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CNBC is symptom of business media's refusal to incorporate credibility, objectivity

Submitted by Chad on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 1:41pm.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Chad Rubel

If you are a sports fan, imagine watching ESPN and having them report on the positives of the games without mentioning injured players or whether some players were taking steroids. You would be upset that you aren't getting the whole picture.

Well, if you are watching the business news channels, you weren't getting the full story when things were good, and any rational explanations for why we're here now haven't been explored yet.

"During the bubble, everybody's a cheerleader, right. Now we're in the bust, everybody is a psychologist," said The New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera on last night's "Daily Show with Jon Stewart." "If you watch it then, you felt like running out and buying stocks and that was really the purpose of the whole thing."

According to the listings from my cable company, I get CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business Channel as well as HD versions of CNBC and FBC along with CNBC World. Forgetting the HD versions (maybe bad news looks better in HD), there are four business news channels that come into my home. And I don't think I could trust any of them.

There has to be more to business media than "buy stocks."

It didn't have to take a sharp nosedive in the markets or even watching last night "Daily Show" to know that the business media -- print or TV -- missed the boat on what was coming and what we should do about this. To be fair, print journalists such as Steven Pearlstein are the rare exception and not the rule. But by and large, the boat was missed -- badly.

If ESPN behaved as badly as CNBC et al., I wouldn't watch them, and millions would join me. But the financial news networks want us to watch them as if they are digging into the business world, and they aren't.

The biggest business story in 70 years, and at least four 24-hour business channels at the command, and the story blew by them like a softly thrown knuckleball.

They can't even cover the regular groundballs, almost as if there isn't a glove in sight. The visuals from last night's "Daily Show" tell a compelling story. "What's it like to be a billionaire?"

How about "What's it like to miss every single significant business story in the last year or so and not feel bad when that happens?"

In sports reporting, there is a phrase, "No cheering in the press box." In business reporting, there is nothing but cheering for the business executives.

The business media channels might get the rest of us to watch them if they introduced objectivity into the spectrum. Ask a tough question or two. We don't expect the business media to out-report the rest of the corporate media. But by comparison, the corporate media looks like Glenn Greenwald and Greg Palast when put up against the business media, especially on TV.  

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS




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Propaganda Is Their Purpose...

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 10:26pm.

...Their ONLY Purpose

Any connection between the business "news" channels and real news is strictly coincidental. One can admire how MSNBC has a liberal evening lineup, but the rest of the day they present a lineup almost as off the edge of the spectrum as FOX. CNN - with the regular exception of Jack Cafferty - is almost a FOX clone. And CNBC is a lost cause, with a clear political agenda constantly presented as reporting.

I continue to marvel at why so much effort is directed at changing the establishment media when it is clear that it is a lost cause. One cannot win a battle on ground chosen and owned by the enemy. There are other media options which are ripe for development, and if the wasted mainstream efforts were applied to these, the alternatives would rapidly become viable. The people are already making their preferences clear, or else "broadcast" television and local newspapers wouldn't be complaining about falling revenues due to a seriously reduced customer base. The smart media content provider adapts to the new media world or gets left behind with the dinosaurs.

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millionaires

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 7:29am.
my father told me once "never let a millionaire talk you into spending a thousand dollars", of course, at the time, I just stared at him because I did not have a thousand dollars. as I got older I started to understand what he was talking about. these "millionaires" are not worried about you making any money, they are only out for themselves. they will take your 1000 and the 1000s they collect from other suckers and parlay it into a fortune for themselves while you, in the end, make peanuts or less. hell, after its over and he has made his money, you might find out that you some how lost yours. I guess my point is these financial "gurus" in this day and age don't have our best interest in mind, they have sold their stocks when they were high, thay want the market to crash so they can buy back everything for pennies on the dollar. its only the unknowing that are losing money in the markets today.
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Who pays the bills?

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 5:31pm.
Look at the commercials on any program on any financial news channel.Who do they work for? The invester or the corporations who get the cash?All you hear is that Obama is some how responsible for all this and the corps are just in shock over this whole thing. I have no finacial training.I don't watch the finacial channels or read the journal. But I saw this coming back in 2000 when homes worth 35k were selling for 250k! Madness! My little 990ft. house here in Michigan cost me 169k. New worth...65k.Untill ALL banks are nationalized,we have universal health care and a complete overhaul of our corperate system (military too), we will be stuck in a ever excellerating economic decline that can only end in poverty and war.
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