NBC's Jeff Zucker: Cheerleading for his cheerleaders

If there were ever any doubt that today's wealthy media conglomerate czars are out of touch with reality, all you have to do is listen to Jeff Zucker at this morning's Business Week media summit. The NBC Universal CEO went out of his way to blast Jon Stewart's ongoing dissection of CNBC's ludicrously amped-up coverage of the stock market train wreck, saying that "just because someone who mocks authority says something doesn't mean it's true." Of course, that's the exact definition of being out of touch: When everyone else is looking at your financial network and seeing a bunch of ratings-obsessed charlatans who, though they surely knew better, talked up a host of terminally ill companies that were about to collapse, you look at your financial network and tell a media conference that "CNBC is a spectacular organization that's done a tremendous job."

The next thing you know, Zucker will be saying Ben Silverman is doing a wonderful job of running NBC too.

What I found especially appalling about Zucker's remarks was his faux populism. Here's a guy who travels on a corporate jet, whose salary, bonuses and stock options are probably right up there with most of AIG's bonus babies (Zucker doesn't have to disclose his compensation, but his predecessor in the job, Robert Wright, earned $17.8 million in 2006), yet he has the nerve to act like he's in the same boat with the rest of us, telling the audience, "Everybody wants to point a finger--I'm upset that my 401(k) isn't what it was too.... But to suggest that the business media is responsible for what's going on now is absurd."

BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis, who was at the media summit, has a great post up now saying that Zucker also made the specious argument that blaming CNBC for missing the financial crisis is like blaming the press for prompting the U.S. to go to war in Iraq. "Both are absurd," Zucker said. Actually, what's really absurd is  Zucker's imagining that CNBC did a good job. What the network really did was help fan a gigantic financial bubble, even when Jim Cramer and its other "experts"--as Stewart has repeatedly pointed out--were savvy enough to know that the companies they covered, and often touted, were involved in all sorts of shady conduct.

Zucker should be profusely apologizing and promising to make things right, not defending CNBC's hapless carnival act.   

Photo of NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker by the Associated Press

 

 

Comments

[TruthandConsequences]

I am stupidly sentimental about NBC because of my love for the original Star Trek. Ever since Zucker developed a reputation as the "wunderkind" prodocer of the "Today" show, he somehow has mesmerized NBC/GE and has been failing upward ever since.

If Jon Stewart was so off, why doesn't Zucker get a clipfest compiled of CNBC's sound advice before the meltdown? Maybe because it can't be done?

[mapakase]

Jon Stewart did what Jeff Zucker's minions can't or won't do and that is go after the giant mountains of talking points (i.e. BS, lies, untruths ... pick one) that all commercial news media, constumed however you like, have been trying to pass as factual news for years. Speaking truth, like Jon Stewart did, is so anti-everything that people like Zucker hold dear they come really close to melting from the pure radiance of it. So, what do you expect him to do other than to try to justify his existence no matter how silly he looks.

[MRDFLA]

Sorry Mr. Zucker
The media has failed us.

[Alisa]

If JZ (Jeff Zucker) is remotely close to being a party to the ills of our financial markets, the economy and my unemployement due to his "connection" to CNBC, the question begs, "what in the hell is Rupert Murdoch at fault for causing, Global friggin' Warming?"