Don't know nothin' about finance

Hmm. Meet the Press: Survey Evidence on Financial Journalists As Information Intermediaries by Andrew C. Call, Scott A. Emett, Eldar Maksymov, and Nathan Y. Sharp. From the Abstract:

Financial journalists play an important role as information intermediaries in capital markets. We survey 462 financial journalists and conduct 18 follow-up interviews to provide new insights into the inputs, incentives, and beliefs that shape their reporting. Our findings can be summarized in three important themes. First, financial journalists have stronger incentives to produce original information and analysis than to disseminate information already in the public domain, and they rely heavily on private communication with company management for information. Second, sell-side analysts play an important role in informing financial journalists, many of whom lack financial sophistication. Third, the incentives for sensationalism in the business press assumed in prior research are dominated by incentives for accurate, timely, in-depth, and informative reporting, while the quid pro quo incentives assumed in prior literature (e.g., putting a positive spin on company news to maintain access to inside sources) are substantial. We examine a wide range of other topics relevant to the literature on the business press, and our results provide multiple avenues for future research in this area.

America self-identifies very roughly as 30% liberal, 40% moderate, 30$ conservative. Financial journalists, in contrast are 58% liberal, 37% moderate and 4% conservative. America can claim that they don't see themselves reflected in the make-up of the mainstream media.

More critically, the key finding is that financial journalists don't know much about finance and finance journalists swap favorable coverage for access.

Which sounds like all of journalism to me. Back when we had competitive news organizations in cities, this was less of an issue. Once we allowed media collusion with the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, we also gave local government monopsony power as well. Most major cities also have some sort of Invest "City Name" Public Private Partnership for encouraging corporate relocations and/or facilitating the use of government money with (usually minimum) developer money to encourage city development. A city which also has the power of eminent domain to bulldoze the rights of citizens in favor of developers. Finally, every single city has had the same party in office for two or three generations.

Single newspapers, local government and business interest collusion, single political party dominance. It is a recipe for corruption and lack of media oversight. At the local beat level, the local paper knows that they have to stay on the side of the city government and the local business interests if they are to get access to sources of news. The irony is that all they are getting access to is polite narratives, not news in the sense of facts not known to the public.

Our city mayor and city council just green-lighted a 25 year subsidy of public money to a developer to the tune of some $2 billion dollars, with no tax or other benefits to the city. Citizens in opposition communicated and shared information via social media but there was not much coverage in the mainstream media and no investigations. Despite backroom negotiations, transparently bad terms and an overwhelming wreak of corruption.

The research above validates that our challenge is not political polarization but the oppressive governance of the Mandarin class (business government, mainstream media) all in cahoots against the interests and needs of the citizens.