Know the Media for What It Is

This will be short. I'm tired. Pool problems, No. 1 Daughter's Spanish Test, #2 Daughter's oozing vomit, airline and disney ticket purchases that took forever (I know: boo hoo) wore me out last night.

I did catch a little of the news on the likely faked CBS memos calling Bush a child raper or some such thing. There's enough for liberal and conservative alike to be annoyed at with him, why make stuff up?

Anyway, here's a snippet of what I had to say in The Pure Investor about the media:

The purpose of broadcasting and printing financial news is the same as that of broadcasting cartoons, sit-coms, and cop shows: to sell advertising. In order to sell advertising, newspaper editors, news anchors, and news radio must get people reading newspapers, eyes watching television and cares listening to radio. The best way to do this is to make the news as dramatic and compelling as possible to the most people.

This same problem is particularly evident on the financial cable channels such as CNBC and CNNfn. Every announcement, event, and issue that at one time would not have made it onto the evening news or the front page of the Wall Street Journal now gets massive amounts of attention. The event gets hours of air time, its own logo at the top of the screen, and two analysts speaking about how this triviality will effect the markets, the economy and their audience's wealth.

Brilliant 'eh? Then go buy the book.

Stay You.

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