people in the investing business are as
worried as anyone these days about losing their jobs.
“Wall Street has been in a state of
depression, literally and mentally,”
says Pisani, standing among a swirl of
traders on the floor of the N YSE, where
he reports. “They feel that the country
now hates them. They have gone from
being heroes to feeling like they are
part of the problem—and indeed, there
are people who took excessive risks.
Wall Street does bear a good part of the
blame for this.”
and I think it’s all very good, because
it keeps people honest. When there’s a
mistake in the media the blogs are on
you in a nanosecond.”
Pisani shares Bartiromo’s view that
having a high-profile role, especially
during such a turbulent period, carries
big responsibility. “People are always
angry when they lose a lot of money,”
he says. “This happened in 2000 and
Wall Street got hit heavily then, but
people were shown ways out. If the news
is tough and grim, we’ve got to say the
news is tough and grim. But we’ve also
f
t
underwriters, the institutional investors,
the regulators, the press. It’s hard to find
anybody who did what they were supposed to do.”
With respect to the media, he says it’s
ough to register a cautionary message
during boom times, when people don’t
want to listen.
Bartiromo, who has been at CNBC
or 16 years, makes a similar point. She
recalls a segment on the network at the
height of the tech bubble in 1999 called
“Annoying Little Comparisons.” Hyped
dotcom companies were lined up against
f
The media has also been a target for
blame, CNBC included. In February, a
rant from analyst Rick Santelli about
the mortgage crisis drew media
attention and a rebuke from the
Obama White House, whose
policy Santelli had criticized.
In March, market commentator Jim Cramer appeared on
The Daily Show for a long interview in which host Jon Stewart
blasted him and other CNBC
personalities for failing on
due diligence.
Stewart made deft use of clips
rom CNBC shows to bolster his
case, and not without good reason,
says Bartiromo. “I think he’s funny and
he makes a good point,” she said during
a follow-up phone interview in April.
“It’s only fair that everyone looks in
their own backyard to figure out how we
can be doing things better. The media
has an enormous responsibility to ensure our reporting is accurate, and
I don’t take it lightly.”
She added: “It’s important to recognize that there’s been a real democratization of information. Investors today
have access to information not just on
CNBC but on the Internet and blogs,
a
ha
“It’s
rd to find
nybody who did
what they were
supposed
to do.”
got to concentrate on where we need to
go from here.”
The Blame Game
The finger pointing, of course, has tended
to focus on how we got here in the first
place. As David Wessel, the economics
editor of The Wall Street Journal, puts it:
“In terms of blame, the sad thing is that
almost everybody who was part of the
system failed: The rating agencies, the
be
some of America’s oldest industrial
titans. The dotcoms had equivalent or
even greater market valuations.
“No matter how much you bang
the drum, it’s very tough to stop
that kind of mindset when it is
going on,” Bartiromo says.
“Having said that, I don’t give
the media, myself included, a
break on this situation we’re in.
I think we all missed some-
thing, and we all need to take
responsibility and hopefully
walk away educated from it.”
CNBC’s role in that regard could
considered substantial. Its all-
day-long market coverage is watched
intently on Wall Street, from the trading
desks to the executive suites. (Part of the
reason so many heavy hitters go on for
interviews is because they know every-
one in the the business will be watching
when they deliver their message.) The
network’s coverage can have the power
to move markets: As a documentary aired
earlier this year on the PBS program
Frontline recounted, reporting in March
2008 by CNBC’s David Faber impacted
the timing of the collapse of investment
bank Bear Stearns. According to CNBC’s
own publicity materials, it provides
