Now you have MarketWatch.com – a Dow Jones web site, for God’s sake – saying CNBC deserves the ripping they’re getting. This was posted at 7:30 and already has 200 comments chiming in.
The network’s mistaken priorities have made it an easy target for the incisive [comedian Jon] Stewart. CNBC can look like a television outfit that values the presentation of news mainly as entertainment. CNBC appears to use ESPN’s "SportsCenter" show as a model for its own "Squawk Box," in which people sit around the shoot the bull on the headlines of the day.
CNBC loses sight of the idea that the public takes investing, and the economy, much more seriously than sports fans debate baseball or football headlines. A recession can make investors snap to attention real fast, you see.
…CNBC’s priorities are clearly out of whack.
As Dan Mitchell wrote on Slate’s …"The Big Money" site: "The overall vibe of CNBC — with its ‘money honeys,’ Jim Cramer’s inane frothing, and the lunkheaded frat boys on ‘Fast Money’ treating economic news like a football game — is stupid."
CNBC has much to answer for and be embarrassed about. The network has gone overboard in its effort to dumb down business news for the masses.
CNBC should know better by now and have a keener understanding of what its audience needs. After so many once-hot technology stocks crashed and burned a decade ago, CNBC’s personalities were castigated for having acted as cheerleaders for the shooting stars of the equities market.