Bush's Economic Address, Suffering Slings and (Down) Arrows By Howard Kurtz
When President Bush was speaking about the economy last Monday, Fox News and MSNBC blew up the size of their stock market tickers -- filling most of the screen with sinking numbers while reducing the president to a small box.
As Bush talked about restoring investor confidence, he was dwarfed by the down arrows: Dow, down 285. Nasdaq, down 20. S&P, down 27.
White House officials called the networks to complain, and Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes now calls the super-sizing of the stock tickers "a mistake."
"It did give a false impression," he says. "We shouldn't have done it. If the market goes down 400 points while the president is speaking, that doesn't mean he drove it down 400 points. There are too many other factors."
MSNBC Vice President Mark Effron, however, says, "When the president is making a speech on Wall Street and the economy, it makes sense to do that. We weren't doing it to make any kind of editorial statement. I don't think there was anything wrong with it."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer calls the split-screen approach "a troubling new development that sensationalizes and distorts what makes markets go up and down. It suggests to viewers there's a causal connection between a president's speech and minute-by-minute market shifts, which is a misleading representation. . . . It's economic nonsense."
Fleischer also notes that when Bush discussed the economy during a Wednesday news conference with Poland's president, the stock tickers remained small -- and that this time the Dow was up 80 points.
The "basic journalistic question," he says, is whether the big graphics should be flashed "only when the market goes down? Is it only when members of the Bush administration speak? What about members of Congress?"
CNN did not enlarge its graphics but for several minutes used a large shot of the New York Stock Exchange tally board that overshadowed Bush. "I understand their point and even sympathize with them," says Lou Dobbs, CNN's "Moneyline" anchor, noting the brevity of the shot. "But ultimately the responsibility is theirs. I really think the White House should have been more sensitive to the fact that that's precisely the way news editors and many viewers react when the president speaks during market hours."
Ailes raised the issue at a staff meeting after Bush's Monday speech, telling colleagues that the approach "troubled me a lot."
"The direct link between what the president was saying and what was happening in the market was not accurate," Ailes says, and any impact would clearly be delayed.
The media love to simplify events, and the idea that a president must rescue the stock market -- which is based on millions of daily investment decisions and economic factors -- is apparently hard to resist.
Some newspapers also connected the dots after Bush's July 9 Wall Street speech. USA Today: "President's words don't boost stocks." Boston Herald: "Bush Speaks, Markets Fall." New York Daily News: "BUSH TALKS -- STOX TANK."