Bailing Out So-Called Professional Journalists

I just got through watching a handful of MSNBC hard news journalists cry about bloggers providing a free service--often used to talk about Paris Hilton--and thereby supposedly devaluing theirs. I switched over to CNN only to see their so-called professional journalist flounder through a short interview with Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich.

Kuncinich wants to stop bailed out banks like Citibank from using funds to put their names on stadiums. It's a simple enough concept. The only thing CNN brought forward was someone's feeble attempt to say that banks were not using bail out money but "their own" money. Kucinich easily and correctly parried that notion by saying that money is fungible. Most people have no idea what that words means, but the money's use is so obvious the audience can probably guess that Citibank had no such reserve without seeing the question and answer. Anything else? No. On his own, Kucinich added that banks are not lending money and that Citibank is laying off 50,000 people while they concern themselves with stadiums. He said that because there wasn't a coherent second inquiry. Why can't a CNN journalist muster the common sense to ask reasonable and penetrating questions instead of collapsing into mush when a politician comes on their show?

I say to CNN and MSNBC, this free service blogger will give you something for free right now. The question should have been: Advertising is a normal part of business. It's the way television journalists make their living. How do you expect banks to recover if they cannot hold customers and seek new business through traditional business means?

Now (unless someone with access to our nation's capitol has the guts to read this blog and bring the question forward) we all have to wonder what the Congressman's answer would have been.

Since I'm handing out head starts, I'll give Representative Kucinich a possible answer to the question I've posed. Citibank tells us that the deal was made before the bailout and therefore should go forward. Tell me how a business strategy allocating a certain level of funding in any direction can make sense when the company is in free fall and living hand-to-mouth on someone else's money. They're stubbornly trying to implement an old plan in a completely new environment. If Citibank is so confident that this advertising works, why are they in a hurry to lay off such a large part of their work force? Because they know that stadium naming rights is long-term strategy and will do little for them in the short-term.

I wonder what the high salaried journalists are planning for their long-term strategy. There's a reason they are losing market share. I suggest they learn to do their jobs better than us bloggers if they ever want to be taken seriously again.