WSJ steps over the line with Disney

TheStreet.com media critic Marek Fuchs writes Wednesday that a Wall Street Journal story on Walt Disney Co. went too far in predicting financial problems for the company due to the credit crunch.

Fuchs writes, “In a WSJ article about Disney today — ‘Headwind Threatens Disney Parks: Global Economic Slowdown Promises to Take a Toll on Next Year’s Bookings’ — actual proof (such as hard booking information) is absent. Even well-founded intuition, which is far easier to come by, is nonexistent. There is no mention of troubling indicators, such as, say, an increase in promotional activity.

“And yet there is that dire and scary sub-headline, which has all the subtlety of a finger in the eye.

“The business media are always stepping over the line — and usually at just the wrong time — between too positive and too negative. They give voice to the madness of the panicked or elated crowd, even as they push it further in the direction it was going, and much of what The Business Press Maven has done in the past couple of years has involved waving big red flags about how the business media were too blindly positive.

“And now? Well, such corrosively negative articles as this one are still infrequent, but the times, they just might be a-changin’.”

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