Greta and Sarah: BFFs

(Photo from Fox News Channel)

Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren had beef with this portion Howard Kurtz’s Nov. 13th column for The Washington Post about her latest interview with Sarah Palin.

[Balitomore Sun TV Critic David] Zurawik calls the Van Susteren interview "beyond friendly," saying: "Greta Van Susteren is totally sympathetic to her and makes no secret about it."

In the blog post (which was removed shortly after it was posted, here is a screenshot), Greta complains that Kurtz didn’t give her the opportunity to defend herself against Zurakwik’s criticism, even though Kurtz had called her about another topic the day before. Fox News’ mantra “fair and balanced” must be going to her head. Kurtz is under no obligation to provide all sides of every single assertion in a column and should feel free to quote a prominent TV critic without the journalists reference complaining. 

If his column had been specifically about Fox News’ treatment of Palin, then she would have had a point. Kurtz doesn’t give her a chance to respond to 64 words at the tail end of a 1,000 word piece and Greta feels betrayed!? That’s ridiculous. It’s no surprise she took the blog post down, realizing she’d made a mountain out of a molehill.

Zurawik’s characterization of Van Susteren’s interviews as sympathetic is self evident to anyone who has seen any of them. In her latest interview, Van Susteren spent the first half of the interview letting Palin address rumors about her $150,000 wardrobe and whether or not she insisted Africa was a country. The interview is so pedestrian and accommodating in these ten minutes that Palin herself looked bored. In Susteren’s previous interview with Palin shortly after her nomination, she played to Palin’s strong suit asking her about sports and Title IX, hardly relevant for someone who’s a heartbeat away from the presidency.

In the rest of her blog post Susteren goes on to defend her treatment of Palin, insisting that “you can get a lot of information out of guests by being polite” and that sympathetic does not equal ineffective. But it does equal useless.

When she’s asked general and open ended questions, Palin never has to venture far from her comfort zone. Anyone can speak generally about anything. Palin needs to be driven off her talking points so she can prove to American that she actually understands the issues and has the ability to think critically about them before there’s any talk of 2012.

Greta Van Susteren’s interviews are like meet and greets when they should be obstacle courses.

It’s about confidence...

Does this seem like a healthy working environment?
Image from Alteringtime.com

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.