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President Obama made remarks on the economy today at CAP, during which he ironically cited the new Pope’s moral question: “How it is not news when an elderly homeless person dies from exposure, but news when stock market loses two points?”

Obama was making a case for why we need a strong middle class and to offer opportunity for the working poor. This was obviously a part of his push for a decent minimum wage, which is Not News according to Fox and CNN. Both networks cut away from Obama’s speech, while MSNBC stayed tuned.

Fox News chose to continue to pretend that the ACA website is still broken, talk about Jodi Arias, and the link between obesity and heart disease. (A topic that should be very important to population of red state obesity cases that are addicted to Fox News). CNN decided that it was more important to discuss murder trials with Ashleigh Banfield than let their viewers hear the president tell them that corporations, right wing billionaires and Republicans are killing the American dream.

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Apparently it’s also only news when a website has a glitch, but when a President talks about income inequality and makes a case for rebuilding America’s “economic opportunity”, it’s not news.

“The combined trends of inequality, decreased mobility pose threat to economic standing at home, in the world,” the President said, calling for a higher minimum wage and more collective bargaining rights. He continued, “A child born into the bottom 20% has less than 1 out of 20 shot at making it to the top 20%.”

Why do our news networks think that the issues of economic opportunity and inequality aren’t worthy of air time? To rephrase the Pope, “How it is not news when a President is making a case to address increasing economic inequality, but Jodi Arias and Ashleigh Banfield are news?”

image: WWII Foundation