The problems with TV business news

Margaret Heffernan, writing on The Huffington Post, writes Friday about the “sado-masochistic sport that is now TV business coverage.”

Heffernan wrote, “Recession? What recession? Whether you’re watching CNBC or just browsing through newsstands, that’s what seems to be on everyone’s mind. Are we in a disaster, heading for a disaster – or really pretty okay? Pundits on TV screen squack endlessly: we are going down the tubes, we are already at the bottom, or well, ya’know, it’s not really so bad. Jack Welch says one thing, Warren Buffet says another. Our favourite witch doctors peddle hope and hysteria. Who should you believe?

“Believe no one. Why? Because nobody knows. This parlor game of guessing the future, for all that it’s laden with data and charts, is still just hocus pocus. The future (of markets and everything else) is not written and you can’t steal a peak at the end of the book to see how it ends. The complexity of world markets is so immense that no one can model it, never mind predict it.”

Read more here.