It’s about confidence…

Does this seem like a healthy working environment?

On his blog “The Feed” media critic for St. Petersburg Times Eric Deggans wondered how CNBC’s tourette’s afflicted financial “guru” Jim Cramer (host of his show Mad Money) kept his job after telling investors to get out of the market on NBC’s Today show.

On October 7th, Jim Cramer defended his statement on NBC’s Today show, saying he still stands behind what he said. According to anchor Meredith Vieira, his comments caused a “firestorm.” One email likened his comments to “yelling fire in a crowded building.” Another email pointed out that the financial system is based on “trust” and that Cramer was sabotaging it. What makes this all very ironic is that Cramer has been giving bad advice for a while (he told people to buy Wachovia and Bear Stearns stock), but he’s taking criticism for giving good advice this time: SELL!

Jim Cramer and business journalists (not that he is one) are stuck in a very odd position. Because the market is based so much on confidence, their collective coverage can affect the confidence of the market. It’s sort of like the “observer effect” in science that says in some experiments in quantum physics, the very observation of the experiment could change its outcome. Business journalists are in the same boat.

Howard Kurtz’s column “Press May Own a Share in Financial Mess” is about how business journalists failed to foresee this economic crisis. He acknowledges their difficult balancing act: “If these journalists shout too loudly, they can be accused of scaremongering and blamed for torpedoing the stock of outwardly healthy companies.”

Using The Wall Street Journal as an example, he says some stories and opinion pieces did warn about possible collapse, but they failed to paint a full picture of the economic crisis. Basically, they played it down. Some of the journalists he quotes in his piece offer hints as to why:

“…If we had written stories in late 2000 saying this whole thing’s going to collapse, people would have said, ‘Ha ha, maybe,’ and gone about their business.” – Fortune Magazine Managing Editor Andy Serwer.

“When I would cover these very issues about problems with regulation, problems with ‘is this a disaster waiting to happen?’ people would say: ‘Well, young man, you don’t have an MBA like I do. Trust us. We went to business school.’” – David Brancaccio, PBS.

“The business press tends to get in with the people that they cover. They get in the bubble that is Wall Street, just like political reporters get in the bubble that is the White House and the traveling press of the campaign . . . and they don’t see the obvious things.” – Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post business columnist, Pulitzer Prize winner.

This does not sound like an environment where honest journalism can go down. Can you smell filters?! How much does sourcing and corporate ownership contribute to the sunny optimism of business pages, even on the verge of a financial crisis? There is real pressure on business journalists to paint a rosy picture and when they don’t, they’re punished, even when they’re giving good advice at the time (a la Jim Cramer). There needs to be enough distance between the business journalist and the market, so that honest, objective reporting can go down.

Campaign Ads: Two, Media Critics: Zero

In the last month, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain has put out two undeniably dishonest campaign ads. The first, titled “Education,” claims that Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s one contribution to education legislation in the Senate was to support a bill that advocated “comprehensive sex education” for kindergarteners. Non-partisan, not for profit political watchdog Factcheck.org declared the ad “a factual failure.” In fact, Obama voted for (but didn’t officially sponsor) a bill that advocated enough sex education for kindergarteners to make them aware of the dangers of sexual molestation and predators.

McCain’s second ad, “Fact Check,” purports to quote Factcheck.org calling Obama’s attacks on vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin “completely false” and “misleading.” Factcheck.org was, in fact, referring to ludicrous anonymous Internet attacks on Palin. Showing Alaskan wolves on the prowl, the ad in question also claims that Obama sent “a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers” to Alaska to “dig dirt” on Palin. The Obama campaign said this was “completely false” and that “no one from the Obama campaign, or the DNC, has been sent to Alaska.” John McCain thinks sly, less than honest campaign ads will help him win the election and he may be right, despite efforts by the news media to expose these falsehoods.

We know and accept, unfortunately, that political candidates, Democrat and Republican, bend and distort the truth regularly. We look to the news media to expose the lies and set the record straight. But with mountains of campaign cash to pay for slickly produced campaign ads and the air time to carry them, candidates can bombard many millions more voters with fictional claims than working journalists could ever hope to reach with the truth.

If a candidate lies in a speech or at a press conference, a healthy press should jump all over it, in which case it will be covered, scrutinized and criticized by commentators on the air and in print. Responsible news outlets would find out we were lied to and broadcast it. As a result, more people will hear about the lie than heard it in the first place. But when a campaign ad maliciously misleads, the news media just can’t reach all those afflicted by the misinformation; the damage seems to be irreversible. According to a Wisconsin Advertising Project press release, by mid-September McCain’s ads had run nearly 600 times in Detroit, Michigan, a key battleground state, with nearly two million reachable households. Do the math. News outlets just can’t compete with that kind of exposure.

Even if a Detroit voter saw one of McCain’s deceptive ads fact-checked on the local news, it might not matter. A study by John Bullock, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, found that correction doesn’t necessarily fix bad information. Bullock found that when shown an ad by an abortion rights group against then nominee for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, many Democrats still thought worse about Roberts than they had originally, even after they were told that the charges brought against Mr. Roberts were completely false.

When confronted about his misleading ads on ABC’S The View and MSNBC’s Morning Joe, John McCain shamelessly insisted they were factual. In his campaign, the Republican candidate has been religiously antagonizing the media and accusing them of bias toward Barack Obama. His supporters no doubt applaud his defense of his own self promotion along with his spurious attacks on his opponents. Well aware of their effectiveness, the candidates spend hundreds of millions on ads, spending months if not years before every election to raise the money for them.

What can be done to undercut campaign ad deception? Perhaps the fairest solution would be to ensure that a campaign ad never runs alone – a rival would be guaranteed equal airtime in the next slot. This way, instead of a platform for shameless self promotion and deception, campaign ads could become mini multimedia debates. Also, with the knowledge that an opponent will have a chance to view the ad and craft a response before it airs, a candidate might think twice before bombarding us with baloney.

Bush, Bernake, Paulson: New Communists?

The New Communists

This image was a full-page ad in the September 23rd’s New York Times paid for by Bill Perkins, a Houston-based venture capitalist, who’s disgusted with the government’s plan to bailout Wall Street. As can be seen, it shows Bush, Bernanke and Paulson erecting an American flag (mimicking the iconic American photograph by Joe Rosenthal called “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima”) with the hammer and the sickle inscribed with “Big Insurance,” “Detroit Auto” and “Wall St. Banks.” In the background you see the tombstones of “Private Enterprise” and “Capitalism.”

This is a widely held opinion. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky) is called the bailout “economic socialism and “un-American.” Martin Schram’s column “The September Surprise shows Bush to be a socialist” says Bush will be remembered as a president who “brought socialism to the citadel of capitalism — Wall Street.” Every column by Cliff Kincaid, editor of the right wing Accuracy in the Media Report, invokes socialism: Socialist “Bailout” Could Spark Collapse (9/29), Will Conservatives Embrace Socialism? (9/27/), Senator Bunning Blasts “Financial Socialism” (9/24).

Interestingly, most of these critiques don’t actually explain why the bailout could be a bad idea. They operate under the assumption that Americans will stay true to Red Scare logic: “If the bailout looks like financial socialism and everything socialist is bad, the bailout must be bad.” Last time I checked, China’s economy wasn’t doing too badly. I wasn’t around during the Red Scare; can someone tell me what’s wrong with financial socialism?

These critical voices are not part of the mainstream, they’re coming from the free market freaks on the far-right who want the bill to fail. Sen. Jim Bunning’s quotes are buried in the tail end of hard news stories. The mainstream opinion, as demonstrated by the two presidential candidates (you can always count them to be in the middle of the road on rogue issues) supports the bill.

This pro-bailout stance isn’t surprising coming from the mainstream media, they’re own by corporations anyways. You wouldn’t wish destitution on your parents. But I’d bet in a country with healthy, vigorous, independent media outlets, this bailout would be opposed by editorial pages of all ideological slants: those on the far left are eager to see what happens when Capitalism is left to its own devices and those on the far right want to keep the free market intact.

What happens when the Rainforest meets Wall Street

Bailout = Bullshit (Rainforest Action Network, Flickr)

On Wednesday, October 1st, Activists with Rainforest Action Network hung an enormous American flag with “FORECLOSED?” emblazoned on it right behind the iconic Wall Street bull. I saw the police trying to take it down on my way to work. About 30 protesters gathered around with signs saying “families before finances” and “our money, our planet, our future.”

While Congress is on the verge of a bailout, it’s clear that many people want to hold Wall Street accountable for its own economic downfall. This could be a rare occasion when the commies and some Republicans agree: let Wall Street fail. Those on the far left are eager to see what happens when Capitalism is left to its own devices and those on the far right want to keep the free market intact.

Let’s give it a shot and please ‘em both.

Phelps’ Book on Tape

Phelps' first book

I was surfing the Simon & Schuster upcoming books list and clicked on a listing for “Built to Succeed,” Michael Phelps new memoir about his Olympic feat. When I read it is also coming out as a book on tape, my heart froze, I started to panic. I can say with profound certainty I would rather kill myself than listen to Michael Phelps read aloud his own autobiography. Running time is 6 hours!!

Luckily they haven’t decided who gets that lucky job: “Read by: TBA.”