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November 26, 2008

Why CNN Can't Cover the Credit Crisis

My friend Dale Dougherty has up a thoughtful and laudably straightforward post over at BoingBoing on why traditional media -- especially the televised variant -- is doing such a crummy job of covering the ongoing credit crisis. Here is an excerpt:

5) Real experts are hard to find, especially ones with big hair. So over-present talking heads such as Suze Orman ramble on and on in front of Larry King and others. Here's an incredible ramble from Suze Orman on CNN:

People feel they need medication because they are panicking. It’s as if the economy right now is in the I.C.U. unit of a hospital. We are in intensive care and they are throwing everything type of medication at us to cure what is going on. They are panicking because why? Nothing is working. They tried this, it didn’t work. They tried that medication, it didn’t work. They are running out of prescriptions to give it. We are going to be in the I.C.U. unit for a while. Eventually, I don’t know when that will be, six months, a year, year and a half, we will get out, we’ll be in the hospital then. We’ll stay in the hospital for about a year or two. After another year or two we will end up in rehab and then we’ll be okay. This is a long stretch. People have to stop panicking. 

Makes me think of Amy Winehouse singing "They try to make me go to rehab, I say no, no, no." Rehab is taking place over on CNBC.

…10) Lastly, the TV media is no better off than we are at understanding this complex crisis. On a gut level, viewers know what the story is, that it's about them, their future and their children's future. They have specific questions that are difficult to answer (see the Suze Orman blog on CNN where it is promised that she'll answer these many, many questions; she doesn't, of course.) and they have general worries (should I panic?) that are hard to resolve. While we try to absorb as much information as possible, we keep having the same conversation over and over:
Q. What's going on?
A. I don't know. It's hard to tell.

Read the whole thing here.

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