For Analysis of Visa, Big Media: 2, Blogs: 0

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Good and bad can occur in equal measure, which brings us to Visa's (V) earnings and the acknowledgement that federal authorities are investigating their debit fee structure.

Too many in the media just mentioned the good earnings. They either ignored -- or subordinated -- the investigation.

Business Insider, for example, ran a story called: "10 Things You Need To Know Before The Opening Bell." They spoke about Visa beating earnings expectations and offered a "however," but the "however" was a mention of Prudential's (PRU) bad miss. Nothing on the investigation.

Seeking Alpha pounded the table with a positive headline: "Visa Posts Another Terrific Quarter: We're Big Fans Of The Shares," only mentioning the probe toward the bottom of their story, as mere afterthought.

The Wall Street Journal gave the conflicting issues the equivalence they require. They did it right from the headline: "Visa Profit Surges as U.S. Probes Debit-Card Strategy" as well as down through their coverage.

Reuters, too, got at what should shake the market's confidence in Visa's happy thoughts about the future. In their second sentence, they mentioned that Visa's management increased expectations, before offering a caveat: "The company also raised the high-end of its estimated range for full-year earnings per share, despite uncertainty over questions from United States government anti-trust investigators on how it is adjusting to new federal limits on fees charged merchants for debit card transactions."

In the case of Visa, you cannot mention anything good without that equal weight of bad.

At the time of publication, Fuchs had no positions in any of the stocks mentioned in this column.

Marek Fuchs was a stockbroker for Shearson Lehman Brothers and a money manager before becoming a journalist who wrote The New York Times' "County Lines" column for six years. He also did back-up beat coverage of The New York Knicks for the paper's Sports section for two seasons and covered other professional and collegiate sports. He has contributed frequently to many of the Times' other sections, including National, Metro, Escapes, Style, Real Estate, Arts & Leisure, Travel, Money & Business, Circuits and the Op-Ed Page.

For his "Business Press Maven" column on how business and finance are covered by the media, Fuchs was named best business journalist critic in the nation by the Talking Biz website at The University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Fuchs is a frequent speaker on the business media, in venues ranging from National Public Radio to the annual conference of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

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