The Bernie Madoff Incident: Why a Degree in Journalism is Not a Degree in Godliness

Hello, Media, how come you went and televised a hoopla about Bernie Madoff's "hi-tek" operations and gave undeserved publicity to his business when it all started?

Did that program ever carry a disclaimer that "it was for advertisement purposes only?"

If not, are you willing to pay his victims for the damage you did by sanctifying his operations then?

A replay of that episode will appear as if his was the only security firm in all USA that used computerized trading.

And even if Bernie Madoff did pay for it, that ended up as media's inducement to invest in his ponzi scheme.

No amount of sympathetically interviewing victims now can just wash away the media's involvement in lionizing a swindler as if he was the ultimate trader and investor in the world.

If it was just an advertisement, we can understand it as every businessman should publicize his business.

But to televise a whole segment as if he is the only decent in kid in town or that he is the only smart guy with the latest gizmos on Wall Street was downright misinformation.

I don't know how many investors were fooled by that kind of blind adulation and promotion which may befit Hollywood but not Wall Street.

It is a shame if the media treats every aspect of American life as if they are reporting on Hollywood.

Reporting, including finance and technology reporting, has become an avenue for yellow journalism and gossip-mongering.

Media may be the fourth pillar of a democracy. That doesn't mean they can break the laws of this land regarding advertising investments. If I am beatifying every investment scheme just because I am paid for it or just because I am invited to a party by the swindler, that is not financial reporting. That is writing gossipy tidbits for socialite magazines.

And that is no reporting if such objects of "flagrant flattery" finally end up in prison for 150 years never to come out alive. That is complicity in a crime. Not media science.