Vanity Fair’s recent exposé on the collapse of Bear Stearns seems to be having more of an impact in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, where business news station CNBC is located, than on Wall Street.
The article by Bryan Burrough, author of “Barbarians at the Gate,” suggests some short-sellers may have intentionally tried to drive Bear down by spreading rumors about the firm – and that the business station helped usher in the collapse by fanning the flames.
“Overall people think the article exaggerated the role of CNBC,” said a CNBC staffer who asked not to be identified.
Charlie Gasparino, one of the CNBC reporters mentioned in Burrough’s story, said: “CNBC didn’t report rumors. What we were talking about was market activity. . . In those critical hours we were reporting what was happening in the markets. What are we going to do? Ignore it?”
As for the Vanity Fair story, he added: “If Bryan Burrough wrote something substantively and factually accurate about the way we covered the story there would be a problem, but he didn’t. He was incredibly sloppy.”
Burrough told The Post he’s been taken aback by the strong reaction, including calls from CNBC employees. “Maybe I touched a nerve,” he said. “I don’t know.”
And he says his intention wasn’t to place the blame on CNBC. “The idea that CNBC did in Bear Stearns is ridiculous,” he said, but added that “there’s a few places where they stepped right up to the line and I think I point that out in the article.”
While media watchers speculate that CNBC may now become more cautious in its reporting, Gasparino says “there’s no change in the way I do my job and I don’t think there is in the network.”