Minority Meltdown - Righties try to pin economic crisis on minorities and the poor

[ck4829]

It was a stunning revelation: Illegal immigrants hold 5 million bad mortgages in the United States. Conservative commentators pounced on the statistic last October. Many of them were already blaming immigrants for the subprime mortgage mess. Now they had numerical proof, and from no less an authority than the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Just one problem: It wasn't true.

Although HUD immediately debunked the bogus factoid, it nevertheless spread rapidly on popular blogs, syndicated radio shows and major cable networks.

This wasn't the first time that immigrant bashers with virtual megaphones ignored the facts in spreading misinformation about the ongoing financial crisis. Unless media outlets of all stripes tighten their fact-checking standards, it won't be the last.

As the nation's housing crisis worsened last fall, right-wing radio hosts, bloggers and columnists became increasingly strident in blaming it on the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, a federal law aimed at spurring FDIC-insured banks to lend money to people living in lower-income communities. They claimed the CRA forced lenders to make risky loans to non-whites including illegal immigrants, causing the mortgage meltdown. Never mind that there was ample credible evidence that, like the HUD statistic, this wasn't true either. The CRA falsehood easily jumped from the far-right fringe to more mainstream, presumably more credible conservative media outlets, illustrating how sloppy fact-checking or no fact-checking at all have become increasingly common in the midst of fierce competition among speed-obsessed media.

...

The histrionics over the supposed 5 million bad mortgages is a prime example. On Oct. 9, the conservative online news site Drudge Report included a link to a story on the website of conservative talk radio KFYI-AM in Phoenix that said HUD had reported that 5 million illegal immigrants held bad mortgages. That same day, the Phoenix Business Journal posted an article stating that a HUD spokesman said there was "no basis" for the 5 million figure, and that the agency had no data reflecting the number of bad mortgages held by illegal immigrants.

But a few hours later on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" — a primary venue for the airing of false allegations about undocumented immigrants — San Diego radio show host Roger Hedgecock cited the bogus HUD statistic as a hard fact. By the following day, others were engaging in the journalistic equivalent of fabricating a "big fish" tale, embellishing the falsehood with their own extravagant claims. Rush Limbaugh stated on his radio program that HUD was "admitting 5 million illegal aliens were given mortgages … with fake Social Security numbers and so forth to go out and purchase homes that they didn't have to pay back." Over at Clear Channel's "The War Room with Quinn & Rose," Jim Quinn claimed that while there were some excesses on Wall Street, the bigger problem was the issuance of "5 million mortgages to illegal aliens who didn't even have to come up with an ID."

Quinn neglected to cite a source for that claim about identification, which turned out to be just as bogus as the 5 million figure. The fact is that banks can make mortgage loans to immigrants who do not have a Social Security number if they have been issued something called an Individual Tax Identification Number. "In general, the borrower must have a history of paying income taxes and a steady work history," said Ellen Seidman, who was an economic adviser to President Clinton and has held senior positions at Fannie Mae and the U.S. departments of Treasury and Transportation.

KFYI posted a subsequent story on its Web site explaining that a HUD spokesman had contacted the station to say its number was inaccurate. The station said its source for the original story was not HUD, but an unnamed retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. By then, the fictitious figure had been widely reported as fact by the nation's radio ranters and blogosphere fulminators.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1011

[AndrewP]

1. OH.....THOSE people!!!!!!!!!

:eyes:


The underlying racism in the Repukelickin party is obvious.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. Those homes form a line from Disneyland to Vegas.

[global1]

4. Exactly On The Same Route Of The High Speed Rail Project.......nt

[Brewman_Jax]

3. I've heard that before

even a friend of mine has fallen in the trap. This morning on my Public Broadcast station, there was an interview with one of the local xenophobes that used the same line. I see where the source of some of the bogus propaganda he spewed.

To them, the minority group always is the source of (insert problem here). :puke: