CNBC drops “World Business” show

CNBC has pulled its weekend international business show, “World Business,” after it was discovered that the show’s production company was doubling as a PR firm for Malaysian politicians, reports Keach Hagey of Politico.

Hagey writes, “‘In light of serious questions raised last week, CNBC immediately initiative an examination of FBC and its business practices and has withdrawn the program ‘World Business’ indefinitely,’ Brian Steel, senior vice president of media relations at CNBC, told POLITICO.

“‘World Business’ did not run in the U.S. market, but aired in Europe on Friday nights and in Asia on Saturday evenings.

“FBC Media, short for Fact Based Communications, was formed in 1998 as a ‘European-based media and entertainment group specialising in television format creation, production and distribution,’ according to a cached version of its website. Its active website has apparently been taken down.

“The company’s executive chairman is Alan Friedman, an American journalist who interned in the Carter White House and worked as a columnist for the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. Last year, he wrote for The Atlantic as a special correspondent from Davos.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.