TV outlets struggle to explain fiscal turmoil

The financial crisis is complicated not just by companies that are too big to fail, but numbers that -- especially for our news media -- are too big to fathom. Television is a blunt instrument, one driven by story and narrative. As such, the nuances of high finance are beyond the grasp of most cable news talent. As MSNBC's Keith Olbermann put it on his program, "We've all been forced to understand the economy to a greater degree than we did before." Some are clearly doing better than others. Put simply, you know how newspeople struggle with topics like TV ratings or polling data, where the significance of modest movement up or down is often wildly overblown? It's a lot like that, only with money. And it's showing up in the reporting being done, which frequently tends to focus on relatively small matters in the larger scheme of things.