Why Bartiromo will fit in at Fox Business

Albert Kleine of Media Matters for America writes about why CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo will fit in well at Fox Business Network, her anticipated new employer and which he argues has a pro-business, anti-government slant to news.

Kleine writes, “In 2011, Bartiromo repeatedly argued that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) should not have intervened when Boeing was accused of anti-labor practices, going so far as to claim that the only reason NLRB filed suit against the company was because Boeing’s jobs are non-union. In late 2012 when Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit unexpectedly resigned, Bartiromo asserted that is was because he was ‘[g]etting bashed and bashed and bashed again by the President, by the populists.’ And of course, there is Bartiromo’s recent staunch defense of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, despite the fact that Dimon headed the investment bank when it was involved in allegedly fraudulent deals in the mortgage security market just before the financial crisis.

“Bartiromo’s soft approach to business interests is exactly what will make the host successful at Fox. The network regularly accuses the federal government of committing ‘shakedowns’ whenever big business interests are held accountable for misconduct, even when there is mounting evidence of wrongdoing. Similar to Bartiromo’s assertion that Pandit resigned because of pressure from the Obama administration, Fox Business’ Stuart Varney claimed that when Standard & Poor’s Devan Sharma stepped down as president in 2011 it was because the Obama administration was exacting revenge for S&P’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating.

“Bartiromo’s defense of big business is not the only reason she’ll fit in at Fox — she’s also well-practiced in false, conservative attacks on President Obama. In October 2012, she suggested that the reason President Obama did not refer to the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya as ‘terrorism’ — a well–worn falsehood — was because he may have been trying to garner support for cuts to military spending.”

Read more here.