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When The Wall
Street Journal finally turned against Dick Grasso you could
see it in his face. For years the Journal used the above-left
stock image of Grasso. One day,
it quite suddenly replaced that image with the one the right.
Grasso, former chairman of the New
York Stock Exchange, was once one of the "darlings
of Wall Street" in business journalism parlance. To the folks of the financial
world, he could do no wrong.
In 2003, however, the Exchange was engulfed by a corporate
governance scandal. At a time when most stockholders were losing
their shirts in the wake of the dot-com bubble burst,
it came to light that Dick had enjoyed an astronomic salary and bonus compensation in the hundreds of millions
.
The board of directors benchmarked Grasso's salary,
which was much larger than any of his predecessors, against the pay
of some of America's most richly compensated CEOs. Critics said
that Grasso, as the head of what is technically a not-for-profit
regulatory body, should have been paid a salary more in line with
that of other regulators.
For a good while during the summer months in which
the scandal unfolded, the Journal rallied to
his defense. But the scandal got uglier and uglier. Finally,
it could no longer defend its fallen champion without losing face, choosing instead to altered its potrayal of Grasso's own physiognomy...and editorially send him to the wolves. Sadly,
I don't recall the exact day the paper made this image switch. I do, however, remember not needing to read ONE word of the accompanying
article to know that the Journal had changed its tune on Grasso,
who eventually resigned in September 2003.
That same month, the below set of faces in the
news appeared in another financial news publication, Institutional
Investor.
These images may appear to be of two different issues of the
magazine. In fact, they represent two discrete covers of the SAME issue.
One is the U.S. edition. The other, the international edition.
Can you guess which is which? Yep, the one featuring President Bush
as its cover story was distributed in the U.S. The one that touts a story on Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf as its main event was distributed ... everywhere
else in the world!
This struck me as the perfect example of how U.S.
news organizations reinforce the cultural and intellectual ignorance
of the American people. Americans are some of the most inwardly
looking people in the world and often seem unable to
grasp onto any sense of internationalism. We hardly know that
other people or countries exist, let alone consider ways we
might interact with them in such a manner as to prevent them from chopping
our sons' and daughters' heads off.
But news organizations, like most of our institutions,
help solidify our cultural illiteracy by reinforcing the notion that international news has no value...unless,
of course, the international news is about foreign people chopping
Americans' heads off.
When I visited Europe in 2000 and 2002 I could not believe how
absolutely kick ass CNN was there. In Europe CNN is actually 24-hour network of world news. Really.
World news. Not American news, with some international stuff thrown
in. For example, on the international edition of CNN you will
see stories about African countries that don't have to do with
famine or war! Who
knew anything happened in Africa besides suffering?
The profound difference between CNN news coverage
in America, and that in its "not America/rest-of- the-world"
broadcast is impossible to convey in words. You really have to
see it for yourself. CNN in the U.S. sucks ass. A big, stinky,
American
ass.
The anchors for CNN's international channel report
from desks in the U.S., UK, Germany, Hong Kong, and other countries—basically
from wherever it happens to be daylight working hours at the time.
Here, all the anchors report from Atlanta, New York, and maybe
Washington, D.C., no matter what time it is.
In Europe I switched between CNN, Sky
News, and Euronews to
get some of the best television news coverage I'd ever seen.
In America, the best I could do was subscribe
to digital cable. Then, I got News
World International (which features news show feeds from the
Canadian Broacasting Company, Al Jazeera, Poland, Germany, Turkey,
etc.), CCTV
(a 24-hour English-language news channel that is surprisingly
independent and objective, considering it comes from mainland
China), among others.
Also, sometime around midnight, CNNfn (the network's
financial news channel) would go off the air, and be replaced
with "CNN World," which is basically just the aforementioned,
real CNN that is seen everywhere outside the U.S. For the
majority of Americans, news is red, white, and blue.
And, for our last
segment of faces in the news, I give you images of former AIG
chairman and CEO, Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg. You can
read about Hank and AIG here,
but I insert the below pictures to support my assertion that Hank
never shows his teeth when he smiles (just like robber
baron pimp daddy John D. Rockefeller actually — see below),
and that this is indicates he has something to hide. I used to
work for Greenberg (well, actually I worked for the AIG corporate
Secretary, who worked for Greenberg) and just always thought he
was sleazy. To me, his no-teeth smile was indicative that he was
hiding something (that is, that he was every bit the unscrupulous
thief that most powerful U.S. corporate executives are).
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