CNBC Disclosure Stirs Ethics Debate in Business Media
Maria Bartiromo, the stock-market reporter and anchorwoman for CNBC, opened her hourlong television interview earlier this month with Sanford I. Weill, the chief executive of Citigroup, with an unusual disclosure. She told viewers that she owned 1,000 shares of Citigroup stock, then worth about $45,000.
nytimes.com
Neither Ms. Bartiromo nor her supervisors thought her stake in Citigroup should disqualify her from questioning Mr. Weill about the company's future and his decision to step down as chief executive at year-end. Amy Zelvin, a spokeswoman for CNBC, said Ms. Bartiromo had abided by the network's policies, which Ms. Zelvin said were intended to ensure "compliance with the highest ethical standards."
Ms. Bartiromo's revelation highlighted an issue that has divided financial journalism. Many business news organizations — including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and Forbes — say that they forbid reporters from covering companies in which they have investments.
CNN, one of CNBC's cable-news competitors, says it tries to avoid such conflicts.
Sarah Cohn, a spokeswoman for CNN in New York, read a prepared statement that said: "We take active measures to avoid putting our staff in the position of reporting on companies in which they have a meaningful stake. Therefore, it would be highly unusual for any on-air disclosure to be necessary."
That position is supported by many experts on journalism ethics. "It's not to suggest that Maria is unethical, but it certainly leaves open concerns that a conflict of interest exists," said Robert M. Steele, the senior faculty and ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., a nonprofit organization that studies the news media. "Disclosure doesn't resolve a conflict of interest; all it does is reveal that a conflict exists."
But not all business-news executives take such a firm stand. Some, like those at Fortune magazine and Fox News, as well as at CNBC, argue that disclosure usually solves the problem of an apparent conflict.
CNBC said that its policies require disclosure of stock ownership during on-air discussions about companies that involve more than passing mention. Among other things, the policies also prohibit reporters and anchors from holding stocks for short periods of time or from selling shares of companies soon after reporting on them.
Ms. Bartiromo's disclosure was not a first for a CNBC anchor, Ms. Zelvin said. But she declined to provide any details other than to say that Ted David, a co-anchor of the network's late morning program, had made at least one stock disclosure on the air. Mr. David did not respond to a request for comment.
In an e-mail message, Ms. Bartiromo, whose frequent reports from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange are closely watched by traders, said, "I don't own many stocks, but the few I do are always disclosed." Through Ms. Zelvin, she declined to say which stocks she owned or what disclosures she had made.
Mark Haines, David Faber and Joe Kernen, who appear daily in the morning on CNBC's "Squawk Box," did not reply to e-mail seeking comment. Ms. Zelvin said all three declined to comment.
Asked whether any of the three had disclosed stock holdings on screen, Ms. Zelvin replied: "If they had anything to disclose, they would disclose it."
David Friend, a senior vice president at CNBC, would not discuss how the network handles conflicts of interest or why its policies differ from those news organizations that impose a more restrictive standard.
Mr. Steele and Al Tompkins, who also teaches ethics courses at Poynter, said they favored the strict guidelines on stock holdings that The Wall Street Journal has for its reporters. In short, they said, reporters should not invest in companies that they cover or might have to write about.
A spokeswoman for Dow Jones & Company, The Journal's owner, supplied a copy of its code of ethics, which is posted on the company's Web site and observed by the newspaper.
Mr. Tompkins suggested that CNBC should have assigned a reporter who was not a shareholder to interview Mr. Weill. Some conflicts may be unavoidable, he said, like reporting on one's own company, but Ms. Bartiromo's conflict was not such a case.
The New York Times, like The Journal, BusinessWeek and Forbes, prohibits reporters from investing in companies they regularly cover and bars reporters from writing about companies whose shares they own. |
