Cramer and Velshi: Let's get serious about the economy
Now that everyone understands how perilous the economic times have become, it does not seem unreasonable to ask the executives running the cable channels to showcase some of their best reporters on the story -- and rein in the likes of Jim Cramer on CNBC and Ali Velshi on CNN.
I really believe American business journalism can do better -- and we have never needed it more in recent history. Does anyone remember Louis Rukeyser? (Here's an obit I wrote about him in 2006.) He had his quirks and conflicts, but wouldn't it be nice to have him on PBS today?
I wrote last week about Velshi's flawed performance as lead correspondent on CNN's breaking coverage of the rejection of the Wall Street bailout plan by the House. He was all opinion and few facts -- insisting in a loud and excited voice that the bailout plan must pass or a financial crisis would immediately follow.
I posted before Velshi really went off and got in a shouting match with another talking head who dared to disagree with him. Financial experts appearing out of control are not what we need to see on TV these days. For contrast, think of the calm, measured tones in which BBC has reported the economic turmoil abroad.
And now comes CNBC talk show host Jim Cramer, appearing on the Today Show Monday telling viewers to get out of the stock market as fast as they can.
"Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the market right now, this week," he said in a dramatically quiet voice on Monday morning's Today.
I say quiet, because his TV persona is the opposite with him sweating and squirming and yelling as if in a shaman-like trance as he gets his great visions. Two weeks ago, the great vision was to buy Wachovia stock.
"I do not like to say these things on TV," Cramer said in that dramatic voice Monday, sounding as if he was pronouncing the economy terminal.
I am not saying Cramer was or was not a contributing factor, but the market dropped like a brick most of the day.
Today is one of the flagship broadcasts of NBC News, an organization with credibility built on an impressive 70 year history. Whatever you think of Cramer, the credibility of NBC News surely stood behind that statement in the minds of some of the millions of viewers who watch Today every day. That's why I mentioned him being dead wrong on Wachovia, because even if he turns out to have been right today, the point is that a guy who has been wrong more than once before is being showcased as a voice of wisdom on network TV.
Cable channels don't have broadcast licenses from the government, but affiliates of networks like NBC do. Surely, the general managers at those stations understand the sense of civic duty that comes with those licenses.
Maybe they can lobby for their corporate cable cousins to step up in this time of crisis, lose their show-biz ways for a while, and think about giving Americans the kind of reliable and verified factual information that we have not needed so desperately since World War II.
Let's call a hiatus on cable TV clown time until we are out of crisis.
Comments
Funny you should mention the lack of good finciacial reporting. NPR's "On The Media" just had a segment on it. The transscript can be had at: www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/09/19/02
Thanks for the info -- and the link. And speaking of public broadcasting, I am focused in that post on cable and cnbc's network cousins at NBC. But Paul Solmon has long done outstanding work on Jim Lehrer's NewsHour on PBS. But Solmon does not have the kind of visibility -- or indeed daily presence -- that the cable clowns do.Z
Posted by: Paul | October 6, 2008 4:25 PM
Dr. Z -Your mother would be ashamed. It appears as if you looked at Cramer for comments that led to today's negative market and put the two together. He is knowledgeable entertainment. Anyone who gets their financial advise from one source should not be in the stock market. Cramer says it all the time -do your research. A simple analogy is to blame the refs for yesterday's Ravens loss. Hey they control their own destiny. If you sell because Cramer says to and buy because he says so-you deserve what you get.Sorry that is not bad on his part, it's just part of the story. By the way I am buying. Buffett's adage When others are greedy, I am fearful and when other's are fearful I am greedy.
Posted by: mdlrvrmuncher | October 6, 2008 5:23 PM
You should check out his website about the Wachovia issue. It went from buy, to sell (with the CEO on the wall of shame), to an explanation of the whole story.
You can only purchase stock in a company based on what's on the books. If the books are wrong, then you can't make a good decision either way. What good can a level-headed talking head do when the sky, floor, and walls are already falling?
BBC is much better? Didn't talks between the EU fall apart, with France, Germany and others doing their own thing to take care of national interests this weekend? I guess the BBC would've been much better describing that...
Posted by: Cheese | October 7, 2008 3:07 PM
If Obama wins (which he's likely to), just watch the clouds part and the Munchkins 'come out! come out!' over the course of November and December. I guarantee that more than a few people will suggest that this was a ploy to get a certain man elected. Manufacture a crisis that helps him literally win the day.
Posted by: Chris | October 8, 2008 12:24 PM
Surely, we can’t blame a single person in the situation we are in right now. If Cramer has said something that somebody think was absurd then it is their right not to believe in him. Financial crisis is all about all the bad economic aspects that merge together to be a self-destruction bomb that anytime will blow up and destroy everything humankind had ever built. Exaggerated but that is what we are afraid right now. One of these days, we’ll just notice that everything we had especially money would be worthless. We can’t always be Jon Stewart all the time by ridiculing someone like Cramer just for the show. Jon Stewart gets headlines. Jon Stewart is already one of the most popular sources for the interpretations of news headlines that people turn to. Recently he went after Jim Cramer, the former hedge fund manager and financial analyst on CNBC’s Mad Money, an investment show about what to put your money into on Wall Street. Stewart pilloried Cramer last week, along with the CNBC network or NAMBLA, as being ignorant or at worst complicit with the various Wall Street shenanigans of the last few years. He pointed out that certain firms had taken on too much debt because their practices were making short term profits – at least, until the collapse. An unflinching desire to take people to task is part of what makes an American icon.
Hi Aiden, no one is blaming a single person. That is the spin CNBC trying to put on Stewaret's devastating critique of the situation after the fact. Thanks. Z
Posted by: Aidan B. | March 19, 2009 5:39 AM