Talking Biz News

Information about business
journalism from the
Carolina Business News Initiative.

Jonathan Cutler, a sociology professor at Wesleyan University and an expert on unions, writes on his blog that the business media coverage of the recent settlement between the United Auto Workers and General Motors shows that the union probably got a bad deal.

Cutler wrote, “Is the business press an ‘objective’ source on labor relations?  No.

“It is unabashedly and transparently pro-business.  But that transparent bias is precisely what makes it potentially more interesting and more reliable than mainstream media accounts.  Business press bias means that union victories are often disparaged while union defeats are celebrated.

“To read ‘against the grain’ of business press bias requires only that one reverse the terms: expressions of fear, disappointment, and rage in the pages of the business press are best interpreted as signs union strength.  Expressions of euphoria and/or indifference in the business press can signal union weakness and a raw deal for workers.

“So, what is the business press saying about the UAW-GM deal?  Are the signs of fear and trembling at a labor movement is willing to stand up for the members, stand up for the retirees and take some risks?

“Hardly.”

Read more here.

Felix Salmon of Conde Nast Portfolio wants to know why economist/actor Ben Stein is writing a column in the Sunday New York Times that is full of errors.

Salmon noted that Stein got facts about former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget wrong in his column on Sunday, and that he misquoted himself.

Salmon wrote, “Stein, of course, is the man who played the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. ‘Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?’ is funny when it comes from Brad DeLong, attacking Stein. But the thing is, Stein’s character never actually says it in the movie.

“Stein finishes up his column seemingly asking the SEC to regulate everything that absolutely anybody might conceivably invest in. He doesn’t claim that this massive expansion of regulatory responsibilities would do any good, mind you; he just ends his column, cryptically enough, by saying that ‘the ladder of law should have no top and no bottom.’ It’s a Bob Dylan lyric which Stein obviously loves, since this is the second time this year he’s trundled it out.

“So here’s my idea. Since Stein clearly isn’t being featured in the business section on the grounds of his economic expertise, he’s obviously got this gig on the grounds of his celebrity status. Maybe the Times has no desire to replace Stein with someone (like DeLong, say) who actually knows what he’s talking about – what they want is a writer who’s vaguely familiar with economic concepts but who’s also something of a household name. My suggestion: Bob Dylan.”

Read more here.

Ray Rivera of The New York Times writes Saturday that the recent sexual discrimination lawsuit against Bloomberg L.P. has shed a light on how the financial information and news company treats its employees.

Rivera wrote, “Mr. Brickman did not return calls last night seeking comment on Ms. Czelusniak’s assertion. Two of his federal lawsuits against the company remain open: one filed in New Jersey involving four plaintiffs that accuses the firm of age and sex discrimination, and another in Manhattan involving age, disability and race discrimination.

“The E.E.O.C. lawsuit filed on Thursday stems from complaints made by three women in 2006. After an investigation, the agency’s New York district director, Spencer H. Lewis Jr., determined there was cause to bring a complaint against the company.

“A separate lawsuit was brought by a fourth woman in June that is similar to the complaints described in the E.E.O.C. suit. In the June case, a former account executive, Monica Prestia, says she flourished at the company from 1997 until 2005, when she became pregnant with her first child. After that, she said, she began receiving poor performance reviews, and a form of compensation was reduced. At one point, according to the suit, a supervisor asked her, ‘What is this, your third baby?’”

Read more here.

TheStreet.com’s Marek Fuchs reads former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan’s new book in an attempt to decipher his relationship with those in the business medit that covered him.

Fuchs conclusion: Greenspan doesn’t understand why reporters did things like emphasize in its coverage the phrase “irrational exuberance” out of a speech in the late 1990s to describe the state of the stock market.

Fuchs wrote, “Here, I don’t trust Greenspan’s falsely modest ‘What, me?’ explanation. The speech in which he mentioned ‘irrational exuberance’ was — like all his public talk — perfectly calibrated. He would never have used such explosive words, even buried so as not to immediately bury the economy, deep in the text.

“But Greenspan claims that he was a bit blindsided by the business media’s extraction of this phrase, innocently puzzled that they ran with this as their takeaway.”

Read more here.

Washington Post business editor Sandy Sugawara sent out the following e-mail Friday about the paper’s new personal finance reporter:

“We are pleased to announce that Nancy Trejos will replace Nell Henderson as our personal finance reporter. Nancy joined the Financial staff in February to cover real estate, after an impressive two month rotation in Iraq. During her seven months as a real estate reporter, she has written A1 stories about condo buyers whose projects are unexpectedly cancelled, glitzy condo parties to attract customers and ‘upside down’ home sellers (who owe more on their homes than they can sell them for). Her memorable stories from Iraq include the difficulties of giving birth in Iraq, the return of ‘enjoyment marriages,’ and the plight of women there.

“With her aggressive reporting, lively writing, creativity, energy and interest in consumer issues and pop culture (she lists chick lit and celebrity trivia as hobbies), Nancy has already had a huge impact on our coverage. We are delighted that she wants to expand her base to write about a wide range of personal finance issues. She will write for Sunday Business, the daily Business section and A1.

“Nancy was born and raised in Queens, where she lived with her Colombian father, her Ecuadorian mother and two older siblings. She moved to Washington in 1994 to study at Georgetown University and in 1998 took a Post summer internship in the Southern Maryland bureau. She worked briefly for the Los Angeles Times but then returned to the Post’s Southern Maryland bureau to cover three school districts. She later covered schools in Prince George’s and was a general assignment reporter in Montgomery County.”

Michael Learmonth of Variety notes that CNBC producers are on alert with two weeks to go before the Fox Business Network launch on Oct. 15 because Fox News boss Roger Ailes is a big believer in having “name” interviews during the first few days of any new network.

Learmonth wrote, “Vacations by on-air talent for October are banned, and producers and correspondents are racing to land high-profile talking heads for the week of Oct. 15, when Fox Biz goes live.

“CNBC is said to have made a play for uber-investor Warren Buffett, who declined. Liz Claman, the TV journo closest to the Oracle from Omaha, left CNBC in July — and may turn up at Fox Biz after her non-compete agreement expires … on Oct. 15.

“Former GE chief and ‘Winning’ author Jack Welch is also off the table. An assistant says he’s received requests, but is traveling that week and unlikely to appear.

“Also in demand: Steve Jobs. Fox Biz producers, meanwhile, are combing business and academia for talking heads and trying to head off any awkward expectations.”

Read more here.

Newspapers with pro-Democratic endorsement pattern routinely give more coverage to high unemployment rates when the president is a Republican than when the president is Democratic, compared to newspapers with pro-Republican endorsement pattern, according to a new study by professors.

Valentino Larcinese, a government professor at the London School of Economics, Riccardo Puglisi, a political science professor at M.I.T., and James Snyder, an M.I.T. economist, conducted the study, which can be found on the National Bureau of Economic Research web site.

They collected endorsement information on 102 newspapers dating back to 1996.

What they discovered was that newspapers that had historically endorsed Democrats gave less coverage to high unemployment when Bill Clinton was president and more coverage to high unemployment under President Bush’s time in office. They found the opposite to be true during periods of low unemployment.

The study stated, “When the unemployment rate was one percentage point above the average, newspapers with a strong propensity to endorse Republican candidates reacted with 15% more articles under Clinton than under Bush. For the same one percent increase, newspapers with a strong pro-Democratic endorsement policy have 9% less news on unemployment under Clinton than Bush.”

The professors also concluded that the result is not driven by the partisanship of readers.

They also wrote that there is no evidence of a partisan bias — or at least of a bias that is correlated with the endorsement policy — for stories on inflation, budget deficit or trade deficit.

Fox Business Network, which launches on the air on Oct. 15, said Friday that it will unveil a micro version of its web site on Monday, Oct. 1.

The URL, www.foxbusiness.com, will automatically convert to the network’s website upon the Oct. 15 launch.

Video clips of on-air talent, including senior vice president Neil Cavuto and vice president Alexis Glick, will provide insight into what viewers can expect from Fox Business Network’s reporters and anchors. Each on-air personality will have a personalized web page consisting of a series of headshots, a biography and blog entries.

Additional on-air talent including will also be seen talking about their unique approach to covering business during a series of three, 30-second video promos.

Del Marbrook, a former newspaper editor, argues in a posting Friday afternoon that there’s something seriously wrong with business journalism these days when business affects virtually everyone but most people are still more interested in reading about sports or the obituaries in their daily paper.

Marbrook wrote, “The majority of Americans are wage earners. They neither have their own businesses nor help run businesses. Their wages have been more or less stagnant for two decades while the cost of living has risen relentlessly. Now their jobs are being exported and their unions broken, and yet the business section of their newspaper doesn’t interest them as much as, say, sports or obituaries.

“Something is wrong with this picture, something verging on hoax. We need to reexamine the history and function of business news, whether it’s the business section of a newspaper or the business segment of a telecast or even publications given over wholly to business.”

Later, he added, “In other words, every day and in every way business is trying to milk money from every civil right you assume you have because you are American. But the media persist in reporting your rights as one story and business as another, and that is simply a distorted view of what is actually happening. And the media persist in ignoring the shortsightedness of destroying the middle class on the one hand and bilking it on the other hand.  Thomas Jefferson foresaw that corporations could corrupt the fledgling democracy he and his colleagues were trying to create. If he could have foreseen the extent to which Congress would put itself in the pockets of lobbyists he probably would have proposed Constitutional precautions.”

Read more here.

Ronald Grover and Diane Brady of BusinessWeek take a look in the latest issue at the upcoming business news war between CNBC and Fox Business Network.

Grover and Brady wrote, “Chances are, though, that Fox’s channel could end up looking a lot like CNBC, at least during the trading day. Hoffman acknowledges that Ailes–who ran the channel for three years before he left for Fox in 1996–tried to entice superstar Jim Cramer, whose high-voltage persona has helped boost prime-time ratings at CNBC. Ailes will probably approach the network’s other brand name, Maria Bartiromo, whom he first put on air in 1993, when her contract expires in two years. (Bartiromo is also a BusinessWeek columnist.) And he may be interested in hiring Liz Claman, the former CNBC anchor, after her noncompete agreement ends in mid-October. For now, FBN’s headliner is ‘tear up your credit card’ radio financial guru Dave Ramsey, who will have a prime-time show. Ailes declined to comment.

“Over at CNBC, Jeff Zucker, the head of NBC Universal, is using the high-profile Today show to promote his business channel. And CNBC is likely to focus anew on prime time with shows like American Greed and the edgier Fast Money with Dylan Ratigan, which it will move to the important 5 p.m. slot.

“But the real conundrum for CNBC is its relationship with The Wall Street Journal now that Murdoch is buying Dow Jones & Co., the paper’s owner, for $5 billion. CNBC has a contract, which lasts five more years, that gives it exclusive access to Journal reporters for straight business news. Murdoch, however, says they can appear on FBN to talk about topics such as personal finance. And, though neither side will say anything now, Murdoch is probably calculating how much he will have to pay to end the arrangement with CNBC altogether.”

Read more here.