McCarthy writes, “Nowhere is this unholy alliance more obvious than on the business page. In what other section are journalists so uniformly filled with animosity toward the subjects they claim to cover objectively? An arts writer who despised film and music, or a sportswriter who loathed football and golf would register as odd if not unfit. But anyone who has interacted with them can tell you that most business writers are steeped in progressive worldviews intrinsically hostile to markets and predisposed to government regulation and control.
“That could be because most have never worked in corporate America, nor studied economics beyond an undergraduate survey. Journalism and other liberal-arts departments at the universities that stock our press corps are dominated by faculty with an anti-market animus manifestly transmitted to their students. As a consequence, few business writers display any understanding of the motivations or worldviews of the people who drive private enterprise.
“The result is coverage in which any perceived market failure yields a predictable consensus around a set of supposed bad actors with malignant influence who must be stopped via regulatory or legal intervention.”
Read more here. COMMENT: I’ve been teaching business journalism for 20 years now, and I always tell my students that I am pro-business. What I don’t like are companies that rip off consumers, hurt their employees, and are scams.
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Kind thanks for sharing the piece, Chris. I'm a longtime reader of your blog and you may recall we dialogued years ago when I was helping several clients during the Spitzer wars and media obsessions over executive compensation. Lots to kick around on this topic of course, so please count me in if there's ever opportunity or forum in your work to do so. Best, Jim