The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media and Manipulation - Softcover

Kurtz, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684868806 ISBN 13: 9780684868806

Publisher: Free Press, 2001

Synopsis

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Spin Cycle comes this engrossing, entertaining exposé of how the media -- from television to newspapers to the Internet -- drive the financial markets today.
The booming economy and mass investing have produced an insatiable demand for financial news and given rise to a group of "fortune tellers" eager to scoop and spread the latest intelligence. In this riveting, unsettling book, Howard Kurtz introduces the powerful journalists, commentators, and analysts whose reports -- too often based on rumor, speculation, and misinformation -- have a real-time impact on the rise and fall of stocks and on the financial health of millions of investors.
Focusing on such well-known figures as cable TV's Ron Insana, Maria Bartiromo, and Lou Dobbs; Christopher Byron and other print reporters who specialize in exclusives; and superstar analysts Ralph Acampora and Henry Blodget, The Fortune Tellers is an incisive, often amusing, and sometimes terrifying report by a journalist well known for his sharp-eyed observations and behind-the-scenes access. In a time of head-spinning volatility, The Fortune Tellers is essential reading for all of us who gamble with our savings in today's overheated stock market.

About this title

From the Author:

My assignment for the day was to hang with a Wall Street trader who was trying to save his rear end as the market came crashing down. It was October 19, 1987, and as the New York bureau chief for The Washington Post, I was drafted on a big breaking story, despite the fact that, like most Americans, I knew little about the stock market. I wound up spending the afternoon with John Mulheren, who seemed to me icy cool as the market plunged by 22 percent and he was losing millions of dollars. (Months later, Mulheren was arrested for waving a gun and threatening to kill legendary trader Ivan Boesky, whom he believed had implicated him in an insider-trading case, but that's another story.) In those days, few ambitious reporters wanted to cover business. It seemed like a backwater, a realm of dry statistics and quarterly earnings reports. Fortune and Forbes were considered trade publications. There were a handful of business shows on the air, such as CNN's "Moneyline," but otherwise television avoided the arena unless there was a market crash or some other calamity. The journalistic action was in politics, crime, sports -- anywhere but business. By the time I began work on The Fortune Tellers, the landscape had been utterly transformed. Business journalism was hot. Nearly everyone cared about Wall Street, thanks to 401-K retirement plans and online trading and a cultural revolution in which half of American families were now invested in the market. New financial magazines and Web sites were springing up, seemingly by the hour. CEOs like Jeff Bezos, Steve Case and Meg Whitman had become cult figures. Two cable networks, CNBC and CNNfn, covered the market's every burp all day long. Celebrities from William Shatner and Phil Jackson to Don Ricles and Lily Tomlin were making dot-com commercials. Even Howard Stern was talking about the market. You couldn't get on an airplane without seeing the latest Dow and Nasdaq numbers flashing on the seat in front of you. All of which raised for me some intriguing questions: Who among the steady parade of analysts, fund managers and commentators could we really trust? Was this explosion of financial advice worth a damn? And what role did journalism play in a world where every hiccup could send a stock hurtling toward the sky --or into the toilet? The results aren't pretty. The advice served up by many of these fortune tellers is not only contradictory, it's often wrong -- but almost no one in the media holds these folks accountable. The press often fails to blow the whistle on blatant conflicts of interest, as Wall Street analysts tout the stocks of companies that their own firms are either doing business with or hoping to snag as clients.

The talking heads themselves are often influenced by cozy relationships with their sources. That's true in other fields as well, but financial journalists are not just observers but players -- their scoops and stories can slice billions of dollars off a company's net worth in a matter of minutes. Wall Street, I learned, is like a snooty high school where half the people hate the other half -- and that sometimes has an impact on the coverage. Even worse, this is the only part of journalism where it's considered okay to report rumors, even bogus ones, on the theory that rumors move the market. But the media now serve as a giant echo chamber for this gossip, giving it legitimacy for millions who otherwise would never hear the Street chatter. Fortunately for me, the financial media machine is filled with all kinds of colorful personalities who do their thing under fierce pressures, making them compelling subjects for a behind-the-scenes narrative. Best of all, I got to hang with CNBC's Money Honey, Maria Bartiromo, who, I can report, is a lot better looking than John Mulheren. -- Howard Kurtz

About the Author:

Howard Kurtz is the media reporter for The Washington Post, and also writes a weekly column for the newspaper and a daily blog for its website. He is also host of CNN's Reliable Sources, the longest-running media criticism show on television. His previous books include New York Times bestselling Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine (1998) and The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation (2000). His book Hot Air: All Talk All the Time (1996) was named by Business Week as one of the ten best business books of the year and Media Circus: The Trouble with America's Newspapers (1993) was chosen as the best recent book about the news media by American Journalism Review. Kurtz joined The Washington Post in 1981, and his work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Newsweek, New York, and other national magazines. He lives with his family in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0684868806
• ISBN 13: 9780684868806
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352