Make the weekly market commentary less inflammatory
C
Christopher Browning
We must heavily modify the weekly market commentary each week before we send it to our clients. There is a consistent theme of negative coverage bias, as though the authors are writing heavily biased political editorials. Much of the language used attempt to stoke feelings of fear and anxiety, rather than simply reporting factual events and data. The last thing we want is to expose our clients to content that might frighten them, and perhaps even influence financial decisions based on the terrible way the stories are written that may not be in their best interests.
Also, what purpose are the authors hoping to achieve by the selection of the negative quotes expressed in the "Food for Thought" section each week? It seems that almost every week the quote selected has a strong negative connotation, and I very much take issue with that.
This week there was a quote form Warren Buffet, "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it". Really? Is that necessary? What is the point in that?
I find the writing in the weekly commentary to be quite offensive, and todays was no exception. The insinuating undercurrent is clearly biased left politically as though the authors were writing an editorial for the Washington Post, New York Times, or CNN.
I acknowledge that the markets and the economy do contract, and so I'm not expecting every story to sound Pollyanna or view everything through a rose-colored lens. All I'm asking is for the editorial B.S. to be left out of the commentary, and simply report factually what has happened.
In the meantime, I will no longer continue to use your awful content which requires so much editing. Until you change the tone of what you write we will look elsewhere for market commentary that is just that, market commentary.
B
Brandon Brown
Christopher Browning thanks for taking the time to break down your thoughts and lay out specifics of what you're seeing—that's really helpful and helps us in our editorial conversations. We try to create a balanced stance when it comes to political bias by using writers from both sides of the aisle (and no aisle at all), but it sounds like we're missing the mark for you and your clients. We'll look into that with your feedback in mind. Regarding overall negativity: we're aligned with you philosophically there as well. But your examples are helpful in seeing that we missed on execution. Thanks again for being generous with your insight.
C
Christopher Browning
Brandon Brown, thanks for your reply. We have subscribed to FMG Suite since 2018, so my feedback above is not coming from a new user by any means. I can say with confidence that the writing in the weekly market commentaries is not the same as it once was a few years ago.
We started noticing the change in tone in 2020, and we have been editing the content ever since. It started with just simple edits by changing overly frightening words like "dropped" or "plummeted", to simpler descriptions such as "decreased" or just simply stating a value without any additional descriptive language. However, as we entered the election season last year we had to increase our editing to further reduce the editorializing or sensationalistic language. And this year the content has continued to require ever more editing each week.
Here's an example from the first paragraph in today's "newsletter":
"Investors endured another volatile, whipsaw week as ongoing trade talks and White House comments about the economy unsettled investors".
We changed that obnoxious and unnecessarily inflammatory language to:
"It was another volatile week in the stock market with mixed economic reports and unsettling news headlines over how the change in US trade policy may influence the direction of the economy".
Another example is from today's content which seemed to try to implicate tariff policies alone in connection with inflation as though there are no other circumstances that may either offset or contribute to it either way. The negative connotation was exacerbated by using incendiary phrases like "...tariff threats, riling up anxious investors". We can not ever send wording like that to our clients! Why would we want to scare them?
And later in the newsletter the authors go on about egg prices in such a negative fashion despite their attempt at the use of clever literary devices such as puns like "Sunny Side 'Down'", or "So why do consumers appear to be overly uneasy?". Attempted humor aside I don't think our clients would find that amusing.
My point here is that the authors seem to be expounding on topics for which they are neither qualified nor informed enough about to render these editorial opinions loosely disguised as market commentary.
I hope this feedback does help and that you can return the weekly market commentary to the reliable fact reporting and interesting content our clients used to enjoy reading.