An interesting new policy at CNBC:
NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Business news network CNBC is enacting new rules on employees' personal investments, a move journalism experts said could spur a trend at other media outlets hoping to avoid conflicts of interest among reporters.
The General Electric Co. -owned cable channel laid down new restrictions this week considered among the toughest in the industry, barring news staff and managers, as well as their spouses and dependents, from owning individual stocks or corporate bonds. Other employees such as receptionists and hairstylists can hang onto their stocks, but not buy more.
[ . . . ]
Al Tompkins, who teaches journalism at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, said he applauded CNBC's move, but thought it would be hard to enforce, particularly regarding the stock holdings of an employee's family.
"It will be interesting to see how they or any journalism outfit enforces what a person's spouse can do," he said.
CNBC said the policy was more than a year in the works, and was unrelated to criticism it received in July when reporter Maria Bartiromo prefaced an interview with Citigroup chairman Sanford Weill by disclosing she owned 1,000 shares of the bank's stock.
The network set a January 2005 deadline for news staff and managers to sell their stocks or put them in a blind trust.
The blind trust sounds like the way to go (nice loophole). But the whole thing sounds way over the top to me, and I doubt it's going to "spur a trend."
Update: Jonathan Gewirtz exposes similar fuzzy logic in the field of journalism. And points out that Donald Luskin has been here already.
