Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 12:13 PM by Gene

In yet another inspired bit of LALA typing (this one courtesy of ROMY), Tim Rutten tells us the press failed with Enron.

What doesn't it fail on?

Not long after Enron's collapse, the Conference Board published a pseudonymous piece by a "longtime-publishing insider" [MY link], who correctly diagnosed the problem this way: "Most of the mainstream business media has been too busy morphing CEOs into celebrities and giving us guided tours of their royal lifestyles. There's been no time to do reality checks on their balance sheets and business practices. Instead, 'the press gave us personal information about Ken Lay's brilliance, his wife's wonderful taste in furniture, and the glamorous lives of other business executives,' says Ron Berenbeim, the Conference Board's expert on business ethics. 'They didn't think we were interested in those boring footnotes in the balance sheet and earnings reports.'

"There's another dilemma…. Many reporters and editors ceased to be journalists in any real sense and began writing what seemed like infomercials and advertising copy…. At first, CEOs were portrayed merely as brilliant business warriors, but during the last five years they have been crowned all-knowing Citizen Kings. After such deification, it's not easy for business reporters to now fall on their keyboards and declare that the emperors are not simply naked but crooked as well. The late George Reedy, press secretary to Lyndon Johnson and a wily student of media, used to say to me: 'Every reporter I know has to whore now and then, but damn if I understand those who pimp too.'"

WELCOME TO THE WHOREHOUSE OF JERNALISM!