NPR’s Morning Edition ran a revealing (if unsurprising) story yesterday on credit cards that consumer advocates call “fee-harvesters.” The companies give the cards to consumers without good credit and make money on fees. Capital One charged a seventy-two-year-old woman living on Social Security over $1100 for $400 in purchases. And the debt collectors sought $1500 more. (The story was based on a study by the National Consumer Law Center.) The companies will advertise that a card has a $2000 limit, but the nominal limit is actually $200-$300. That limit is actually a lie, though, because the company will then deduct (i.e., the consumer will incur instantly as debt) over $150 in fees, which leave the consumer with about $50-$70 in credit. Once a customer exceeds that limit, it’s more fees! The industry defends the practice as offering credit to consumers who otherwise wouldn’t get credit and argues that federal regulations would---you got it---hurt lower-income consumers by denying them credit.

Kudos to NPR for reporting this story. The credit-card companies come off as villains, and they have to make arguments that are completely ludicrous. Indeed, the more stories like this that appear, the less credible Mitt Romney, etc. sound when they intone against “big government, big taxes, Big Brother running your lives.” Nevertheless, the story still plays a little too much he-said--she-said. In a great column last week, Paul Krugman once again criticized the media for relying on this cheaper, easier method of reporting. His main argument was that the commentariat should consider candidates’ mendacity a character issue, and he exhibited the Republicans’ attacks on Democratic proposals for universal healthcare. In a nice aside, though, he wrote: “Memo to editors: If a candidate says something completely false, it’s not ‘in dispute.’ It’s not the case that ‘Democrats say’ they’re not advocating British-style socialized medicine; they aren’t.”

During its pledge drive (as all public-radio listeners know), NPR boasts that it offers “in depth” reporting that “gets behind the story.” And, many of it’s shows do just that. Marketplace (unfortunately sponsored by about every bank out there), for example, has a host, Kai Ryssdal, who often does ask pointed questions to commentators (which, last night, included Professor Katie Porter). And Fresh Air ran an excellent interview with political scientist Jonathan Oblerlander over the summer, which analyzed how various healthcare systems around the world work.  Compare this reaction to Sicko with CNN's.  At the end of the day, NPR is leagues better than TV news, but it’s too bad its reporters, themselves armed with the facts, couldn’t challenge the industry spokesperson to support her claims with empirical data. Those pesky facts might really have gotten in the way of her claims.