Why CNBC's Bartiromo Will Be A Perfect Fit At Fox
Written by Albert Kleine
Published
Reports indicate that CNBC business anchor Maria Bartiromo will soon move to the Fox Business Network to host a weekday market hours program. Judging by Bartiromo's past comments, the host will find a welcome home at Fox.
On November 18, multiple news outlets reported that Bartiromo, currently the anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell, intends to leave her current position to take a job at Fox Business. According to USA Today, Bartiromo will also report for Fox News.
A March 2010 profile of Bartiromo in New York magazine described her as “empathetic to Big Business” and noted the criticism she's taken for being “too cozy” with the people she covers as a journalist. Bartiromo dismissed her critics as jealous: “Anybody who has been very successful is sort of, you know, in the crosshairs.”
Indeed, Bartiromo has gone to great lengths to protect the interests of businesses, even advancing borderline conspiracy theories about the Obama administration and government regulatory agencies.
In 2011, Bartiromo repeatedly argued that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) should not have intervened when Boeing was accused of anti-labor practices, going so far as to claim that the only reason NLRB filed suit against the company was because Boeing's jobs are non-union. In late 2012 when Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit unexpectedly resigned, Bartiromo asserted that is was because he was "[g]etting bashed and bashed and bashed again by the President, by the populists." And of course, there is Bartiromo's recent staunch defense of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, despite the fact that Dimon headed the investment bank when it was involved in allegedly fraudulent deals in the mortgage security market just before the financial crisis.
Bartiromo's soft approach to business interests is exactly what will make the host successful at Fox. The network regularly accuses the federal government of committing “shakedowns” whenever big business interests are held accountable for misconduct, even when there is mounting evidence of wrongdoing. Similar to Bartiromo's assertion that Pandit resigned because of pressure from the Obama administration, Fox Business' Stuart Varney claimed that when Standard & Poor's Devan Sharma stepped down as president in 2011 it was because the Obama administration was exacting revenge for S&P's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating.
Bartiromo's defense of big business is not the only reason she'll fit in at Fox -- she's also well-practiced in false, conservative attacks on President Obama. In October 2012, she suggested that the reason President Obama did not refer to the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya as “terrorism” -- a well-worn falsehood -- was because he may have been trying to garner support for cuts to military spending. The attacks in Benghazi, of course, have become fodder for Fox to advance baseless conspiracy theories and attacks on the Obama administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Given that Bartiromo's past comments fit into Fox's pro-business anti-government narrative, it is no wonder that the network would take her on board.
(Image via Financial Times via Creative Commons License)