Fixing CNBC

The liberal group Media Matters for America has a new website up, fixcnbc.com, which is demanding changes at CNBC.

You screwed up badly. Don’t apologize – fix it!

CNBC should publicly declare that its new overriding mission will be responsible journalism that holds Wall Street accountable. As a down payment, we ask you to hire some new economic voices – people who have a track record of being right about the economic crisis and holding Wall Street executives’ feet to the fire.

Oh boy. Neither CNBC nor Jim Cramer are responsible for the credit crisis. If you think they are, then you don’t understand the crisis.

The idea that they need to hire “people who have a track record of being right about the economic crisis” is laughable. No economist predicted what happened because no economist could have predicted it. Some people got parts of it right, but were way off on many, many other aspects. And being right on one prediction doesn’t mean much about your next prediction.

One more thing. You can only ask for a down payment if you own something and someone else wants to buy it. Ironically, it was people who didn’t understand the concept of a down payment that Media Matters should be upset with. They can blame themselves.

Comments

[TCK:]

CNBC is far from perfect. But they are at least smarter than the congressional ( lack of ) oversight.

How scary is that ?

Mar 17 08:20 AM

[Flatiron:]

True, nobody got everything right but I can tell you THIS! While CNBC was touting on Sept 15 I went to cash and advised all I knew to do the same.

And CNBC has not stopper the puffing so maybe they could counter Santelli, Cramer and other excited guys with the likes of a Krugman or Reich ar maybe a Galbrath (BTW: read his book The Preditor State) Galbrath called the AIG fiasco a long time ago.

Mar 17 08:24 AM

[john s. gordon:]

as you said, oversight by CNBC is better than no oversight at all.
> jack

Mar 17 08:25 AM

[D_Virginia:]

CNBC is good for one thing: unfiltered news. You'll hear it there first (or close to it). And that's a good thing, don't get me wrong.

However, after that, they will repeat and reiterate that news most of the day, but don't expect them offer any kind of useful analysis or investigation of that news.

All you get when they do try are:
1) random predictions that try to sound urgent and
2) utter partisan hacks that can't put their own agendas down long enough to actually talk about the money

I forget who said it, but they were right on: (paraphrasing) "CNBC will make you stupid and poor. If you have to watch it, watch it with the sound off."

Mar 17 08:26 AM

[D_Virginia:]

> Ironically, it was people who didn’t understand the concept of a
> down payment that Media Matters should be upset with. They can
> blame themselves.

Easy there, Santelli-wannabe.

One thing that does piss me off about CNBC (and apparently Jon Stewart too) is their hypocrisy.

Everyone one of those failing homeowners would have been fine had the market continued to go up the way it had been -- and so would every failing company, for that matter. That's why they all leveraged as much as they did.

Coincidentally, every homeowner watching/reading CNBC as their due diligence would have had every reason to believe that the market WOULD continue to go up, because that's all CNBC kept saying.

Who's really to "blame" at this point is as much a philosophical argument as a factual one, but in terms of equal share, people /taking/ stupid loans are no more guilty than people /making/ stupid loans, and certainly no more guilty than so-called experts reporting about how great those stupid loans were for the markets.

Mar 17 08:35 AM

[This is all...:]

CNBC has been about 4 to one on bashing Obama and supporting tax cuts as a way to bring back jobs. I always wait for a journalist there to ask any company they choose this, when you get your tax break, how many jobs are you committed to add? Seems to me that if 70% of GDP is consumer spending, stocks won't really rebound until consumers are healthier, but that possibility is lost on all financial networks. whether its a truth or a fantasy, they don't want to talk about it. THAT is irresponsible and transparently one sided. Advertising and their core markets are their driving force, not objective thinking.

Mar 17 08:51 AM

[Flatiron:]

Far from perfect! These guys are puffing stock up, getting on the short side and then trashing and cashing in.

That is a Mob trick.

How do I know, I countered their "buy on the rumor sell on the news" crap and did just fine.

Mar 17 08:56 AM

[Nick Gogerty:]

CNBC has an average audience of 250k. The demographics indicate average household wealth of $1.2m. Here is some older data from 2008 showing the didn't reach Nielsen minimums. tvbythenumbers.com/200... More recent data reflects similar levels of interest. www.nytimes.com/2009/0...

CNBC like most media has a greatly exaggerated sense of self importance. The germain issue facing CNBC isn't of editorial programming choice, but rather survival.

I give them 6-8 quarters. Every hour spent watching CNBC is a lost opportunity to read a good book, blog or spend time with your family. Invest your time wisely. Your health and your time are your most important assets. Few will look back on their death beds and wished they had spent an extra hour of their lives watching CNBC.

Mar 17 08:58 AM

[Fabien Hug:]

I agree with you. It's common knowledge that they don't add value. I never watch them, too much noise.


On Mar 17 08:58 AM Nick Gogerty wrote:

> CNBC has an average audience of 250k. The demographics indicate
> average household wealth of $1.2m. Here is some older data from
> 2008 showing the didn't reach Nielsen minimums. tvbythenumbers.com/200...
> More recent data reflects similar levels of interest. www.nytimes.com/2009/0...
>
>
> CNBC like most media has a greatly exaggerated sense of self importance.
> The germain issue facing CNBC isn't of editorial programming choice,
> but rather survival.
>
> I give them 6-8 quarters. Every hour spent watching CNBC is a lost
> opportunity to read a good book, blog or spend time with your family.
> Invest your time wisely. Your health and your time are your most
> important assets. Few will look back on their death beds and wished
> they had spent an extra hour of their lives watching CNBC.

Mar 17 09:17 AM

[SALTAWAY:]

They lost any usefullness for me after the tech bubble burst. Before it burst at least they would "poke fun" at some of the market caps of companies making no profits and often through humor made the point that valuations were getting absurd. Since the bubble "burst"...nothing but noise from CNBC.

Mar 17 09:40 AM

[andrew j:]

<i>Oh boy. Neither CNBC nor Jim Cramer are responsible for the credit crisis. If you think they are, then you don’t understand the crisis.</i>

You've got a nice little self-righteousness thing going here, and i hate to spoil it. But i don't see anywhere on the site or in your quote them saying that CNBC or Cramer were responsible -- complicit, maybe, but hardly responsible.

More to the point, you're missing the forest for the trees here. The objections stewart et al have with CNBC is the blending of financial advice with entertainment and shock news, in addition to having some clear conflicts of interests that they rarely disclose.

I'm with Nick Gogerty, but i don't think they'll die -- they already have too many big-pocketed institutions happy with the low cost PR & free softball interviews they already provide. Whether anyone watches or not, well, that's a different question.

Mar 17 09:53 AM

[Robert Jung:]

CNBC is there to SELL advertisement time, "period".

They are in business to make a profit. So they will do what it take to make a profit. I personally don't think they are biased in their reporting; at least not like the national news programs.

The world is not and will not ever be fair. This is the problem with "the everyone gets a trophy" group. If you just ignore "media matters" you take away their power.

I hope America stops it mouth breathing, drooling, lazy behavior and starts to educate themselves. Don't be spoon fed from the left nor the right. Neither provides the answer.

Be responsible for yourself and your family and quit relying on "Uncle Sam".

Mar 17 09:55 AM

[The Spiral ...:]

I’m not sure the new “spicy” format at CNBC is all that distinguishable from that at the E! News channel. CNBC is a business trying to turn a buck, albeit occasionally annoying (who isn’t) and just following a common trend in the media to write and report in a style generally used by bloggers. I don’t know if it’s good, but it’s fun to watch. Media Matters is complaining because CNBC is a soft target, lots of supporters and detractors (i.e. web traffic). I suggest they focus on the folk’s at the NYT; that paper is reading like The Onion more and more each day.

Mar 17 10:17 AM

[bobbobwhite:]

Media Matters may have not stated in the correct way what they wanted to change about CNBC. I do not think MMA meant CNBC needs people reporting who were "right about the economic crisis" as you interpreted it to mean, it meant that CNBC needs reporters who see the crisis for what it is correctly and do not slant its causation, processing nor its potential remedies due to political bias.

But, anyway, you can forget that possibility. GE owns CNBC and has a conservative political agenda as that agenda better serves its overall business operation.

Mar 17 10:40 AM

[bobbobwhite:]

According to my own test done over the course of two weeks, CNBC has 23 to 27 minutes of content air time per hour, the rest of the minutes are packed with inane commercials. I do not watch ANY programming with that agenda as it is only meant to sell soap, not content. Thus, how much value does any content in that format have?

Any smart 10 year-old can see that after one viewing.

Mar 17 10:46 AM

[ain't no fo...:]

Actually, I watch, but don't listen. They are on almost permanent mute. They've turned into a shill for the repugnicans, most of their interviews are with repugnican pols now, trying to do damage control for what the 12 year reign of repugs in congress from 1994 to 2006 did to our economy.

One day last week they trotted out McConnell, Hutchison and Shelby in a 6 hour time frame to bash the administration, bash the stimulus, bash everything the Obama administration is trying to do to stabilize things. And in that time frame NO Democrats and/or administration members.

You rarely see anyone from the Obama administration invited on, or Democrats from Congress, certainly nothing anywhere near in proportion to the repugs they trot out.

Its become nothing more than a staging area for RNC partisan attacks.... Kernan, Quintania, Gasparino, Kudlow... on and on.

And then there is Crammer, the supposed hedge fund big hitter turned game show host...


On Mar 17 09:17 AM fabien hug wrote:

> I agree with you. It's common knowledge that they don't add value.
> I never watch them, too much noise.

Mar 17 12:00 PM

[friar tuck:]

i like jon stewart but he did some arm chair quarterbacking there against cramer as hindsight is 20/20. if cnbc would get rid of kudlow, maybe send him to england because he's always dissing our way of government, more people would watch. these nuts who voted for dumb and dumber for president just can't get over the fact that our government governs only those who wish to be governed. the people can vote for whoever they choose.

Mar 17 12:05 PM

[Phil Trupp:]

The job of any news organization is to cover the news. Unfortunately news outlets which cover corporate matters tend to morph into the culture they are covering, replete with its specialized hype, distortions and outright falsehoods. Sad to say CNBC is among the worst offenders.

Mar 17 12:28 PM