'Distractions' Crushed Sallie? Lord, That's Lame

He would have been better off blaming student loan problems on the warmer-than-usual September. I can see it now: "It's clear that the warm September meant that more students were out at beaches with no access to the stamps they needed to send in their loan payments."

Anyhow, I don't want to dignify such self-justification with too much space, even to stomp on it with stamp jokes. But it is highly instructive to look at just about all the coverage of the Sallie Mae meeting that I can find. The vast, vast majority reports this excuse straight. It does not take issue, poke a hole, raise an eyebrow or otherwise let investors know that this is just plain ridiculous.

And if you report the ridiculous as a straight story, well, guess what? You are ridiculous too. And you've misled investors.

People often ask me why trust in the media -- business and otherwise -- is so low. This, more than any scandal and as much as any Paris Hilton sensationalism, is why. The act of talking to the public, especially in the business world, has become completely systematized. Everyone is rehearsed, scripted and prepared to within an inch of their lives. And then the business media ambles in to report, with the same old, just-the-fact-ma'am methods they used before public- and investor-relations ruled the earth.