Wall Street schmooze and spin

Media author Howard Kurtz says financial journalists are more powerful and morally bereft than Washington's political pundits.

By Alan Deutschman

Topics:CNN, Lou Dobbs

If the media is a moral Inferno — a tortured realm of commonplace conflict of interest, hidden manipulation and pervasive deceit, betrayal and megalomania — then Howard Kurtz is its Dante.

With each new book, the tireless Kurtz (whose day job is as media columnist for the Washington Post) descends to an even deeper and more damnable level of media hell and serves as a knowing guide. The last time around, in “Spin Cycle,” he showed how our favorite White House correspondents got spun by the Clinton propaganda machine. Where could Kurtz possibly look next for an even stickier pool of moral muck ready for raking? The answer is Wall Street. And in his latest book, “The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street’s Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation,” he takes on the proliferation of media outlets, like CNBC and CNN, that traffic in advice and rumors about the stock market for a public hooked on frantic speculation.

Kurtz, who’s based inside the Beltway, spent 18 months hanging out in the canyons of the Street, where he discovered that New York’s financial press is more powerful and morally bereft than Washington’s political punditry. “No single reporter can affect White House policies or a candidate’s campaign through mere analysis or commentary,” he writes. “In this realm, journalists are score-keepers and second-guessers and naysayers, and their influence is ephemeral and diffuse.” But on Wall Street, “financial journalists are players. They make things happen instantaneously, and their impact is gauged not by subjective polls but by the starker standard of stock prices.” When reporters tout or bad-mouth a stock on TV, their pronouncements can alter a company’s market value by billions of dollars within minutes.

With that kind of money at stake, it’s no surprise that the powers of Wall Street — the CEOs, brokerage honchos and mutual-fund managers — are constantly trying to use journalists for their own ends. Kurtz shows that reporters allow themselves to be used by these self-interested sources because the media has such a continuous need for fresh material — for a “nonstop flow of tips, touts, picks, and pans” to lure millions of viewers and readers seeking that elusive edge.

The strange thing is that no one ever holds the journalists accountable for being wrong — and they are wrong so much of the time. And hardly anyone notices that the stock analysts and financiers supplying the opinions have a tremendous conflict of interest, since they’re often touting stocks they own or puffing companies that are their investment banking clients. “The media’s willingness to play along with this insider’s game is nothing short of appalling,” Kurtz concludes. “It’s as if a presidential candidate’s chief fundraiser put out a report predicting a great future for this man, and this caused a spike in the politician’s approval rating.”

Kurtz’s analysis is persuasive, but he doesn’t belabor his own punditry, which is mostly confined to the book’s introduction and its afterword. In between he follows a large cast of media players as they covered the stock market from 1998 to earlier this year, serving up dead-on profiles of stars like CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo (the “Money Honey”), TheStreet.com’s James Cramer and former CNN Moneyline anchor Lou Dobbs, who left the cable network to head up Space.com. As Kurtz takes us through all the jarring NASDAQ swings, his narrative is compelling, though occasionally a bit numbing, as if you’ve been watching CNBC all day and still can’t get off the couch.

But what makes the book so good is Kurtz’s taste for delicious detail, especially about the egos, excesses and quirks of the media elite. He writes that Dobbs “once demanded that a very short producer stand on a chair so he could yell at him, and when the young man refused, Dobbs crouched down to deliver the scolding.” Kurtz tells us that when Roger Ailes, the notorious Republican campaign strategist, left politics and took over at CNBC (before becoming chairman of Fox News), CNBC anchor Mark Haines was “on a hit list of people to be fired, but as a fellow fat guy, Ailes felt he deserved another chance.”

We learn that the guest experts on CNBC were always told in advance what stocks the viewers would call in about, which made it easier for them to feign omniscience. We watch as New York Observer financial columnist Christopher Byron, who hates almost every stock, gave a rave to Martha Stewart’s IPO partly because he thought she had a nice ass. (Stewart, for her part, was amused by the assessment.)

While Kurtz’s overall posture is muckraking and moralizing, he also writes admiringly about the ingenuity, energy and dedication of some of the smartest members of the business press. One particularly delightful scene describes how the Wall Street Journal’s Kara Swisher followed up on a late-night tip that America Online and Time Warner were merging in a colossal deal. Swisher knew that something big was happening when she logged onto AOL at 2 a.m. EST and found that many of the company’s top executives were online, since their secret screen names turned up on her buddy lists. When she sent them instant messages saying, “We know,” most of the execs were so freaked out that they logged off immediately, but one confirmed the tip, which helped produce a huge scoop, albeit a short-lasting one. The story ran on the Dow Jones wire at 3 a.m., an exclusive for two hours before Time Warner’s CNN trumpeted its own company’s tale.

Even when crack reporters get a story like that, there’s constant pressure to do it again and again, which is bound to be “numbingly repetitious,” Kurtz says. He concludes that even though the members of today’s financial punditry are “well paid and sought after and increasingly famous,” they are also cogs in a “hype machine” and “victims of its relentless expectations.” True. But then again, who ever thought that business reporters would ever be highly paid, let alone achieve even the smallest degree of media stardom?

: Alan Deutschman is the author of "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs." More Alan Deutschman

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Nancy Grace is more terrible than ever

Wild and unfounded speculation about Whitney Houston's death is a new low for the HLN host

VIDEO

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Nancy Grace (Credit: AP/Chris Pizzello)

Topics:Whitney Houston, Media Criticism, Nancy Grace, CNN

Cable news depends on colorful characters to draw eyeballs in between those reminders that there are “no new developments” in the real stories of the day. But even in a sea of distinctive jerkwads – your Erin Burnetts and Piers Morgans and Bill O’Reillys and Megyn Kellys – HLN host Nancy Grace never fails to distinguish herself. And just when you think she can’t find new depths to plumb, along comes the Whitney Houston story.

Grace, the woman who has made an entire cottage industry out of her indignation over Casey Anthony, who paints herself nightly as the avenging angel of poor dead Caylee, has never been one to trade in subtlety — or, for that matter, facts. CNN had to settle a wrongful death suit after the mother of a missing child killed herself after being browbeaten on her show. (The parties agreed that Grace “engaged in no intentional wrongdoing.”) She fearlessly championed the prosecution’s side in the Duke lacrosse team rape case, blithely referring to “the victim,” and went ballistic over the very notion that the accused might be innocent. (She then conveniently remained quiet on the subject after the case was dismissed.) This, folks, is a woman who has guilt-tripped abduction victim Elizabeth Smart for not playing along with her interview tactics. And even after a jury found Casey Anthony not guilty last summer, she has held on to the story like a dog with a bone, insisting that “I told the truth,” luxuriating in descriptions of “the backdrop of 2-year-old Caylee’s decomposing body just a few houses down from where Tot Mom put her pillow every night,” and excoriating Anthony for – rich irony alert –“generating interest in herself.”

Yet apparently there just aren’t enough kidnapped babies and alleged gang rapes out there to keep Grace satisfied. She’s turning her attention now instead to the mysterious death of a diva. Grace, who famously said last summer that she knew more than the “kooky jury” on the Anthony case, now seems to know more than the L.A. coroner’s office. Despite word that foul play is “not suspected at this time” in Saturday’s death of Whitney Houston, Grace isn’t so sure. On Monday she appeared on CNN to ponder, “Who, if anyone, gave [Houston] drugs following alcohol and drugs.” That itself isn’t a crazy question, though it is a bit of a reach – a suggestion that the story of a superstar dying alone and surrounded by prescription bottles just isn’t sexy enough. Not when surely there’s a villain on the loose for Nancy Grace to bring to justice. Cue dramatic theme music!

Medical accountability is to be considered whenever someone dies who may have had drugs administered to him or her. Just ask physician Conrad Murray, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. But where Grace, in her totally Nancy Grace-like way, went totally bananas was when she asked, “Who let her slip or pushed her underneath that water? … Who let Whitney Houston go under that water?” Uhhhhhmm… Whitney Houston?

The sad desperation of news networks, and their flailing competitiveness in a glut of information overload, is rarely pretty to watch. But Grace isn’t just some blowhard, saying provocative things to get a rise out of the viewership. She’s a full-on loose cannon, a disseminator of disinformation and an ego gone rogue. That CNN and its sister network HLN continue to permit her to spew her wild speculations, to proudly flaunt her flat-out contempt for the facts as they are known, and to engage in character assassination long after a not guilty verdict has been rendered in a court of law, is blatant and arrogant recklessness. Unchecked, how long before Grace decides she knows who “pushed” Houston under the water? How long before she’s on another crusade, deciding who is a victim and who is a perpetrator? How long before a real criminal investigation or trial is tainted because of her nightly yammering?

After her jaw-dropping segment Monday, CNN anchor Don Lemon had to leap into fire-dousing mode, issuing a hasty reminder that “This is not CNN’s reporting. We don’t know that to be true.” Here’s a crazy idea – you shouldn’t be talking about things you don’t know to be true on a network with the word “news” right there in the middle of it. And CNN shouldn’t continue to provide a platform to a woman whose self-interest makes a mockery of journalistic credibility.

Nancy Grace On Whitney Houston’s Death

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams

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Wolf Blitzer presents “A salute to politicians”

CNN anchor can't help admiring those brave, hardworking candidates

By Alex Pareene

Wolf Blitzer (Credit: CNN)

Topics:CNN, Wolf Blitzer, 2012 Elections, Media Criticism

Wolf Blitzer, the face and droning monotonous voice of CNN’s breaking news coverage, has written the finest blog post of the year, so far. Blitzer has penned “A salute to politicians,” because, really, someone had to.

“I know it will probably sound weird,” Blitzer begins, “but I admire these politicians who put themselves out there before the American public knowing full well that all their warts will be exposed big time.” We have a breaking news alert for you here in the Situation Room: Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer admires members of the political ruling elite.

Politicians, you see, should be admired, because even though they are by and large rich, they still work very hard, every couple years. So says Wolf Blitzer in his essay on politicians, “I admire politicians, by Wolf Blitzer.”

Most of them already have lots of money. They could easily coast at this point in their lives and sit back and relax.

Instead, they are working hard on the campaign trail.

Sometimes people have to do stuff they don’t want to do, unless they have a lot of money. Usually people with a lot of money like to play golf, because playing golf is more fun than going to work. If a person with a lot of money goes to work, he must like work a lot. Even though sometimes work is hard:

I’ve seen them in action, and it’s tough. They get up early in the morning and go to sleep late at night. They have to deliver the same stump speech over and over and over again, and then answer an endless amount of often annoying questions at town hall meetings, at diners and from reporters such as me.

Next time you think about criticizing a politician, step back and think about how early he woke up this morning, and how many times he had to give a boring speech. He might have even had to deal with Wolf Blitzer! Now don’t you feel guilty?

Blitzer hits his main theme — it’s admirable that politicians actually get out of bed and do things even though they are rich — once more and names the politicians he is specifically saluting:

Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul and Rick Perry could have taken the easy path and relaxed and enjoyed life. Instead of playing golf and hanging out with their children and grandchildren, they are working hard trying to get the Republican presidential nomination. In the process, they are bitterly attacked – often for good reason.

In their pursuit of more power these already powerful men have allowed themselves to be scrutinized and even occasionally criticized, which is quite a sacrifice.

This salute to politicians even ends in the most perfectly CNN-y way possible, by presenting two vague and conflicting viewpoints and refusing to adjudicate between them:

Why do they do it?

I know what they say. They say they are interested in public service and want to help the American people. They say they believe in what they are trying to achieve.

The cynics say they have huge egos and are simply seeking power and glory.

That is certainly true of some politicians.

But having covered many of them over the years, I also know some are trying to do the right thing, and I salute them.

“Some say politicians are power-hungry narcissists, others say they are noble public servants. Both sides could be part right, some of the time, most likely.”

The sole disappointing aspect of Blitzer’s salute is that it includes no musical tribute.

[Via Glenn Greenwald]

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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Our creepy, endless fascination with Casey Anthony

"Tot Mom" resurfaces in a new video, and the cable-news universe remains as gleefully obsessed as ever

VIDEO

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

(Credit: Gavonlaessig)

Topics:Casey Anthony, CNN, Nancy Grace

It’s been six months since a Florida jury found Casey Anthony not guilty in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Since then, the woman who spent three years awaiting trial behind bars — and in the glare of the news spotlight – has kept a low profile. Considering the lingering questions about her innocence, the intense public resentment over the verdict, and a steady stream of death threats, her hibernation is hardly a surprise. But perhaps some part of Casey Anthony has missed the attention.

In a new video — ostensibly recorded in October but which did not emerge until Thursday — a now blond, bobbed and bespectacled Anthony narrates a four-minute “diary” entry about her new life. She says she’s “extremely excited” about her future and new computer – being able to Skype, take pictures, and “finally have something that I can finally call mine.” What she doesn’t mention? The child she used to call her own.

Though Anthony, still on probation in Florida, makes no mention of her exact location, her parents said Thursday they were “concerned” the video might endanger her. It has definitely stirred up the usual outrage from the most predictable mouthpieces. In other words, CNN is stoked. For Nancy Grace, the video has been like a late Christmas present, an opportunity to froth like she hasn’t frothed about “two-year old Caylee’s decomposing body” since last summer. Trotting out her favorite nickname for Anthony, Grace opined that “I think this is very simply Tot Mom Casey Anthony and her lawyers, possibly, injecting themselves back in the national media because nobody’s touching her offer for a paid-for interview with a 10-foot pole.” She added that: “It’s all about Tot Mom… generating interest in herself.” Dr. Drew Pinsky, meanwhile, eagerly pointed out her “narcissism and … issues of judgment.”

Out in the wider world, meanwhile, the public reaction has been mostly an excuse for another outpouring of revulsion against the lady one MSNBC commenter called “the most hated person in the U.S.A.” Also unsurprising — and straight-up gross — is that Anthony has her fair share of rabid admirers. On the shudderingly self-proclaimed “#1 Casey Anthony Fan site,” reaction toward the “smokin’ hottie” and her video has been considerably warmer. Or, as one commenter put it, “I would love to rock your world sometime.”

But why did the video emerge now, and who is Anthony really communicating with? Is this a public statement or truly a private “diary”? Anthony’s lawyers told a Florida Fox affiliate that “Casey has maintained some notes on her thoughts for personal use, especially for counseling. She did not release this video to YouTube and does not know how they got it. It could not have been legally obtained and was not authorized.” And John Riley, the man who runs a “Boycott Casey Anthony” Facebook group and first posted the clip, told Nancy Grace Thursday that he found the clip on a few pay-per-view sites and “kept looking and looking and looking” until he found it for free. He says he posted it “so there would be no money made off it.” Try to get your head around the idea of someone clawing doggedly around the Internet for four minutes of what Anthony promises “will be as tedious as my audio recordings have been” and you begin to appreciate the apparently endless fascination this woman still holds.

Anthony’s “tedious” four minutes don’t reveal much about the inner workings of someone found not guilty of killing her daughter. They do seem in line with thoughts of someone recently released from jail – the simple relief of having one’s own possessions, the pleasure of having a dog. And she might well be circumspect about talking about her child and her trial, even on a supposedly private “video log,” if her lawyers have coached her to be. So is her video a case study in narcissism, a private moment from a “smokin’ hottie,” or just personal thoughts before a counseling session? The answer is simple. It’s whatever you already thought. Though Casey Anthony says, “Things can only get better,” minds aren’t changed as easily as hair color. “It’s surreal how things have changed since July,” she declares at one point in the clip. Then she adds, as if speaking for both herself and everyone watching, “and how many things haven’t.”

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams

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Piers Morgan plays dumb in UK media inquiry

The CNN host and former tabloid editor still doesn't admit to phone-hacking, though there's a lot he doesn't recall

By Alex Pareene

Piers Morgan (Credit: Phil Mccarten / Reuters)

Topics:Piers Morgan, CNN, Phone-hacking, Media, England

Minor British media personality host Piers Morgan was called to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, the British government’s ongoing inquiry into the occasionally criminal newsgathering practices of the British tabloid press. Morgan appeared via satellite from the United States, where he is inexplicably employed as a talk show host by CNN.

Morgan edited the Daily Mirror, a competitor to Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and the Sun, from 1995-2004, when he was sacked for printing fake photographs and a hoax story on the front page of the paper. No one alleges that phone-hacking was as widespread at Morgan’s Mirror as it was at the News Corp. papers, but Morgan has written of listening to a voice-mail message left by Paul McCartney on his ex-wife Heather Mills’ phone, and said, in past statements, that basically “everyone” in the British press listened to celebrity voice mails.

The Guardian helpfully liveblogged Morgan’s entire appearance. Asked why the Mirror employed private detectives, Morgan played dumb:

I don’t know. Because I was never directly involved, this was dealt with through the news desk or features desk … Certainly all journalists knew they had to act within the confines of the law.

Questioned about the legality of using “rubbish” thrown out by private citizens as material for stories, Morgan said he thought it legal but “on the cusp of the unethical.”

Asked about a diary entry in which he explained how “phone-hacking” works, Morgan again played dumb, claiming not to remember who explained it to him. Morgan was questioned about a man “who went to the Daily Mirror more than 10 years ago with a story about mobile phone voicemail security being compromised.” Morgan said he doesn’t remember ever hearing about the man, and said the story would’ve been too boring to print, but the man was paid 100 pounds for the tip.

From the Guardian liveblog:

Morgan says he has “studied this man’s testimony”. “He seems to me one sandwich short of a picnic,” he adds.

He continues: “This was a complete non-event, it never got supressed for the reason he’s trying to …”

Sherborne asks why Nott was paid £100 for the story.

Morgan says “loads” of people get paid £100 for stories that are not used.

Nice work if you can get it.

And that was about it. The inquiry was never going to “nail” Morgan on anything other than generally being simultaneously amoral and sanctimonious. While he engaged in loads of completely unethical behavior, and almost certainly skirted the law, it’s clear that the Mirror wasn’t acting in blatant violation of the law as often or as brazenly as the Sun and News of the World.

Morgan finished off with a defensive and petulant closing statement, complaining that the inquiry lawyers only asked him about the bad stuff he did in his years in British tabloids. “It’s like a rock star having an album coming out with all his worst-ever hits,” Morgan said.

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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4. Erin Burnett

The Wall Street and CNBC veteran's shtick doesn't work well on news channels for us little people

By Alex Pareene

Topics:Salon Hack List 2011, CNBC, CNN, Media, Media Criticism, Erin Burnett

Erin Burnett was a perfect fit at CNBC, a business news network that interprets its mission as reporting for business leaders and the finance industry and not on them. A former Goldman Sachs analyst who also did a stint at Citigroup (business journalism might be worse than political reporting when it comes to team-switching and fraternizing among “sources” and “journalists”), Burnett epitomizes the CNBC worldview, where the ideal business journalist is a levelheaded interpreter of the omniscient market and ally of the wise men who’ve been enriched by it. Making the switch to being a news program host for us regular folk, on CNN, has not been without a couple of hitches for Ms. Burnett. Turns out, regular people don’t naturally perceive CEOs and bankers as heroic figures, especially in the midst of a mass employment and consumer debt crisis that the wealthy have escaped unscathed.

Burnett, despite her youth, is a relic of a bygone age. She embodies ’90s “market populism,” to use Thomas Frank’s phrase, now still surviving on our airwaves as a zombie idea. The idea of America as a mass “shareholder society” is a sick joke in a nation currently sharply divided between struggling debtors and bailed-out creditors, but the dream is popular enough among the well-off professionals in charge of our news networks that CNN pinned its prime-time hopes on Burnett appealing to a mass audience. (If ratings are any indication, it’s not working.)

CNN, the network that refuses to take a side on anything, naturally assumes that being objectively pro-finance is the same thing as being objective. Hence her parroting the Wall Street party line that “everybody” (meaning “everybody” in the sense of American citizens and not financial professionals) was “responsible” for the massive financial crisis that plunged us unto a recession. This came after her revisionist claim, on Bill Maher’s show, that “everyone in this country knew there was a housing bubble,” an attempt to excuse the blinkered cheerleading of pre-crash CNBC. (She followed up with a line treating a hypothetical “soak the rich” tax as an objectively bad idea, asserting that Wall Street had already lost too much in the crisis to require such a draconian measure.)

And there was her amazing response to Donny Deutsch’s 2009 suggestion that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs give some minuscule percentage of their obscene profits to Haiti. “Hold on, Donny,” she shouted. “What would they do with all that money down there in Haiti?” I’m sure they could think of something.

Finally, I have no problem with professional entertainers playing make-believe on Donald Trump’s asinine “reality” show, but it’s embarrassing for a supposed journalist to pretend to be the fake-billionaire’s “advisor,” a part Burnett played on “The Apprentice” before she left the NBC family.

HACKIEST 2011 MOMENT:
Clearly, her confused, confrontational response to Occupy Wall Street. She saw “bongos” and “a clown,” but these stupid fools didn’t know how wonderful Wall Street was, and how much it helps all of us, every day! One person didn’t even realize that TARP was an unalloyed positive thing for the nation as a whole! Burnett’s refusal or inability to understand what could possibly outrage people about the extraordinary actions involved in rescuing Wall Street from its colossal mistakes as the rest of us muddle through a protracted non-recovery was only improved by her hostile and dismissive treatment of regular people actually endeavoring to make the country a slightly fairer place. If you want snide, condescending apologism for powerful people you should rightfully worship as your betters, CNN’s got the show for you!
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(Read the introduction here. Read the 2010 Salon Hack 30 List here.)