Scrutinizing the relationship between the media and the markets
11/27/2000
In The Fortune Tellers, Kurtz, media reporter for the Washington Post and host of CNN's Reliable Sources, scrutinizes the relationship between the media and the markets. It's a collection of Wall Street stories told from behind the scenes of the enmeshed worlds of companies, brokerage houses, journalists, and traders. Amid the daily deluge of investment information, says Kurtz, there is one inescapable problem: nobody knows anything. "These are savvy folks, to be sure," he writes, "but all of them—the journalists, the commentators, the brokers, the traders, the analysts—are feeling their way in a blizzard, squinting through the snow, straining amid the white noise to make out the next trend or market movement or sizzling stock." Kurtz provides a valuable perspective on the dynamics and repercussions of what he calls "a mutual manipulation society that affects anyone with a direct or indirect stake in the market, which is to say nearly everyone in America."