The horror show, propaganda and the subdued

Troy Patterson, Slate’s television critic, watched CNBC, Fox Business Network and Bloomberg Television this week to get an idea of how each was handling its coverage of the economic crisis.

Patterson writes, “CNBC introduced a few such segments to the strains of a horror-show score, a snippet of apprehensive violins. At the bottom of the screen in the chyron, the network asked, ‘Is Your Money Safe?’ This was the central question of the day, and one that CNBC tended to address with thoroughness and sobriety, but it was being posed in a font—grotty, rotted-out, fit for the opening credits of some apocalyptic thriller or lurid prison documentary—that implied that your money was presently being excreted by cash-eating bacteria.”

As for Fox Business, Patterson noted, “Being the financial news network most directly engaged with politics, Fox cut, around 11 a.m., to John McCain on the campaign trail in Iowa, where he gave Main Street a meat-and-potatoes lecture on the credit crisis. Being the financial news network most directly engaged in propaganda, Fox followed the speech with analysis claiming that McCain was ‘really getting into the nitty-gritty’ in the talk, when really the senator had not dared to say anything that might surprise the most average freshman in the most remedial macroeconomics course.”

Bloomberg Television, Patterson wrote, “was notably more subdued, with academics offering cool reason, investors soberly pushing the ‘remarketing’ of the failed bailout bill, and the understated stock ticker crawling with good news in suave green. (Compare this with Fox’s garish neoclassical looks or CNBC’s silver graphical bling and the sound-effect whoosh of its incoming updates.) And anchor Deirdre Bolton was a revelation in a tweed blazer.”

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