Why TV business journalists owe a debt to Myron Kandel

Marketwatch media columnist Jon Friedman takes a look at the career of CNN’s Myron Kandel, who paved a trial for reporting business news on cable television that has allowed others to make a career out of it.

Friedman writes, “He worked at CNN for 25 years, serving as the network’s financial editor and a very popular commentator. He shrugs off the notion that he was a trailblazer, but I’m happy to call him one.

“More than anyone else, Kandel and the late, great Louis Rukeyser popularized financial news on TV. Today’s broadcast journalists could learn a great deal from understanding what distinguished Kandel and Rukeyser from their peers. They knew their stuff, of course — and they offered viewers much more than many of today’s shouters, who seem to aim as much for entertainment as for analysis.

“‘I tried to add a common-sense approach,’ Kandel told me over breakfast. He always remembered that his job was to inform viewers, but not act as their stockbroker. ‘I never recommended a stock,’ he pointed out.”

Read more here.