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MarketWatch First Take

Facebook, Dimon and the media hype

5/21/12 6:54 PM ET (MarketWatch)

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The media hype machine strikes again! Look what it has done to those who believed in the golden images of Mr. Wall Street, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and the vaunted Facebook initial public offering.

The media like to blow up images way beyond any sense of reality, and it invariably comes back to bite the people who believed the hype. Herewith are just the latest two examples.

Dimon has been touted as an executive who is both wise and good. He had not been scarred by the sort of bad brush that has tarnished Goldman Sachs Group(GS) , because "Jamie," as we thought of him, couldn't possibly be so dumb or reckless or greedy.

Well, it appears, wrong again.

J.P. Morgan Chase's (JPM) much-discussed multibillion-dollar trading loss smells bad from any angle, and the buck stops at Dimon's desk.

Then there's that Facebook IPO -- you know, the one that couldn't miss. Until it did, hitting the ground with a noisy thud.

The media propped up Facebook (FB) , too, confusing a terrific social-media service with a hot stock.

The journalists should have been savvy enough to see through Wall Street's foolish promises. On Monday, Facebook's stock price fell below the $38-a-share IPO price mark, spelling trouble.

A lot of people at J.P. Morgan Chase and Facebook have egg on their faces today. But the biggest miscalculations belong to the media, which built up Dimon and Facebook into gods -- and to you, if you believed and bought into the hype.

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