Fox Biz Invents the Pro-Business Populist Crusade

Shortly after Fox Business Network launched in October 2007, I offered a dim view of its prospects, saying the network lacked the sort of obvious, reliable villain it required to stir up populist sentiment in the way that its sister channel, Fox News, can count on liberal judges and Hollywood loudmouths.

That was, of course, before Wall Street, the banking system and then the whole economy went kablooey. The last problem anyone should be having right now is a shortage of bad guys. But Fox Business is still constrained by its initial pledge to be more business-friendly than CNBC (I know, I know). How do you work up a satisfying rage while resisting the urge to point a shaking finger at the corner-office guys?

The answer they've come up with is at once obvious and a bit of a stretch: Blame the guv'mint! For the last few weeks, FBN has been on a lawyering spree, filing Freedom of Information Act requests to the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for documents relating to bank bailouts, and following those up with lawsuits when the response wasn't snappy enough.

Today came another salvo: FBN is suing the Securities and Exchange Commission for not complying in a timely way with its FOIA request for info on its response to fraudster Allen Stanford. Here's EVP Kevin Magee in a statement announcing the suit:

It is unacceptable that titans like R. Allen Stanford or Bernard Madoff were able to operate such massive financial frauds under the nose of institutions like the SEC. As a news organization, we believe it is the public's right to know how these economic atrocities were committed as part of our continued quest to demand government accountability on behalf of the American taxpayers.

Now, nobody's saying it wouldn't be nice to know how Madoff was able to run his racket for so many years without ever arousing the suspicion of authorities. But Madoff isn't the cause of our economic distress; he's a symbol.

And that's what this legalistic blitz by Fox Business is all about: symbolism. In fact, according to CJR, the network, lacking the reportorial resources to make much sense of the thousands and thousands of pages of documents it's demanding, has no better plan than to put them all online and hope the internet hive-mind can ferret out the good stuff.

Magee insists the FOIA-palooza isn't just some "wild publicity stunt," but acknowledges it's part of an overall strategy to differentiate FBN from CNBC, which he calls "the friend of the CEO." But it's hard to see how Fox can exploit the perception that its rival is in bed with Wall Street while studiously refusing to condemn Wall Street. There's too much anger out there to redirect it all at negligent referees.