Did American Airlines royally screw up, or royally screw over taxpayers?
American Airlines’ fail is even worse than this
Here’s a perfect example of establishment bias related to a story that actually has been reported on in the mainstream media, but where they’ve buried the lede (yes, that’s how it’s spelled in this context!).
American Airlines is canceling lots of flights. But the main reason for this, and why it’s a scandal — or at least should be a scandal — is being left out of the story.
Airlines, including AA, received billions of taxpayer dollars in covid relief to make sure they could keep their operations going. Since they got rid of a lot of pilots and other essential employees, and now have a shortage of pilots and don’t have enough personnel for their flights, it’s obvious AA mismanaged things, whether intentionally (which seems likely) or not.
That bailout money, or discussion of what happened to it, isn’t mentioned in many of the articles or reports I’ve seen. If the bailout is mentioned, it’s a quick aside several paragraphs into the article or well into the segment.
Here’s one of several examples I found: in this case, a segment on CNN about this that doesn’t mention the bailout at all.
Click on the screengrab above to view the video
Many in the media are instead focusing on the long lines and the headaches it’s causing customers. Which are important to mention.
But when they eventually try to explain the causes behind this entire mess, it’s almost as if the corporate media are too afraid to suggest or look into whether there may have been corruption at American Airlines, with money going somewhere it shouldn’t? 😲 Seems like something to investigate to me
They often give a combination of one or more of these excuses that have nothing to do with what on earth AA did with the billions of dollars Uncle Sam gave them.
Too many customers suddenly came back too quickly!
It’s been such a hard time for business for everyone during the pandemic!
They had to lay off workers because they didn’t have enough flights during the pandemic!
Pilots are too rusty and need to be recertified and/or retrained!
There aren’t enough qualified pilots to go around!
There wasn’t enough time to hire enough other employees to help things go more smoothly!
My favorite: the weather’s just been too bad!
They don’t mention or emphasize the billions in covid-19 relief aid — which they got months before most Americans got any direct aid.
They’ve royally screwed up, or more likely, royally screwed over American taxpayers.
Maybe American Airlines could have used, or still could use, some of that money to do things like
not fire so many employees, resulting in a situation where AA wasn’t prepared for when more flights could resume
raise salaries to incentivize previous employees to come back to these stressful, often underpaid, jobs.
often better benefits to entice returning and new employees to stay with the company
keep pilot training and certification underway
come clean and explain to journalists and/or Congress why they appear to have wasted billion dollars
Here’s a much better segment by an independent media outlet, The Kyle Kulinski Show.
To be fair, that’s a 9-minute segment. Maybe the 24-hour news network didn’t have that much time to delve into it.
The take-away:
Journalists for corporate media outlets should watch independent media to either help them take off their blinders and look deeper into why things are happening — or why corporations are at fault for them.
Or if they’re purposely protecting airlines over the passengers who paid billions in tax dollars to avoid exactly this sort of situation, watching independent media might help reporters grow a conscience, expose incompetence and/or corruption, and start speaking truth to power.
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