I turned on CNBC at about 5pm yesterday afternoon to better understand the latest stock market
calamity. And, even by the standards of today's broadcast news, I was surprised at what I saw and heard.
"Fast Money" anchor Dylan Ratigan and his five steel jawed, angry looking guest hosts were steaming mad. The mood was ominous and the tone of the conversation that had just begun was downright ugly.
You see, Mr. Ratigan wasn't focusing on why the Dow had just tumbled 700+ points, or where we could be heading tomorrow. No Dylan wanted blood and he wanted it right then and there.
His tone and constant rhetoric focused solely on finding those "despicable, corrupt few politicians whose greed put us square in the middle of this disaster." I watched in amazement as Mr. Ratigan went back and forth among his guest hosts (who ranged from a head of a trading firm, to a research analyst, to an asset manager), whipping them all into a frenzied lynch mob as they debated who should be hanging from the closest tree in Fort Lee.
Mr. Ratigan accepted calls from the outside as well. Each time, his hanging theme was reinforced and pushed out to the next caller in the hopes of supporting the anchor's rallying cry for what felt like the start of a mini revolution. It wasn't until 45 minutes later when a former New York Fed Governor, and highly respected economist came on the phone to squash this mini rebellion, that some sanity was restored and the lynch mob-five calmed down and started conversing about rational economic topics (like what has to happen now to give investors more confidence.)
Wow. This anchor may have missed his calling. If he was born 20 years earlier, he could have been whipping crowds into frenzies on either side of the civil rights debate, instead.
What's my point to this story?
I think that a lot of people let us down and are probably to blame for this monumental mess. Certainly some of them are politicians. The irony is that because most politicians have no real understanding of how our economy works, they probably made these decisions without any clue as to the negative outcomes that we all now feel.
But, where has the state of our media come to when a news show on CNBC is now playing judge, juror and hangman in front of millions of viewers? That's just crazy.
Yes, I know that a large percentage of our media do not cover news objectively anymore. And, there are those on the fringe (like Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs) who really aren't media anchors anymore. Instead, they are analysts or columnists who espouse a one sided focused view or belief.
But it's a shame to see that savvy business news from traditional CNBC shows (this wasn't the Jim Cramer show) are now completely sensationalistic and are (in my view) playing a very dangerous role by pushing viewers to hate and even possibly hurt those who are to blame. This is Jerry Springer journalism and that just isn't right.
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