NBC
Nightly News, which is owned by General Electric, failed to report
that GE did not pay any taxes in 2010. Not only that, the corporate behemoth claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. Nightly News did not report on this,
even though worldwide GE made a profit of $14.2 billion in 2010.
GE
has a 975-employee tax division headed by former Treasury official
John Samuels. This is not the first year that GE did not pay any
taxes; in 2009 they also paid nothing in corporate income tax.
Although this story was reported by other major corporate media, NBC
Nightly News host Brian Williams did not mention the story in spite
of the fact that it had been public for over a week.
For a network to keep its
owners out of the headlines is nothing new. Corporate media, as any other corporate entity, puts the interests of its capitalists owners above all other considerations.
