No End In Sight for Enron Stories
Enron and America's current financial woes remain popular topics for financial journalists

By Charles Derdiarian
Staff Writer

With the Enron scandal still churning out headlines and investors eager to read any and all good news related to the nation's economy, four leading financial journalists met at the Deadline Club in New York on February 12th to discuss the media's recent coverage of the US economy.

...the panelists addressed whether the press should be blamed for not breaking the story sooner, and if media outlets have paid too much attention to the story.

The seasoned panel included Floyd Norris, chief financial correspondent for the New York Times, Myron Kandel, financial editor for CNN, Terry Keenan, business correspondent for Fox News, and Richard Phalon, contributing editor for Forbes magazine. The panel's moderator, former CBS News correspondent Ray Brady, asked the journalists for their thoughts regarding the media's coverage of the Enron scandal, its possible "deification" of Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and its overall coverage of the economic issues currently facing the country and the world.

While discussing the recent events surrounding Enron, the panelists addressed whether the press should be blamed for not breaking the story sooner, and if media outlets have paid too much attention to the story. Norris quickly defended the media and explained how several months before Enron became headline news, "I tried doing the story and couldn't; the (financial) disclosure was too confusing. They did a good job of hiding what was going on...the games Enron played are mind-boggling. But we are learning."

Fox News' Terry Keenan also defended the press, saying that news stories dealing with faltering stocks, or companies, were given little coverage during the boom because "No one wants to hear about scandal when times are good. Now they do."

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Regarding the story's continued popularity, Myron Kandel argued that, "The press isn't overdoing the story. It's a big story. It has an element of Greek tragedy. It has corporate scandal. It has a people side. It's even possible that the tentacles have invaded the White House. I don't think we can overdo it." Kandel emphasized, however, that the most important stories to come out of Enron will deal with the changes the government makes in regulating corporate disclosure.

Dick Phalon added that, "The thing about bubbles is that things are terribly wrong and they need fixing...rather than being watchdogs, auditors suddenly have rubber teeth." Both journalists agreed that the media must devote significant coverage to the reforms that are implemented as a result of the Enron scandal, rather than focus solely on the penthouse-to-jailhouse sagas of fallen Enron executives. 

The panel went on to question the media's coverage of the Federal Reserve and its chairman Alan Greenspan. Kandel supported the Fed's actions and disagreed with the media's exorbitant, and occasionally negative, coverage of it. "We in the media overdid it," he said. "This was a very mild recession and the Fed deserves some credit. It couldn't have done any more than it did."

Others agreed that the media paid far too much attention to the Fed's power and to Greenspan's personal life. Keenan felt that, "The amount of press he got was unbelievable, we heard things about him that we really didn't need to know." All panelists believed, however, that the media's coverage of the Fed is waning and that Alan Greenspan's celebrity status will soon fade.

Unfortunately, the majority of the panel foresees a difficult road ahead for the nation's economy. Dick Phalon argued that the market is still "grossly overpriced," and several panelists spoke of a possible "double-dip" scenario, where the nation would fall into another recession just as it overcomes its current economic woes.

Because of this precarious financial climate, future stories in the financial press will most likely cover ways for individuals to insulate their cash and stocks from the faltering economy. Floyd Norris suggested that investors look into low-risk mutual funds, open money market accounts, or purchase high-interest certificates of deposit. These products will be popular with financial journalists in the difficult months to come, while they try to ensure that their readers live to invest another day, rather than lose everything trying to capitalize on a down market.

Charles Derdiarian researches business & finance publications for MediaMap and holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts.

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