Categories: OLD Media Moves

Getting the business treatment

Howard Bernstein, a former TV producer, blogs about the problems with business journalism and what he would do to improve its performance.

Bernstein writes, “My first proposal is that it should be against the law to name any stock or other financial product as something that the public should buy or sell. The practice is far to open to manipulation. Just as an example: CNBC says Amalgamated Baloney is a good buy. The suckers go out and buy up the shares driving the prices up. The guy at CNBC sells his shares at the inflated price. The suckers are left holding the worthless bag when the prices fall back to what they are really worth. Has something like this happened? I bet it has. Can anyone prove it hasn’t? In any case why allow a practice that is so open to manipulation and fraud. Ban the touts and the touting.

“It is an old joke that if you ask 100 economists where the economy is going you get 100 different answers. If the so-called pros can’t agree, it should therefore be illegal for TV hosts and pundits to predict where the economies and markets of the world are going. There is far too much money being bet on the apparent expertise of these hosts and pundits. I say the business media should get out of the prediction game and report the facts, the facts that can be proven to be true, just like the rest of the journalists are forced to do. If you cannot prove it, you cannot report it. Finished. The end.

“Finally, I think it’s time to remove business news, as a sub-heading, in mainstream news. Most people don’t care about the markets or the economic minutia. They want to know where their next pay cheque is coming from and what bread and milk are going to cost tomorrow. If something happens in the economy or the markets that is newsworthy it should have to compete with the political news, the murders and the car accidents for air time. When Chrysler adds jobs in Oshawa, that’s a story. The unemployment figures and the budget are stories. The markets jumping or diving 150 points, that’s a story. But when Honda announces a dividend or the stock market climbs 0.2 percent what the heck is that doing on our TV newscasts and in our major newspapers?”

View Comments

Joey says:
April 13, 2010 at 4:44 pm
First, touting a stock isn't journalism, it's stock-touting and that's something different.
Second, if you're an idiot who listens to stock touts you hear on TV, you're going to be an idiot and listen to them somewhere else if we don't have them on TV. The good news: you're probably so uneducated that you don't have much money to put at risk anyway.
Third, the joke is that if you ask 100 economists their opinion on the economy, you'll get 101 different answers. Where did you find this fool?
Fatarb says:
April 15, 2010 at 4:34 am
Bertnstein is right.
I've spent a lifetime in the financial markets and it's consistently been my experience with the business media that they won't contemplate any criticism of the hand that feeds them the advertising revenue ie big business, nor will they broadcast/print anything which might put a damper on growth within the sector they report on - it's just not in their interest to do so.
The point Bernstein makes about being cut off after criticism and the problems that then brings to continuing to do the job is very pertinent and very much under appreciated. It happens in just the same way outside of business journalism, I know for example of sports journalists who were refused interviews, entry to grounds etc after being critical of the then current management policy of the club and thereafter the worth of that journalist to his employer and in the market place deteriorated rapidly thereafter.
Joey thinks he's smarter than the average and the "idiots" and " uneducated" deserve what they get that's a view which is not uncommon but it's held by people who I don't respect. I've worked with the very rich and better educated most of my life but it's with the poorer and less educated I have had the most worthwhile experiences and lasting friendships - and it's these less fortunate souls who deserve better protection from the misleading propaganda generally churned out by much of the business media .