The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
WaPo: Housing market not bad for everyone; 'Evening News' finds foreclosure victim who was paid to leave; CBS hypes rising sea levels in one-sided global warming report.
 

April 2, 2008

The Good
     This may come as a surprise, but the drop in housing prices is helping some people.

     The March 31 Washington Post explained that although the housing market is a drag on the economy, high-end housing is becoming more and more affordable in some areas. As homes in those areas with higher-than-average home prices drop, it is causing a buyers’ dollar to go further in a qualitative manner and that is causing the median price of homes in the Washington, D.C. area to actually increase.

     “However, the median house price region-wide in 2007, $420,000, was actually up 0.5 percent from 2006. The median is the point at which half the homes sold for more and half sold for less,” Maryann Haggerty wrote for The Washington Post.

     According to the report, it’s still in sharp contrast to the Case-Shiller Index, which showed Washington area home prices in January were down almost 11 percent from a year earlier. However, it is a sign that the market is being taken advantage of as more expensive homes become more affordable for some.

The Bad
     Surprise - another foreclosure sob story on an evening news program.

     This time it was the March 27 "CBS Evening News." CBS correspondent Ben Tracy had no difficulty finding one family affected by the housing crisis. He showcased a family in Oakland, Calif., that had to move due to a foreclosure. But it turned out that this family was paid to move.

     "What they did not know is that the owner of the home they've been renting near Oakland, California, wasn't paying her mortgage, and the bank foreclosed on the property at the worst possible time," said Tracy.

     According to the CBS report, the original agreement between the family and the bank was 30 days, but they accepted an option to expedite the process and shave 16 days off the agreement for the compensation.

     "The offer was $2,500 to leave," said Adriana Diharce, one of the members of the family. According to Tracy, this is not uncommon.

     "And so brokers representing banks often offer what's called ‘cash for keys,' a payoff to get a renter out quickly," Tracy said.

     For moving 16 days early, the Diharce family received a little over $156 for each day they forfeited in their old rental home.

The Ugly
     This time, the "CBS Evening News" traveled all the way across the pond to push the alarmists' global warming agenda.

     The March 27 "Evening News" went to the coastline of England to show melting ice caps causing people to lose their homes.

     "Much of the effects of climate change have been couched in terms of if or when its effects will be felt," said CBS correspondent Mark Phillips. "Well, here there is no ‘if.' And when is now. So choices are being made. It's called managed retreat. Some areas of coastline deemed indefensible are being abandoned. Climate change is producing winners and losers, and Diana Wrightson and the others here have already lost."

     However, global warming expert Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, told the Business & Media Institute blaming global warming for this is "nonsense."

     "This story is nonsense from start to finish," Monckton told the Business & Media Institute. "As a result of continuing isostatic recovery following the recent end of the last Ice Age (about 9,000 years ago), the western half of the U.K. has been rising, and the eastern half has been falling."

     Monckton continued, "The loss of coastal properties in eastern England, which began occurring long before we could have had any appreciable influence on the climate, has nothing to do with rising seas and everything to do with falling land. But stories like this are constantly peddled by the leftist media, who have no regard whatsoever for objective truth."

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly tracks the best and worst media coverage of business and economics. Readers are invited to submit suggestions or news tips to Staff Writer Jeff Poor at jpoor@mediaresearch.org.