CNBC, Wall Street And The Stockholm Syndrome

Most people are familiar with the psychological phenomenon called the Stockholm Syndrome. It's a scenario in which hostages begin to sympathize with their captors. Sometimes to the point where they will defend their captors and try to protect them.

Journalists can suffer a similar fate as they cover an industry for a prolonged period of time. You get to know your subjects, you spend time with them at industry functions and events and suddenly you consider them friends. And once you've crossed that line, it's difficult to keep your perspective about these people that you've grown to admire and respect.

It's not a new problem and it's not one that is confined to a certain type of writing. Famed rock critic wrote about the issue back in the 1970s and these excerpts still resonate in today's journalistic world:

"These people are not your friends...Friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong...If you want to be a true friend to them, be honest and unmerciful."

TV critics are certainly prone to this problem and I have seen some behavior that is cringeworthy. But when it comes to falling in love with the people you cover, nothing comes close to the unsettling relationship between CNBC reporters and anchors and the people they cover.

In 2014, we are living in a time Wall Street has never had more political power. The economic inequality between rich and poor in the U.S. is as bad as just about any place in the major economic markets. We're not exactly living in the second Gilded Age, but we're getting close and all of these issues are played out every day on Wall Street.

But if you listen to a typical day of financial news on CNBC, you'd feel as if you were living in some sort of journalistic bubble world. Everyone seems to know everyone else and access to CEOs and market movers is dependent on personal relationships and leverage. Yes, there are some tough questions being asked, but they are almost exclusively centered on earnings reports and revenue projections.

CNBC obviously needs to cover the data points that drive Wall Street. But while the network's reporters and anchors don't have a problem whining about government interference in the markets, tax rates and ineffective politics, they don't manage to make the connection between those issues and the people they cover on a daily basis. CNBC might not be the official voice of the plutocracy, but they are close as Wall Street's rich and powerful are going to get without financing their own cable outlet.

Ironically, CNBC's close relationship with Wall Street has made it difficult for the rival Fox Business Network to make much of a journalistic impact. Like the Fox News Channel, the inclination of the execs at Fox Business is to move to the right of the competition. But that's a difficult task when your chief rival is the de facto house organ for Wall Street. To move to the right of that, you'd literally have to have your anchors screaming "screw the middle class" while burning hundred dollar bills on the desk.

I spent some time as a financial reporter and I know it can be a thankless job filled with long hours and a lot of stress. Anytime you're writing things that can affect someone's pocketbook, you're likely to make some people very unhappy.

But the problems with CNBC aren't a function of that stress. They're the result of spending too much time in the world of the people you're covering. There is a fine line between having a friendly relationship with people in the industry you're covering and allowing their interest to cloud your journalistic judgement.

Watch CNBC for a couple of days and decide for yourself which side of the line the network is sitting on.