Bartiromo's Plane Ride Raises Questions

By Chris Roush
February 15, 2007

I have a confession to make.

As a new correspondent in BusinessWeek's Connecticut bureau in 1993, I once accepted a free helicopter ride from the New Haven airport to some corporate retreat in the upper portion of the state to interview Wall Street titan Sandy Weill.

The helicopter was owned by insurance company Travelers Corp., and Weill had bought a chunk of the company and was making changes. If I wanted to interview Weill in person, accepting the 30-minute ride was the only way to get to him in time for my deadline.

My editors in New York told me to do it, and I don't think that the magazine paid Travelers for the ride.

Why do I bring this up, nearly 14 years later? Because business journalism is getting a bad rap after it was disclosed that CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo took a plane ride on a Citigroup jet from China back to the United States.

The ride, which would have cost upwards of $50,000 for the average traveler, has become part of a controversy about business journalism ethics. A Citigroup executive was ousted because of his relationship with Bartiromo, and media reports said that the plane ride -- which bumped company executives and forced them to find other transportation -- was the last straw for Citigroup's CEO.

CNBC says it paid for the flight. But I'm finding a distinct difference between what Bartiromo did and my long-ago helicopter ride.

Bartiromo, according to a CNBC spokesman, took the flight for "source development" reasons, not for any specific story. But based on her long-standing friendship with the now-fired executive, it's clear that she could have had access to him anytime she wanted.

As a reporter new to BusinessWeek, I had never met Weill before, so it's unlikely I would have had access except on his terms, or written the story. Compared to Bartiromo's flight, that's a big difference, and one I think all readers would understand as they benefit from the coverage.

What bothers me the most is that CNBC and Bartiromo -- who has also raised ethical questions by disclosing on the air that she owns Citi stock -- act is if nothing was wrong with the plane trip.

The problems should be obvious to them. Yes, business journalists are supposed to interview executives and push to talk to them as much as possible.

But the appearance of accepting something -- whether it's a plane trip halfway around the world or a lunch -- calls into question our integrity and motives with consumers of business news. And we're not supposed to be "friends" with the people we write about.

Somewhere along the line, Bartiromo and CNBC seem to have forgotten these basics.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism