The Closing Bell, Marketplace and the Wall Street Journal
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Mediated Affect and Financial News Media: The Closing Bell, Marketplace and The Wall Street Journal A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Diane L. Cormany IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Laurie Ouellette, Adviser November 2016 © Diane L. Cormany 2016 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my committee members: Dr. Catherine Squires for providing a detailed review of the Marketplace chapter that helped me to reframe and expand upon my research; Dr. Karen Ho for her deep knowledge and perspective about critical capitalism and her generous advice, and Dr. Ronald Greene for guiding a directed reading that developed my skills as a critical reader and an independent thinker. His support as department chairman was also invaluable. Above all, my gratitude to my adviser, Dr. Laurie Ouellette who encouraged my pursuit of a graduate degree in critical media, sparked my interest in business and financial media, and helped me discover the critical theories that undergird this project. I have had the privilege of working with many communication scholars during my years with the University of Minnesota Department of Communication Studies. Drs. Mary Vavrus and Mark Pedelty gave ongoing support as Directors of Ggraduate Studies. My fellow students Rebecca Jurisz, and Drs. Mia Fischer, Liora Elias, Heidi Zimmerman, and Raechel Tiffe have been consistent sources of scholarly and emotional support. I am blessed to have a circle of friends for life who have been together through thick and thin. Thank you Rebecca Frestedt, Stacey Kennedy, Louise Sherman, and Brian Knutson. Dr. Emily Frank has provided knowing advice at each stage of my graduate school experience, including gentle nudging, cheering, and scholarly review. Dr. Beth Ellen McNamara has always held me up and kept me looking forward. Finally, my sister Sharon Cormany helped develop my teaching practice and celebrated my accomplishments. My mother, Patricia Gilbert, developed the love of learning that ultimately led to this project. She always believed that I would succeed, even when I expressed doubts. Gratitude to my father for his abiding love. Thank you also to my aunt, Cathy Gilbert, who has always had my back. My mother-in-law, Jan Bunting, has kept us well fed and has always loved me as her own. Above all my love and appreciation for my husband, Greg Bunting, without whom this life change would have been less possible. His faith in me, home-cooked meals, and This project would not have been possible without the research support of my assistant Brian Carrier and the friendship and proofreading skills of Jennifer Shephard. i Abstract At the turn of the 21st century, the financial turn and the affective turn swept through critical cultural studies. The former recognized how society was being shaped by financialization—essentially the expansion of securities markets and market logics to all areas of daily life (Martin 2002). In order to understand the impact of finance capitalism’s incursion into private and social life, scholars including Brian Massumi and Lauren Berlant turned towards affect, which refers to the flow of sensations within and between bodies. At the same time, financial news media shifted to focus primarily on market movement, often replacing contextual analysis in the process. Drawing from media studies, theories and histories of financialization, affect theory, and cultural studies, my dissertation examines the intersection of these sociohistoric and contextual phenomena. I evaluate financial news media across both broadcast and print platforms: The Closing Bell (CNBC), Marketplace (American Public Media), and The Wall Street Journal as case studies for theorizing how financial news media operates as both a reflection of and a technology of financialization. My dissertation does so by situating financial news media within the context of neoliberal regulatory and ideological change that affected both the expansion of finance capital and changes in the media industry. In addition, I undertake close readings to evaluate the genre-specific aesthetics and the definitional forms of each text in order to understand how they interact with market logics. In the process I have discovered a common focus on incremental market movement across my case studies. These aesthetic forms may be considered affective by focusing on movement as productive and change-worthy (Massumi 2002). Likewise, ii while each of my dissertation texts imagines a different investing audience based upon their responsiveness and involvement in the market, the demographics comprise the educated and financially elite. Therefore, my project evaluates how media communicates engagement with the market as exclusive and hegemonic. iii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 2—Bringing Audiences into the Market: CNBC’s The Closing Bell 52 Chapter 3—The Sound of Market Education: Marketplace 100 Chapter 4—WSJ: Market populism hits Wall Street 162 Chapter 5—Conclusion 217 References 244 iv List of Figures Figure 1 Closing Bell Exchange, April 30, 2014 .............................................................. 53 Figure 2 The Wall Street Journal celebrated its 125th anniversary by reprinting its original front page, using its current form. ............................................................. 194 Figure 3 Reuters critiqued this September 29, 2009, front pages as indicative of the WSJ's change towards sensational headlines. The prominent placement of the global political news was another Murdoch change (Salmon 2009). ................................ 196 Figure 4 Pew content analysis ......................................................................................... 197 Figure 5 May 2, 2014, front page Wall Street Journal ................................................... 200 Figure 6 "Chasing Yield, Investors Plow Into Riskier Bonds" (Lauricella 2014) .......... 213 v Chapter 1: Introduction At the turn of the 21st century, two theoretical moves swept through critical cultural studies: the financial turn and the affective turn. The former recognized how the global economy had become shaped by financialization—essentially the expansion of securities markets and market logics to all areas of daily life (Martin 2002). Multiple forces have worked in tandem to drive the process of financialization, including regulatory and institutional changes with impact on individuals’ private and social lives. As these changes registered in the daily lives of individuals and in institutional structures, scholars including Brian Massumi, Kathleen Stewart, Sarah Ahmed, and Lauren Berlant responded with a turn towards affect, which refers to the flow of sensations within and between bodies, to understand the disorientation inherent in finance capitalism. At the same time, financial news media shifted to focus primarily on market movement, often replacing contextual analysis in the process. These changes to financial news media privileged affect, including the development of visual and aesthetic cues that focused on movement as productive and change-worthy (Massumi 2002). Together, the expansion of financialization, changes to financial news media, and the affective turn form a conjuncture. Conjunctural analysis looks at the intersection of disparate social trends including within the economy and media, in order to critically understand moments of rupture. My dissertation evaluates the conjuncture during which financial news media developed as financialization accelerated, especially during the late 1980s through the early 2000s. Through conjunctural analysis, I discover and demonstrate how financialization both shapes financial news media forms and the daily 1 lives of its audiences, while financial news media actual perpetuate the continuation of financialization. Cultural studies’ turn towards affect theory and towards studies of financialization were both required to understand the conjuncture in which finance capital is privileged and perpetuated. At their most essential, both financialization and affect rely upon movement. Financial media reports on the minute fluctuations of individual securities prices, indices, and global exchanges. Affect responds to movement by registering that something is happening—something that must be noticed (Massumi 2002). However, theorists have rarely considered affect, media, and financialization together. Financialization is a condition of citizenship and of basic survival in a neoliberal society. Managing one’s 401(k) correctly is the only way to ensure security in old age, while achieving (and maintaining) ownership is the means to full participation in American life. Because of financialization’s integral role in citizenship and daily living, my intervention is an important one. Media contribute to definitions of the market and of the investing self. Understanding how financialization and specifically finance news rely on affect helps diffuse claims of a rational market and of journalism as objective truth. To understand how financialization operates within relations of power, therefore, it is vital to bring together financialization, media, and affect theory. My dissertation evaluates case studies of The Closing Bell, Marketplace, and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and pursues three research questions: How have different financial news media developed in genre-specific ways? How did the sociohistorical 2 environment affect the development of each of these forms? How do financial news media