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.

In my previous post I said that Fareed Zakaria’s CNN newshour show called GPS may be the best such show on television today. 

In it I said Zakaria appears to be more liberal than conservative, but that is an appearance.  It depends upon the subject.  What follows is an interview of Zakaria where he discusses budget deficits and the problems they present Congress.

New York (CNN) — The solutions to America’s long-term budget deficits are surprisingly simple, but they’re politically unthinkable in today’s Washington, says analyst Fareed Zakaria.

America’s failure to deal with its growing budget deficit is hurting its image internationally, according to Zakaria. President Obama proposed a $3.8 trillion budget Monday, projecting a deficit of more than $1.5 trillion this year and nearly $1.3 trillion for the 2011 budget year.

Zakaria, author and host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria: GPS,” spoke to CNN Wednesday.

CNN: So the president released his budget this week, projecting deficits almost as far as the eye can see. What do you make of it? 

Zakaria: The real problem is not the current deficits that the president has projected. These deficits are to a large extent inescapable because of the financial emergency we find ourselves in, the rescue of the financial system, the stimulus package to jump-start the American economy. But it’s worth understanding why this gets us to 10 percent of GDP, the worst deficit since World War II.

And it is because, as the president points out, the budget was broken in the first place. It was broken by three decisions made during the Bush administration.

The first was to have massive tax cuts, which was a decision made in the wake of the Clinton surpluses.

The second decision was to have a massive new entitlement program — prescription drugs for the elderly — which took the fastest growing part of the American population and joined it to the fastest-rising costs in American health care, which is prescription drugs. It was therefore a marriage made in budgetary hell.

And the third, of course, was to have two wars that were going to be funded without any tax increases, the first time in modern American history that that decision was made. … A partial exception was Vietnam, which produced an economic catastrophe in the 1970s.

And then you add to it the fact that we were in a financial and economic crisis and needed to spend money to get out of it, and you have the current budget problem.

CNN: Right now the United States has a triple-A credit rating and the dollar is the reserve currency for the world. Do you think America’s financial stability is threatened in the short term?

Zakaria: Not in the short term. These are understandable choices America has to make. The entire industrialized world is facing very similar budget deficits. We have probably five years to try to bring our budget into some kind of manageable situation. And if we can’t do it within five years, it suggests two things. One is that the trends at that point become so deep that fixing them at that point becomes very difficult. And the second thing is that it becomes a signal to the world that we really cannot get control of our budget. And at that point, I do think that America’s reputation, its credibility, its ability to borrow vast amounts of money all will come into jeopardy.

CNN: Do you think that President Obama should have taken more dramatic steps to curtail spending?

Zakaria: If he were to cut spending at this point, the economy would quite likely go into a second recession, a double-dip, and then frankly everything collapses. If you don’t have growth, you have no prospect of getting out of this budgetary situation. … But he must in a year begin really to address the serious issues that make up the budget crisis that we have.

The most significant one is health care costs. … Obama’s health care plan, while it has some cost control measures, is mostly about expansion and adding to the costs. … There has to be a much, much more serious focus on costs.

The second is a number of sacred cows in the federal budget which are very large but which frankly make no sense. We have a $250 billion a year hole in the federal budget because employers are given a tax deduction for health care plans. This is actually bad for health care, because it is one of the factors that contributes to these out of control costs, because it’s an invitation to have inflation in the system.

CNN: Are there other large “sacred” budget items?

Zakaria: Another is the deduction of mortgage interest, which is taken in America as some kind of great measure that has enabled Americans to own homes, whereas we have the same rate of home ownership as Britain and Canada, neither of which have interest deductions for their home mortgages.

What it is really is a subsidy for homeowners to take on debt. … We take on more debt than people in other countries and we can see that has been part of the distortion of the market that has produced the financial crisis that we’ve just gone through.

That deduction is a hundred billion dollars. When you hear people talking about freezing this or that federal program, there you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, occasionally a billion dollars. But the real big money is in all these middle class entitlements that are regarded as sacred cows.

And the third part is taxes. You’re not going to bring the budget into balance unless you talk about tax increases. The only real question is what kind of tax increases. If we were to have a modest value added tax, the kind we have in Europe, it would probably raise $150-$250 billion a year. It would discourage excessive consumption, it would encourage savings. …

CNN: So if the solutions are so simple, why aren’t they happening?

Zakaria: If you take those three things — health care, middle class entitlements and taxes — we have effectively solved America’s budget crisis. So the good news here is that we have a $14 trillion economy.

There’s more than enough money to have a very substantial federal budget, moderate taxes (we are still at the low end of the industrialized world in terms of taxes as a percentage of GDP). So it really is worth thinking about how strange it is, that a fairly sensible set of discreet measures could put us back into a situation where we would be the envy of the world in terms of our fiscal condition.

The steps I outlined are economically simple and sensible and yet they’re political dynamite.

If we were to raise the retirement age on Social Security, modestly and on a sliding scale so that it was phased in. If we were to trim the benefits very slightly … the program would be solvent for the next 75 years. And yet think about it. That simple commonsensical fix is politically absolutely impossible in Washington today.

CNN: Why do you think that is?

Zakaria: Because we have a political structure in Washington today, that if one side proposes any solution to these problems, the other side does not ask itself: How can we have a compromise that solves this problem?

Instead they think: How can we demagogue this issue to fundraise, to win votes, to scare people, to polarize the political climate and gain advantage from it? It’s almost that the entire strategy now is how can we take any proposal that anyone makes and turn it into a fundraising opportunity for our extreme wing.

And if you do that, you’re never going to actually solve the problems of the country because every proposal can be demagogued.

CNN: You just came back from Davos. What’s the view of world leaders of this American budget problem?

Zakaria: There is great unease not just about the numbers … the real unease is about the sense that Washington is no longer working, that you cannot count on the United States to be able to make hard decisions, to sort its own internal affairs out. One European CEO said to me, what worries us more than anything else is that problems you’re facing now are the same problems you were facing 10 or 15 years ago.

They don’t seem to go away. In other words, we keep kicking the can down the road.