Networks Ignore New Request for $15 Billion Bailout for Fannie Mae

Mortgage-backer has bled taxpayers for more than $75 billion, but is rarely criticized by the news media

By Julia A. Seymour
Business & Media Institute

A business partly responsible for the economic downturn requested another $15.3 billion bailout last week.

It wasn’t one of the news media’s usual suspects, like the banks or insurance giant AIG – the ones they have repeatedly scorned and scrutinized for needing bailouts. It was government favorite and Democratic donor Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association, created as a public-private hybrid in 1938 but taken over by the federal government in Sept. 2008.