I think the point, Gary, is that the media shouldn't judge a company's actions based only on its stock price, no matter what section of the paper is passing the judgement. Berkshire is perhaps not the best example, but there are plenty of other cases where the Money & Investing section has decreed a company's future to be "cloudy" simply because traders are predicting volatility in the short-term stock price. This is plain irresponsible, especially in cases where the company is unlikely to receive coverage in the front section of the paper, the pejorative "cloudy" forever serving as readers' only point of reference.
To take things a step further, the very practice of dividing stories into separate sections of a newspaper serves only to skew information and news. There are two kinds of story--the whole story, and the incomplete story. A business story that doesn't reference the politics, a stock price story that doesn't note the long-term growth strategy, a marketing story that doesn't outline the financial implications -- they're all presenting incomplete pictures, and thereby somehow deluding the reader.
Pick a company and try to say what you know about it. Chances are you can't tell a full story. You might know the stock price. You might know
the company has a nifty marketing strategy. You might think the CEO is a crackpot. But you do not have the information you need to say conclusively that the company, all things considered, is a good company or a bad company. Nobody else has the information either, which is unforgiveable in a society where everyone talks as if they do. The blame for this rests entirely with the media.
In the case of Berkshire, it is just bad taste-and a sort of lie-to print a large headline on a section front page proclaiming that an unprecedented act of charity "clouds" the future of anything, stock price included.
But the Heard column wasn't "judging a company's actions." Have you read the WSJ article in question? It was solely examining the impact of the donation on Berkshire's share price. "Heard" does that every single day. You may not like that kind of thing, and personally it is not my cup of tea (I am a believer in index funds myself), but that is its purpose. This is not a bad thing.
Also it's not very rational to read a "Heard" item, or similar market stories (such as, to pick a name at random, a Barron's story on Google) as a broad-front judgment of a company's intrinsic virtues.
You say that "the very practice of dividing stories into separate sections of a newspaper serves only to skew information and news" and then go on to say that such things "delude the reader." Honestly, I can't figure out how you came to that conclusion or whether you can cite any actual readers who have complained about being "deluded."
As for "cloudy" being a "lie" or "bad taste" or whatever-- again, what you're saying just doesn't make any sense. The "Heard" column didn't say Buffett did a bad thing. It is not "bad taste" to discuss the impact of a nice thing (a donation, peace talks, good weather) on investments. That is just simply not a reasonable (or, frankly, rational) view of financial journalism.
You may not like financial journalism, and that is of course your privilege. I just hope you are not assigned to CJR Daily or some other media publication to cover the financial press, because if so you are going to make a fool of yourself, just as did the writer of this CJR Daily item.
A reasonable analogy would be when an active athlete meets a sorry fate outside of the sport (car accident, disease, shooting etc.) and you start reading stories about how this will hurt his team's chances to win. Callous? In many respects, of course. But, I agree, it all depends on the context.
- Jeff
"The Journal Reports That Good Deeds Are Bad" -- that's the lie.
CJR Audit has made a laughinstock of itself before and I am glad to see someone finally call them on it.
Ah, yes, the familiar arguments. Anyone who criticizes financial journalists is wrong because--well, because financial journalists say so. Why do they say so? Because they know more than everyone. So be careful with your judgements-- You might sound foolish!
What a crock.
I can’t tell you how often media critics hear such comments (or veiled threats, a the case may be)—always from thin-skinned financial reporters who don’t seem to know a whole lot about finance and who rarely provide any specific reasons why their work did not deserve to be criticized.
What a crock.
Pause for a second, and listen to yourselves. And remember: Financial journalism, unlike other sorts, is consumed by people who are far better informed than the reporters who write it. That makes it a tough job, so I sympathize. But it also means that financial journalists need to be a lot more careful about flippantly dismissing the comnplaints of their readers.
In any case, it doesn't take a financial wizard to see that most of the stock stories in the WSJ's Section C, MarketWatch, etc, etc, are superficial blather--that day's random sampling of hedge fund predictions. The fact is, these predictions are often wrong, and they have no bearing whatsoever on long-term (ie. relevant) business outcomes.
So what function do these stories serve? Do they in any way educate or make life easier for the average business person? Do they strengthen the civil society that newspapers are pledged to uphold? What truth are they unveiling? None, according to the readers I've talked to.
Even the minority of readers who give a hoot about short-term stock prices say that they'd prefer that journalists do away with their utterly irrelevant, off-the-top-of-their-heads stock gobbledygook, and instead publish stories that cover the many and diverse factors that are likely to affect a company's prospects. That way, readers could predict stock prices on their own and learn something meaningful in the process. Also stories that get into the brain-teasing complexities of business are simply more interesting.
Even in the realm of pointless stock stories, the Berkshire piece was silly. A few random traders come to the whiz-bang conclusion that charities might sell some of their stock. This means the company's future is "clouded?" What about its profits? Its sales? Its market share?. Its talent? The quality of its investments? Its strategy? Its vision? The competition? The economy? Government policy? China? All irrelevant, it seems from this story. Charities now own a lot of stock, so its future is cloudy. Come on!
I said it above, and I'll say it again. The financial media is not telling us which companies are good, which are bad, and why. Readers are angry.
The media ignores them at its own peril.
(Mark Mitchell is assistant managing editor of CJR Daily, in charge of The Audit -- GW)
Mark, I took the liberty of adding at the bottom of your post that you are assistant managing editor of CJR Daily, in charge of the Audit.
I still don't get where the anger comes from. Why are you guys so teed off at the Journal over flat-out nothing? Hell, they -- alone among major newspapers in the civilized world -- didn't review my friggin' book. I'm the one who should be pissed. Reviewing my book -- now that would surely strengthen civil society.
First of all, you're misreading of the WSJ Berkshire article. It did not say that Berkshire Hathaway's future was "clouded" as a company.
Look at the deck: "Donation of Holdings Depresses Shares Amid Concern Over Sales, But Some See a Relative Bargain." The shares are clouded, Mark, not the company. I know, the headline was ambiguous, but the deck makes up for it. I doubt that anyone would say that headline meant that Berkshire was going belly up.
By the way, can you please explain to me how this supposed "reader anger," manifests itself? (I mean apart from the "readers you talk to.") Who are the angry readers? Where are their complaints?
Quite frankly you are the only reader I know who is teed off about the financial press (in this case, the Marketplace section of the WSJ) for engaging in financial journalism. Your position is very much a unique one that I have not seen reflected anywhere outside The Audit.
I don't mean people who are angry at journalists for legitimate or even illegitiimate but understandable reasons, such as bias or worse.
After all, you're not upset about the article being biased or wrong. Your (the Audit's) beef was that it was written at all. You don't seem very comfortable with the very concept of financial journalism, which does not necessarily report in every article on companies as an organic whole, but rather tends to examine companies from different perspectives (share price, marketing, management, etc.)
Yes, occasionally financial journalism does examine companies to determine if they are "good" or "bad," but the day-to-day grind of financial journalism looks at each component part of the company. In this instance, the share price of Berkshire.
There's a lot of bad financial journalism out there -- biased, unethical, flat-out wrong journalism. Why not write about that? Knocking the media for innocuous pieces strikes me as a waste of time and energy.
My problem with Mitchell's comments is twofold:
1. First of all he is obviously the same person who posted as "Biased Observer." Wouldn't you know, Gary, by the IP address? If that is the case, then a writer for Columbia Journalism Review violated the same ethical precepts as an LA Times biz columnist who was fired for posting anonymously.
2. Even in his signed post he didn't identify himself as a CJR Daily journalist. You had to do that.
3. He did not respond to any of your substantive points and instead slung mud.
For all these reasons I am amazed that this man runs a web site of Columbia Journalism Review.
If Mark comes back to respond, he can address whether or not he was the person who posted earlier as "Biased Observer."
Sometimes the Daily has good stuff. The article on Business Weak's slideshows was spot on. I think it's good to have a fresh perspective on the table.
On the other hand, I'd agree that their writers seem to simply not like business journalism in general. It is like having someone who hates sports be assigned to writing about sports coverage.
The Berkshire post definitely went overboard and didn't help the Audit's credibility very much.
This isn't the first time that Mitchell has shown himself to be defensive, thin-skinned and arrogant. See this exchange with BusinessWeeek:
http://www.businessweek.com/
the_...paign_id=search
Oh, and I want to add that, just as Audit was with the Heard item, Mitchell personally was factually wrong in the article that is the subject of the link. Instead of admitting that, he just blew smoke and postured as he did here.
The first paragraph of Mitchell's response is almost word-for-word out of Thesanitycheck.com. His master's voice.
Yes, the "biased observer" post was mine. I assumed that would be obvious from my second post. I doubt that CJR has rules about anonymous posting, and if it does, I plan to ignore them. I see no harm in a writer using a pseudonym--assuming he is prepared to take responsibility for his commentary.
Randy, are you THE Randy Showalter, from the National Wild Turkey Federation?
Gary, thanks for your reply. I am not "angry," though I do sense that many people are displeased with the stock-pick brand of journalism, as opposed to the broader "financial journalism." Let's keep the two separate for the sake of this discussion, though I find it telling that you equate them--further evidence of the extent to which shallow short-term stock picking--as opposed to corporate strategy stories, economic analysis, in-depth fraud investigations, etc. -- is coming to define the financial media.
In any case, I certainly do not "dislike" the financial media. I don't dislike stock stories, either. They are fun in moderation, as is the sports section. My concern, though, is that these stories have assumed ever greater importance in business publications and, in many cases, they have come to dominate the public debate over corporate value. I don't see how that can possibly be a good thing.
I am sorry if there is anyone who mistakes criticsm for anger or dislike. We're just doing our jobs and enjoying the debate. That's what it's all about. Journalists who don't like to be challenged are in the wrong business.
Johnny T -- ha ha, I'd forgotten about that. Yes, well, Mullaney started it.
Dave O -- weird.
Thanks for your further comments.
If people are displeased with stock-picking stories, more power to them. I'm philosophically opposed to the whole concept of stock picking. People should buy index funds, as I argued repeatedly in my book.
But that doesn't mean that newspapers shouldn't write about stocks, if readers want those stories. When I was at BW, the Inside Wall Street column was one of the magazine's biggest draws. I can't recall a single complaint coming into the magazine -- and I would have seen such a complaint, as such letters were circulated -- saying that BW should get out of the stock-picking business.
As for stock-picking "assuming greater importance" in the financial media -- Mark, with all due respect, where have you been? This is 2006. The stock-picking, stock-performance ethos has been of high importance in the financial media for the past two decades! So I think your thesis is incorrect, except that "fraud investigations" have always been low in the pecking order, and yes that is getting worse. Incidentally, if you look at BW cover stories over the past few years, virtually each and every one has been about corporate strategies and few if any have had a significant market angle.
I'm not opposed to what you're saying philosophically, even though I think your factual analysis is off-target. I'm just saying that it comes across as naive when you use flimsy pretexts to condemn stock stories when, in reality, you have a serious philosophical problem with the genre.
Well, I guess we'd have to count the stories to see whether CNBC - Street.com - MarketWatch - BusinessWeek Online (as opposed to the magazine) - Forbes.com - MSN Money - Motley Fool and thousands of blogs have aided the proliferation of stock-picking journalism. In the meantime, I'll grant you that it's always been a pernicious presence.
I'm not sure what you mean by "philosophical." My problem with these stories is that they add nothing to the body of human knowledge, and often cause more harm than good. I guess that is a philosophy (so is "terrorism is bad"), but I think "critique" is more accurate. Or, "truth."
In any case, generating some discussion seems better than to say, "it has been this way a long time, so don't question it or you'll seem naive." Or maybe you're right: only dumb people think.
This has been interesting-thanks. But I fear we are boring your readers.
Good gawd. All those outlets you cite have been around for years. I was writing about Motley Fool in 1995, for Pete's sake. It was an established web presence even then.
Just because something is new to you doesn't mean that it is new. It means that you aren't familiar with the genre. That is the problem with the Audit generally, by the way, even if you do get some stories right (e.g., the Mark Cuban thing).
The rest of your comments simply indicate, yet again, that you can't seem to push a couple of sentences together without goofing up or misrepresenting what people say.
No, I didn't say that you shouldn't question long-established journalism practices or you'll sound naive. What I said was that the Audit used a flimsy pretext to criticize an article because you guys don't like an entire subset of financial journalism. That's just being sloppy and inaccurate, in addition to being, as you correctly point out, naive.
I'm still trying to figure out where you came up with "only dumb people think." No, that's your sentiment, not mine. Perhaps you can work that into a house ad -- you know, the one that you guys should insert in Audit the next time you're hard-pressed to fill your space.
What unbelievable arrogance. Posting anonymous smears on a blog is both unethical and sleazy. Mitchell's cavalier attitude toward journalism ethics and codes of conduct is a jaw-dropper.
CJR should get rid of the Audit and get rid of Mitchell. Both are an embarrassment to CJR and to the finest journalism school in the country.
It's time for the alumni to speak up. Write Nick Lemann and let him know what you think.
This is not the first time the Audit has been shown to be totally clueless in reviewing market coverage.
Some weeks ago, Yvette Kantrow of Thedeal.vom ripped to shreds a bizarre attack on Barron's that appeared in Audit. http://weblogs.jomc.unc.edu/talk...gbiznews/?
p=495
Ms Kantrow writes: “If stories about the market, or a particular stock, must be “ironclad” and “unambiguous,” as CJR deems they must, any journalist now writing about stocks (or bonds or soybean futures or anything else bought and sold on an open exchange) should just unplug their computers, throw away their Rolodexes and retreat to that cute little bookstore in Vermont right now.
“For nothing about a market is certain; just because a stock trades at one price today doesn’t mean it will trade at that price a year from now, a month from now, even a day from now. There is no such thing as an ‘ironclad’ story when writing about the market, unless of course, you’re simply reporting what’s already happened. Once you get into predicting how a stock (or a company, for that matter) will perform tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, uncertainty is inescapable.
“That’s not to say, of course, that financial reporters should feel free to carelessly produce uninformed stories fueled by reckless speculation. But that’s hardly what [Barron’s writer Jacqueline] Doherty did. Right off the bat — the second paragraph, to be exact — she acknowledges that ‘there are those who disagree’ with her bearish thesis and expect Google to go as high as $2,000 a share. She then engages in what she admits is a ‘less than scientific’ exercise in which she shaves 20% off of an ‘uber-bull’s’ 2006 revenue estimates for Google; trims his projected expenses; makes a few other assumptions about compensation and cash and concludes that Google would be worth $188 a share, not its recent $360.”
Later, Kantrow added, “Does CJR really want financial reporting that does nothing but repeat or reinforce the conventional wisdom? Barron’s, interestingly enough, caught similar flak in March 2000 when it ran its infamous — or should we upgrade it to famous? — burn-rate story that claimed that scores of new-economy darlings were quickly heading for bankruptcy. Other journalists, Web companies and investors severely chastised the magazine for causing Internet stocks to fall with an analysis they viewed as deeply flawed. But when the tech-heavy Nasdaq crashed one month later, the piece was hailed as visionary for being one of the first to take sky-high Internet valuations to task.”
Mitchell talks a good game about listening to readers, but he should try listening to his own readers for a change. I don't know very many people who are angry about market coverage but there is plenty of reason to be angry about The Audit's sloppy, pretentious stabs at media criticism.
Oh, one thing I wanted to add. Kantrow prefaced her remarks as follows:
"Media Maneuvers doesn't often engage in criticizing other media critics. But CJR's tirade against Barron's seemed too absurd to go without comment, not because of what we think about Google, or about Barron's, or about Doherty's article, but about financial journalism, the flow of information and the ways of the market."
Note the word "absurd." Seems to be a pattern here of absurd articles, wouldn't you say?
Mark Mitchell, editor of the CJR Daily, writing anonymously as "Biased Observer," said as follows:
"To take things a step further, the very practice of dividing stories into separate sections of a newspaper serves only to skew information and news."
He should have stayed anonymous.
Here's something weirder, Mitchell.
Bob O'Brien, the proprietor of thesanitycheck.com, is one of your biggest fans. Apropos Gary's earlier item, he's heaped praise on CJR and constantly uses your link as an endorsement and praised your stories.
Bob O'Brien makes a living smearing financial journalists, as do you.
Right. Weird.
Yes, Dave O, that is really weird.
Why do I feel like one of those stocks on the Yahoo! message boards, subjected to the bizarrely skewed abuses of unemployed bashers?
I sincerely hope that none of these posts were written by working journalists. If they were, the myopia, stodginess and intellectual dishonesty of the financial press is even worse than I thought. Is anybody going to respond to the arguments? Or is the trick merely to fling random, negative adjectives and hope that they stick?
He who criticizes the genre is "naďve,” you say. He who criticizes the genre just “isn't familiar” with the genre. He who criticizes the genre uses a “flimsy pretext,” it is said, though the pretext is not identified, and the reasons for its flimsiness are left unspoken. Gary, those are not arguments. What are you doing?
I do not understand what is “naďve” about stating that there is something quite wrong with shallow stories that provide no information relevant to business outcomes or the greater good. Why is it “unfamiliar” to question the value of stories that do serious damage to the reputations of corporations and people, and yet consistently fail to present complete sets of facts? What is the problem with noting that it is a bit absurd to say that the future of Berkshire, or its stock, is clouded for the sole reason that Warren Buffet contributed shares to charity? Might Berkshire’s business model, and stuff like how much money it makes, also affect its future? One need only browse the blogs and message boards to see the influence that these stories are having on the public debate, and it is not good.
Those are my pretexts, Gary. What, precisely, is flimsy about them? I sense the ugliest sort of defensiveness. “We are financial journalists; nobody knows what we know; we must defend our tribe in the face of all attacks.” This is a syndrome and needs to be treated as such. But, instead, you suggest that I should just get hip, join the gang – never mind if the gang is sick and gone astray and now commits gross violations against every basic notion of journalistic decency. Perhaps, you are right, and it has always been so. I cannot, however, grasp the relevance of this observation.
Paltrow’s defense in “The Deal” was spirited, but she did not address the question that Ed Colby posed in his piece—namely, why in the world would Barron’s predict imminent, serious troubles (see sinking Google sign on the front cover) for a company that had just posted record profits and had $8 billion of cash in the bank? It is fine to battle the conventional wisdom, but one must use facts and logic as ammunition. As it were, Barron’s story, while framed as a discussion of corporate strategy, offered little more than a prediction that the stock would fall in the coming months. So what? Will the stock then go back up, as stocks tend to do? Does this have anything to do with Google’s long-term prospects as a company? Of course, not.
Barro
Oh, and Mahoney, if that is your real name:
My only point is that the separate sections, especially in the case of financial journalism, give the impression that the issues need only be considered in isolation. It would be fine if every company received coverage in every section, but that does not happen. So, often, the public perception of a company is defined by stock stories in the Money & Investing section, or marketing stories in the Marketplace section.
Many factors influence corporations and their value to society, and I believe they should be addressed holistically.
I am not suggesting that there is any chance in the world that the Journal will pay heed to the argument, or any other concept that stretches the boundaries of the status quo. I assume the Journal's managers know what they are doing and think they have a model that works, or at least that the cost of changing it would not justify the benefits.
I do not think that detracts from the value of the argument, though. So just consider it an argument for the sake of argument.
If you have something specific to say about it, please do. If your only response is, "that's just nutty, it cannot be," then I would like to hire you as my attorney.
Cheers, Mark
Mark, you say "I do not understand what is 'naďve' about stating that there is something quite wrong with shallow stories that provide no information relevant to business outcomes or the greater good."
What's naďve about that statement is that not every article in a newspaper has the purpose of advancing Mark Mitchell's view of the greater good. It shows a lack of understanding of the news business that I find pretty shocking in a "media critic."
But your comments here, while sometimes bizarre in my opinion, are not what concerns me. What I find troubling is that your staff wrote a flawed, erroneous article, and you -- the AME in charge of the section -- responded not by admitting that you screwed up, but by posting an anonymous attack on the Journal. Your further responses, under your real name, probably did your credibility even more damage, as did your saying "if CJR has rules on anonynmous posting, I plan to ignore them."
Quite an exhibition, overall.
There he goes again, Mark Mitchell making common cause with the famous Bob O'Brien (message board "bashers").
Bob O'Brien is the pseudonym of a kook who posts paranoid drivel on the Internet, claiming that Carol Remond and Bill Baldwin are on the take and that Herb Greenberg belongs in prison stripes.
And this is an objective "media critic." Laugh of the day! He's just Bob O'Brien in pinstripes.
Whether you agree with him or not, at least Mitchell is engaging in dialogue about his position. Compare that to Mark Cuban, who wants to subvert journalism for financial gain and airily waves away criticism.
"My only point is that the separate sections, especially in the case of financial journalism, give the impression that the issues need only be considered in isolation."
To you, perhaps. To the rest of the world, no way.
Yup. Staying anonymous is definitely your best bet. Thanks for sharing, Mark, if that is your real name.
I feel as if I have fallen down the rabbit hole.
What erroneous article? What is “shocking” about a media critic who criticizes the media? What “news business” do I not undertand? The one that censors opinions? The one that cannot engage in a debate over whether it might be churning out too many stories that contain no relevant information and actually do harm (not Mark Mitchell’s notion of harm; quantifiable harm--to real companies)?
As I said, I have no objection to a limited number of stock stories appearing somewhere in the back of the paper, but I do object to significant resources being devoted to them at the expense of in-depth journalism—or even simple stories that honestly convey information that actually matters. I also consider it a serious problem that these shallow play-by-play stock stories, rather than facts, are driving the public debate over corporate value. A “news business” that cares nothing for the consequences of its coverage is indeed one that I cannot understand.
And what could possibly be wrong with someone expressing their opinions anonymously? (I never have; this is the second time I have been moved to post anything at all, but I’d be interested to hear the logic—something beyond “anonymous is bad,” please.) Gary, have you ever posted anything anonymously? I wonder.
Finally, what in the world does Bob O’brien have to do with any of this?
No doubt, my reputation has been tarnished, for I have allowed myself to be dragged into a conversation with a collection of Mad Hatters. And to think, I could have spent the time chatting with the girls on MySpace. A mistake, indeed.
This will be my last post here. Please do visit us at CJRDaily.org.
Mark
PS. Gary, please place quotations around my use of the word “pretext” in the prior post.
"Censorship" now. The list of Mark Mitchell hallucinations continue. It really has been remarkable to watch this man disintegrate in a blog comments section. Let's go over his last remarks one by one:
"What erroneous article?" The one that is the subject of Gary's comments. The one that's been getting you blowing smoke like a chimney for the past few days.
"What 'news business' do I not undertand?" The one you're paid to write about.
"What is 'shocking' about a media critic who criticizes the media?" Nothing. What's been "shocking" here is your behavior.
I could go on, but what is the point? Any criticism of CJR is "crazy." You have to be a "Mad Hatter" to contradict this great man.
Mr. Mitchell, what has "tarnished your reputation," if anything, is what you have done and said yourself. I'll run them down for you:
1. You responded to a criticism of CJR Daily by posting an anonymous tirade on a third-party blog.
2. Your anonymous response contained yet another attack on the Journal.
3. You freely admitted you posted anonymously.
4. You said that if there were CJR Daily rules against anonymous posting, you would ignoring.
5. Last but not least, you make believe that you don't know what's wrong with any of this. The identical conduct got a Los Angeles Times columnist fired. That's all. Nothing serious. Just a "Mad Hatter" talking.
This is a very serious issue, and Mitchell would do well not to make light of it.
The Los Angeles Times, in firing columnist Michael Hiltzik, said as follows:
"Hiltzik did not commit any ethical violations in his newspaper column, and an internal inquiry found no inaccurate reporting in his postings in his blog or on the Web. But employing pseudonyms constitutes deception and violates a central tenet of The Times’ ethics guidelines: Staff members must not misrepresent themselves and must not conceal their affiliation with The Times. This rule applies equally to the newspaper and the Web world.”
This rule "applies equally to the newspaper and the Web world" -- except at a journalism website that is the self-appointed scold of the media. What hypocrisy.
I vowed not to post here again, but I need to be clear about where I stand on this.
Michael Hiltzik was fired because he anonymously praised his own work and smeared his personal enemies. In my “Biased Observer” post, I wrote nothing that I wouldn’t put under my own byline.
Moreover, I wrote a follow-up post using my own name and including the phrase “I said it above, I’ll say it again,” an obvious reference to the prior post. Contrary to a blog post on SABEW’s Talking Biz News, I was not “exposed.” Only perverts expose themselves, and it’s been at least three weeks since I last did that. I will ask for a retraction.
At the time of writing my first two posts, I do not think it even occurred to me that I had posted anonymously. Either way, it didn’t – and doesn’t – seem to me to be a big isssue.
It was, I admit, a bit cavalier to say that I would break CJR’s rule, if there were one. But what the hell: I’m cavalier. Bad rules are meant to be broken (note to CJR editors: I promise to tell you before I break any rules). I stand by my (personal) opinion: There is absolutely nothing wrong with a reporter posting anonymously as long as he is prepared to stand by his comments. Legally speaking, it is a fundamental right—free speech. Ethically speaking, the guidelines are pretty obvious. Self-serving lies posted anonymously are bad. Honest opinions, anonymous or otherwise, are always good.
As I said in a previous post, I truly hope that the (anonymous) posters on this site are not working journalists, for there has been nothing honest about their opinions. I remain hopeful that someone will respond to my specific arguments with something more intelligent than vague references to “hallucinations” and my “bad behavior.”
I mean, yes, my behavior is really bad and perhaps it has something to do with all those hallucinations. But what about the arguments? You know, the ideas. There was a time when journalists had those.
OK, that’s it. No more posts from me. It’s been fun.
MM
Yes indeed. Your "ideas" have been fun. Good luck with the retraction thing.
In other words, CJR Daily has no ethics policy or standards of conduct for its staffers. They are above that. They just do what they want, and when caught with their pants down they can just make up "ethics policies" designed to include the conduct they just committed.
Oh and they can act like adolescents too. That is expressly permitted in their ad hoc "code of ethics."
There's a serious error in Mark Mitchell's latest salvo needs to be corrected. Michael Hiltzik was not fired. He lost his column.
I stand corrected. Apologies to Michael Hiltzik.
Quite an entertaining display all around. Apart from Mr. Mitchell conveniently changing the subject from what CJR said about the WSJ's Berkshire piece to a larger indictment of financial journalism (a clear sign of a weak argument), it strikes me that this whole debate comes down to one truism: either one believes in markets or one doesn't. All markets -- whether for securities or for consumer products like news (yes, as much as I hate to say it, the articles and publications we slave to put out are products) -- depend on imperfect information and hew to the demands of their buyers and sellers. That's why sports sections and "stock stories" exist. My guess is that Mr. Mitchell doesn't believe in markets. But heck, I'm just a thin-skinned, sellout financial journalist.
You're also clearly one of those "mad hatters" too insane to realize the Truth.
Anyway, it's been a good exchange. I'm going to sit right down and write a letter to the Journal and Times demanding that they get rid of those "deceptive" separate sections. I'm a holistic kind of guy.
Speaking of "mad hatters," Mark will be pleased to know that he received a ringing endorsement from "Bob O'Brien," the parnaoid crank who runs a website that specializes in naked shorting conspiracies and vicious, anonymous attacks on journalists.
"Bob" sees nothing wrong with Mark posting anonymously, by the way.
His post contained the usual psycho ranting, so I couldn't run it. But I did want Mark to know that yes, there is indeed someone out there who agrees with him.
"Bob," incidentally, is a great fan of CJR Daily and has touted the Daily's link to his blog, which he sees as legitimizing his wild conspiracy theories and journo-bashing drivel.
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