Join FAIR and leading progressive bloggers and economists in demanding that CNBC practice responsible journalism. Will you please take a few moments to sign this open letter to CNBC?
Add your name at: https://fixcnbc.com/p-fair
***
Dear CNBC -
"You knew what the banks were doing, and yet were touting it for months and months. The entire network was." - Jon Stewart
These now-legendary words were a wake-up call. We're asking you to wake up.
Americans need CNBC to do strong, watchdog journalism - asking tough
questions to Wall Street, debunking lies, and reporting the truth.
Instead, CNBC has done PR for Wall Street. You've been so obsessed with
getting "access" to failed CEOs that you willfully passed on
misinformation to the public for years, helping to get us into the
economic crisis we face today.
You screwed up badly. Don't apologize - fix it!
CNBC should publicly declare that its new overriding mission will be
responsible journalism that holds Wall Street accountable. As a down
payment, we ask you to hire some new economic voices - people who have
a track record of being right about the economic crisis and holding
Wall Street executives' feet to the fire.
Please show us that you hear our voices loud and clear.
Sincerely,
Dean Baker
Co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research and author of
Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy
Lawrence Mishel
President, Economic Policy Institute
Doug Henwood
Economic journalist and author of Wall Street and After the New Economy
Eric Burns
President, Media Matters for America
Peter Hart
Activism Director, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
Linda Jue
Director, G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, a project of the Tides Center
Tracy Van Slyke
Project Director, The Media Consortium
Don Hazen
Executive Director, Independent Media Institute
Robert Borosage & Roger Hickey
Co-Directors, Campaign for America's Future
Justin Ruben
Executive Director, MoveOn.org
Markos Moulitsas
Founder, DailyKos.com
James Rucker
Executive Director, ColorOfChange.org
Adam Green & Stephanie Taylor
Co-founders, Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Aaron Swartz
Co-creator, Reddit and RSS & Co-founder, Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Lawrence Lessig
Professor of Law, Stanford University & Co-founder of Change Congress
Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols
Authors, It's the Media, Stupid; Our Media, Not Theirs Tragedy &
Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy
Democracy
Todd Gitlin
Professor of Journalism and Sociology, Chair, Ph.D. Program in Communications, Columbia University
Christopher Hayes
Washington Editor, The Nation
Eric Alterman
Professor of Journalism, Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate School of
Journalism & Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Tom Geoghegan
Lawyer and author of Which Side Are You On? and other economic-related books
Heather Boushey
Senior Economist, Center for American Progress
Eileen Appelbaum
Professor and Director of the Center for Women and Work, Rutgers University
Sylvia Allegretto
Economist, Institute for Research on Labor & Employment, University of California, Berkeley
Chris Rabb
Founder/Chief Evangelist of Afro-Netizen.com & Demos fellow
Phillip Anderson
Founder, TheAlbanyProject.com (New York Blog)
Ian Welsh
Economics blogger, former Managing Editor of Firedoglake.com
Rick Perlstein
Author of Nixonland and Before the Storm
Garlin Gilchrist II
Blogger at TheSuperSpade.com
John Amato
Founder, CrooksandLiars.com
Joe Sudbay
Deputy Editor, AMERICAblog
Josh Silver
Executive Director, Free Press
For more information on CNBC's economic reporting, check out the FAIR blog archives.
