #15 poncho, Apr 1, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 1, 2014
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