CNBC had the spin on the massive stock market sell-off story so fast it was as if the outlet was just waiting to protect the Biden administration from any bad news.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell a whopping 725.81 points July 19 as “anxiety mounted over the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant and its potential impact on the global economy,” The Wall Street Journal reported. It was the “worst session since October” for the index.
But CNBC seemed to already know how it would spin the story at 10:42 a.m. when the market was in the heat of its nosedive: “Stock market volatility can be an opportunity for investors. Here’s why.”
CNBC pulled the nothing-to-see-here angle from its back pocket and pontificated how “[w]hile volatility can be troubling for investors, experts caution against any hasty selling when markets fall.” Really?
The outlet ran two subheadings in its piece that were just as absurd given the extent of the market downturn. The first was “Volatility is common.” The second was “Volatility can be your friend.”
Under the first subheading, CNBC tried to gaslight readers on the severity of the market dip by telling them just to accept the “volatility” of the market:
First, accept market volatility — which is relatively common — as a normal part of the process of investing and the best way to outrun inflation, said certified financial planner Brad Lineberger, president of Carlsbad, California-based Seaside Wealth Management, which manages about $165 million in assets. ‘Embrace the volatility, because it’s why investors are getting paid to own stocks,’ he said. This means investors should stay calm even through extreme movements.
Fiera Capital Corporation Vice President and Portfolio Manager Candice Bangsund told The Journal that “[t]he emergence of this more highly transmissible Delta variant…has brought into the question the sustainability of this reopening and the recovery.” CNBC’s gaslighting of the potential effects of the market’s drop made the news outlet’s irresponsible behavior toward the stock market news all the more egregious.
Making absurd arguments about the economy and the stock market seems to have become a routine for CNBC. Just recently, CNBC ran one of the dumbest headlines trying to explain the dangerous spike in inflation to protect President Joe Biden: “The upside to inflation: rising wages.” Did it not dawn on CNBC that rising prices associated with inflation would negate the positive effects of rising wages?
Conservatives are under attack. Contact CNBC at 201-735-2622 and hold it to account for spinning the news on the stock market selloff.
