Business journalism is broken and needs to be fixed

Del Marbrook, a former newspaper editor, argues in a posting Friday afternoon that there’s something seriously wrong with business journalism these days when business affects virtually everyone but most people are still more interested in reading about sports or the obituaries in their daily paper.

Marbrook wrote, “The majority of Americans are wage earners. They neither have their own businesses nor help run businesses. Their wages have been more or less stagnant for two decades while the cost of living has risen relentlessly. Now their jobs are being exported and their unions broken, and yet the business section of their newspaper doesn’t interest them as much as, say, sports or obituaries.

“Something is wrong with this picture, something verging on hoax. We need to reexamine the history and function of business news, whether it’s the business section of a newspaper or the business segment of a telecast or even publications given over wholly to business.”

Later, he added, “In other words, every day and in every way business is trying to milk money from every civil right you assume you have because you are American. But the media persist in reporting your rights as one story and business as another, and that is simply a distorted view of what is actually happening. And the media persist in ignoring the shortsightedness of destroying the middle class on the one hand and bilking it on the other hand.  Thomas Jefferson foresaw that corporations could corrupt the fledgling democracy he and his colleagues were trying to create. If he could have foreseen the extent to which Congress would put itself in the pockets of lobbyists he probably would have proposed Constitutional precautions.”

Read more here.