Addicted to financial porn?

Doug Short of The Motley Fool writes about how easy it is to get addicted to the financial porn on business TV shows.

Short wrote, “The airwaves are awash with real-time coverage of the markets. I could spend my entire waking life toggling between CNBC, Bloomberg, and now Fox Business News. If I’m watching Squawk on the Street but need to run to the store, no problem! I can catch the broadcast on XM Radio. Off to the gym? Every treadmill at my fitness center has a personal LCD TV attached. I can pace myself to streaming live quotes from the New York Stock Exchange.

“The program formats for these business channels feature the same basic routines. They alternate between interviews with fund managers – ‘What are you buying in this market?’ — and showdowns between financial pundits on hot topics – ‘Are we heading for a recession? Is it time to nibble on financials? Will we get a January rally?’

“The phrase ‘financial porn’ was coined in 1998 by Jane Bryant Quinn, the Newsweek contributing editor for personal finance. Almost a decade later, my Google search scored more than 1,500 hits on the phrase. It even has an Investopedia entry, which carries an explicit warning: ‘Short-term focus by the media on a financial topic can create excitement that does little to help investors make smart, long-term financial decisions, and in many cases clouds investors’ decision-making ability.'”

Read more here.Â