Economic News Embargoes Should Apply to All
The decline of business journalism has almost never stopped. Now it’s to the point where most of the press, in the interest of propping up Dear Leader, spent this year’s entire first quarter regaling us about our supposedly strengthening economic recovery. Horse manure; we have just learned that 2012 growth is expected to come in at perhaps half of that seen in 1985.
Pre-embargo establishment press access should have ended years ago.
It’s no longer necessary. Market participants and the non-elites now have immediate access to information upon its release, and usually have plenty of time to process its essence before the 9:30 a.m. opening bell. (If I were in charge, I’d move the embargo times for a few of the key reports back by 30 minutes to allow for more complete digestion.)
Far more important, the Associated Press (aka the Administration’s Press), the other wire services, the major newspapers, and the rest of the select outfits which currently have pre-embargo access shouldn’t have it. They should have to compete for news consumers’ attention and eyeballs on the same terms as everyone else in New and Old Media. If they’re really as great as they say they are in analyzing and interpreting information, they shouldn’t need the head start. But they’re not, and the less deluded among them know it. All too often they are exclusively narrative framers.
After using their pre-embargo windows to get an (often incomplete) grasp of the reports involved, their next enterprise almost inevitably seems to be to figure out how they’ll spin it. To name just two recent AP examples seen during the course of separate individual business days, a declining March consumer confidence report devolved from “falls” to “rosy,” and bad news about April housing starts was flushed down the memory hole while good news about building permits got the full-trumpet treatment.
I contend that this kind of “reporting” would have a tough time surviving if it operated from the same starting line as everyone else. One or both of two things would then happen:
- New Media business and economic commentators would soon become the dominant go-to places for people who want accurate and objective information accompanied by insightful analysis.
- In response, the establishment press would start putting genuinely knowledgeable Bizzies on the business beat, or risk irrelevance.
It’s long past time we find out.
Government controlling access to information on the economy is a sign that our government is a house built of cards, and that it is no longer responsible to its citizens.
The Alphabeth soup news organizations need a heads up becasue they have to have time for Media Matters to tell them what it means. Then they need a few minutes to change a few words (they don’t want them to match word for word)
and then send it back out under their own name. They’re more or less bobbleheads for Barack.
Economists, both in and out of government, only guess and usually somewhat wrong, about the future. Check all the restatements and such. These pronouncements, taken seriously by the media, certainly move markets which the so-called “Wall Street” loves since that’s how they make their money. The media is a Wall Street patsy about this. The Dept of Agriculture guesses wrong, and myriad more, but I can’t remember them all and I am too lazy to look it up. Embargos are useless, as is the media.
It is true that the government can manipulate the reports to benefit the boss, President Barack Obama, in his reelection. The government employees might not all have jobs if a Mitt Romney becomes president and they know that. But since the media wants Obama as Sexy Prexy it goes along with the lies and ultimate restatements.
And, besides, early release to special people allowed those people and their closest 100 friends to take advantage of the early knowledge and position themselves to make a nice profit from the ignorance of the rest. Problem has arisen, however, that only the folks in the business who have survived 40 years of government help in the form of cutting out the competition remain, so there isn’t any profit to be made from it. It does, however, give the news – aka the propaganda arm of the party in the White House (either one, no difference) – time to work out the spin they want to put on that news and what they want left out. “Responsible journalism”; what a concept!
I assume that FOX also has early access.
Fox News does not. Fox Business Channel does — for now (as does CNBC). My guess is that Fox didn’t have access until it created its business channel several years ago.
I say “for now” because DOL is “re-credentialing” all entities whose names I learned after this column was published (17 of them, which includes a few foreign-based entities), and probably several others who might want in.