Forbes.com columnist Gary Weiss thinks that the controversy surrounding CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo taking a plane trip with a Citigroup exec on its corporate jet is way overblown.
Weiss wrote, “Maria may be, well….. a bit too close to one of the companies she covers. That, however, is hardly a hanging offense in journalism and in financial journalism in particular. I railed against media puffiness in Wall Street Versus America, but what troubled me was the substance of the coverage, not the ethics of the journos.
“Where’s the ethical issue here? Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see it. She flew around in a corporate jet, with the knowledge of her employer. (They were ‘preapproved’ by CNBC, according to the Wall Street Journal.) She spoke to Citi clients, which I agree is not a great thing but, again, it was with the knowledge of her employer and is not against CNBC’s ethical rules. Above all, she did not get paid for them.
“There are plenty of reasons to get exercised over the financial press — such as the puffiness of much of the coverage, as exemplified by Maria’s BusinessWeek column — but flying around in somebody’s jet, after full disclosure to one’s employer, is not one of them.”
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