Watching Fox News and CNBC lately has been painful for Beezer, who was trained initially as a professional print journalist.

Start with CNBC, which bills itself as the world’s premier news channel for business.  While the channel does spend much of its time reporting actual business events, both in the US and around the world, the same people who are reporting spend a lot of time commentating.  It’s as if the journalist who pens a front page news story, also writes the day’s official editorial.

There’s an old adage in journalism.  The editorial writer has an audience of one: The Publisher.  In professional journalism the two writers are kept separate and the need for such a distinction is understood.

When the reporter melds with the editorial writer, you get bad journalism.  Which means you get poor, honest reporting of the facts.  Which means, inevitably, the audience is fed inaccurate, or at minimum, unbalanced, reporting of what’s truly going on.  Editorial writers will subsume facts that don’t support the ideas of the publisher, and highlight those that do.  Journalist are supposed to draw attention to facts that may be inconvenient to one or both sides of a story. 

Journalists do have opinions, of course.  But professional journalists take a sort of grim pleasure in playing the devil’s advocate, even if they agree strongly with the side of a debate that they discomfit with their questions.  They must do this, because not doing so invariably leaves important information in the dark, unseen by the viewer.

Journalists, in a sense, are the world’s referees.  They are supposed to be as unbiased as possible, trained in the art of writing clearly, and knowledgeable enough to challenge questionable assertions by one side or another debating an issue.

Exhibit one for CNBC would be Larry Kudlow.  An economist with experience on Wall Street, Kudlow is much more commentator than journalist.  The facade of honest reporting crumbles almost immediately when Kudlow is at the desk.  Kudlow commented today that “Republicans were put on the earth to cut taxes.”  Which is fine to say if you preface the remark by noting that you are writing an editorial.  But CNBC exists to no small degree based upon the audience’s assumption they’re getting an honest recitation of the facts.    Of course CNBC may exist to get Kudlow’s particularly misogynist form of economics into the mainstream of American thought.

Guests on Kudlow’s show who might knowledgeably present a different opinion appear as foils only.  If they start to make sense (and most do because they are professionals in the area to which they speak), Kudlow waste no time interrupting them, and if that isn’t immediately successful in shutting them up, he literally hollers over them so the audience can barely tell what’s being said by anyone, including Kudlow.  As journalism, as a tool for honest reporting, Kudlow’s show is a total waste of time.  As a platform for espousing Ayn Randian,  conservative economics, it is quite good.

To make matters worse, every segment of the CNBC channel is dominated almost exclusively by Kudlow clones.  They don’t have his chutzpah and are more polite, but given the opportunity they will trot out what amounts to the Kudlow editorial line (the opinion of the publishers).

Experience tells Beezer to be wary of the reportage on CNBC.  People so openly ideological are bound to latch onto facts that might satisfy their preconceptions, but will be relatively unimportant in helping inform the audience about what’s truly going on out in the business world.

Fox news suffers from some of the same ills.  This news channel started out asserting it was going to be “fair and balanced.”  The implication, one assumes, was that the other news channels weren’t fair and balanced. 

That’s possible.  TV journalism has always been held in low esteem by print journalists.  Most TV stories are simply rehashes of a print journalist story.  An “exclusive” for TV is getting to a newsmaker first “live” where the newsmaker repeats what he’s already said, normally many times, in print.

Fox seems to be constructed, instead of fair and balanced, as a counterbalance to its perception of the liberal bias at the other news channels.   Instead of truly being “fair and balanced,” Fox is the conservative counterweight to other news channels.  Here again, honest reporting is tossed in the dustbin as a result. 

For CNBC and Fox, both quite conservative news organizations, it’s partisan debate in lieu of accurate and unbiased reporting.  Sort of like the US Senate, which is partisan debate instead of sensible leadership and legislation.  Under these circumstances the first victim will be honest fact exposition and truthful news journalism.  The second victim will be the audience, who will inevitably end up being ill informed.

Contrast these two conservative channels with MSNBC.  From an editorial perspective, MSNBC is liberal compared to Fox or CNBC.  Other than that bias distinction, there is another important one where MSNBC separates itself from the other two:  MSNBC still maintains the distinction between its journalists and its commentators.  It may be biased, but it clearly identifies it’s biases as coming from “commentators” not journalists.

If you want real business reporting you’ll have to get Bloomburg, which not only does a more thorough job than does CNBC, but also has an extensive reporting organization with desks around the world.  It’s quite a delight early in the morning to hear journalists from around the world explaining their particular geographic area.   And nary a Kudlow, or Kudlow wannabee in sight.  Refreshing, and more informative.

As for Fox news, I have no clue where one can go for respite.  If Fox is correct and everyone else is liberally biased, then there is no alternative to get truly balanced reporting.  Maybe you can watch Public television and Fox to get a balanced mix.  Like mixing oil and vinegar, with a few spices, to get a tasty salad dressing.

I would like to point out one TV show, Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show ”GPS” on Sunday, as a notable exception to this sorry state of affairs.   As I’ve written previously, Zakaria is refreshingly well informed, and fearless in his questioning–no matter one’s bias.  If you want to see how a good journalist works, watch Zakaria.

It would be nice to get a non business focused news channel equivalent to Bloomburg on business.  But such is not the case, at least it seems to this writer.

The real antidote is to read.  Despite the sorry state of financial affairs in the print news business, there’s still terrific journalism being written.   The New York Times is the unquestioned leader in this field.  The New York Times, a generalist newspaper, has become so good at business analysis that many believe it to be superior to that of the Wall Street Journal.  And there’s numerous general and specialist magazines that regularly churn out great news and analysis.

It’s a lot of work, and costs some money.  But reading may be the only alternative available to the sorry state of reporting by big media, particularly television.

I’ve written a number of posts about this important subject: FDR and the philosophy he believed in.  Without understanding FDR’s philosophy, one can’t understand how he accomplished what he did.

FDR made many brilliant observations during his four terms as President, but none so important to remember as those he made in his first two Inaugural addresses during the throes and misery of the Great Depression.

After fighting the Depression for four years, in his second Inaugural FDR said:

“Nearly all of us recognize that as intricacies of human relationships increase, so power to govern them also must increase–power to stop evil; power to do good.  The essential democracy of our Nation and the safety of our people depend not upon the absence of power, but upon lodging it with those whom the people can change or continue at stated intervals through an honest and free system of elections.  The Constitution of 1787 did not make our democracy impotent.

In fact, in these last four years, we have made the exercise of all power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public’s government.  The legend that they were invincible–above and beyond of the processes of a democracy–has been shattered.  They have been challenged and beaten.”

Beezer here.  Can you imagine President Obama making such a statement of philosophy today?  If you find it hard to do so, then you are at the beginning stages of realizing why we find ourselves today in such a mess, in a quagmire of indecision and partisanship.  We have forgotten what our government is supposed to be.  And this isn’t the first time it’s happened either.  FDR had to directly address this forgetfulness in his first Inaugural address.

In that address, FDR fingered the bad guys and made no mistaking of his resolve possible.

After noting the nation’s problems FDR said:

“Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated.  Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition.  Faced by the failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money.  Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence.  They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.  We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.  The measure of restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”

Can you imagine one our our leaders saying this?  Probably not.  And therein lies the core of our nation’s problems.  But FDR wasn’t finished with this theme.  In the same address he followed with these sentiments.

“Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.  Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.”

Mired in our cynicism and lack of trust, we cannot today imagine someone standing up and espousing such common sense.  It’s possible we wouldn’t know how to respond.  But as for action, FDR identified the number one priority of his first term.

“Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone.  This Nation asks for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.  This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously.  It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.”

I think Obama needs to start sounding a lot more like FDR.  In fact, I think he needs to start quoting him directly and often.  To try and “modernize” these sentiments would diminish their insight.  To quote one of the Nation’s most revered Presidents would capture some of what we’ve lost.

FDR encapsulated better than anyone the need for a Nation to demand ethical behaviour from both its Government and its businessmen.  The misogynist philsophy of the Republican Party, that corporations can be trusted above our government, is so misguided in light of history that it amazes. 

It’s time Obama publicly remind the Nation of FDR’s philosophy:  A philosophy that left absolutely no doubt that the public’s government comes before private corporations.  FDR did not apologize when he closed thousands of banks.  He did not apologize when he directly hired millions of unemployed men.  He didn’t have to because he had communicated a clear philosophy that demanded ethics from everyone and most decidedly favored the public’s corporation:  The United States government.