Over the past several weeks, much has been reported about the dust-up between CNBC and Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show.” Specifically Jim Cramer and his bad stock picking calls. While that’s fair game, the larger issue is CNBC’s cheerleading for Wall St. while the economy tanked due to the Master of the Universe risk taking with our money. CNBC simply didn’t do its journalistic job, which is to look skeptically at Wall Street’s compensation scheme that promotes bad risk taking.
Today on CNBC we see a perfect example of CNBC’s bias, this time by Erin Burnett and Mark Haines. Early in their show, they look at whether the bill to tax AIG bonuses will slow the recovery. Of course, when you promote the segment by asking that question, you reveal your bias. Then, when you have two guests with the same view, well, fair and balanced doesn’t come to mind. Then Burnett, who has become increasingly full of herself in the past year, suggests that pension funds don’t really understand what happening.
Later on in the program, they have Congressman Brad Sherman(D-Calif.) explaining why Congress passed the tax bill yesterday devised to recover AIG bonuses. You can argue whether this is a good bill. But listen to the questioning by Burnett and Haines. They clearly reveal their biases in their questions.
Haines doesn’t just ask questions, he tells us he knows that if people on Wall St. made just $250,000, they’d all go overseas to work. First of all, there is nothing in any bill that keeps all salaries on Wall St. to $250,000. But he clearly demonstrates the Wall St. mentality that they are so bright, they must have multi-million dollar salaries.
Burnett trumps Haines, however, She asks why Sherman thinks that anyone making over $250,000 is “a bad person.” Talk about demonizing people. No one ever said people making over $250k are “bad people.”
Later in the interview, Haines says that neither he or Burnett were in favor of the bailouts. But earlier in the interview, to counter a Sherman argument, Haines states the view that if we didn’t bail them out, the entire system might have collapsed.
If you listen to this entire interview, you can see why I and other think CNBC lacks any journalistic integrity.