FOX with a Ticker

In the aftermath of News Corp buying Dow-Jones and its Wall Street Journal, I was curious about the premiere of Fox Business News. I'm not the biggest fan of the WSJ but I do have respect for its tradition and the role of financial journalism in general. But after watching some of the first two days of FBN, I wonder if two people are rolling in their graves.

The company that Charles Henry Dow and Edward Davis Jones created in the post-Civil War era when the US corporation was emerging as a major economic power is almost synonymous with America's economic rise. Dow and Jones first started with the Customer's Afternoon Letter and in July of 1884 the created the first Dow Jones Industrial Average with 11 companies. The WSJ was created in July of 1889 with the explicit goal of offering news, not opinion.

Well, it seems its the same old Fox news. "We Report, You Decide" - give me a break. One indication is that they are rehashing David Asman, who seems to have his microphone so far up... well never mind on that. Asman is proficient in the language of cynicism, the chief currency of Fox News.

Of course we should have expected this, when Murdoch himself announced that the new network would be “more business friendly than CNBC”. I guess that is like Fox News being more administration friendly. CNBC, the financial news network owned by GE, is quick to “leap on every scandal,” said the NewsCorp chief according to according to BusinessWeek.com, whose parent, McGraw-Hill is no small corporation itself. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm sure glad CNBC jumped on that little scandal called WORLDCOM.

Well, perhaps the market is giving us a vote on the FBN. Down 248 points - from 14,160 Monday morning to 13,913 today - is one indication that Fox Business News is getting the thumbs down from Wall Street.