Covering the ratings downgrade

Joe Pompeo of Yahoo News looks at how the business news networks have been covering the decision by Standard & Poor’s to lower the AAA rating of the U.S. government, which has caused the stock market to fall on Monday.

Pompeo writes, “And indeed, two leading cable business outlets were all over the news. Bloomberg TV produced a live special report for S&P’s downgrade announcement, shortly after 8 p.m. Friday evening. At the time, Bloomberg economics editor Michael McKee was covering Cumberland Advisers’ annual fishing trip in rural Maine,  so he was able to jump on the air immediately with e heavyweights such as the economists Nouriel Roubini and Barry Ritholtz for a special that lasted two and a half hours. Fox Business Network broke into a special report with Gerri Willis shortly thereafter, covering the details of the announcement live from 9-11 p.m., and again with Neil Cavuto on Saturday.

“But CNBC, the most-watched and–many would argue–most influential of the three, devoted its Friday evening schedule to repeats of ’60 Minutes,’ ‘How I Made My Millions’ and ‘Remington Under Fire.’ By Sunday evening, all the networks had cued up special reports–and inevitably have focused most of their programing today on the market reaction, as have the general news channels.

“To be fair, it’s not as if CNBC was late to the party. In fact, correspondent Kate Kelly reported around 4:30 Friday afternoon on ‘Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo’ that the government was bracing for a downgrade. So perhaps, then, viewers of the ‘First in Business Worldwide’ were surprised when they had to turn to the competition to follow the downgrade story on Friday?”

Read more here.