Financial Media Narratives on GME

• When there are two mutually exclusive competing narratives, this suggests the existence of a conflict.
• Narrative control is a key tactic in financial conflicts. It is used to shape public perception, influence market behavior, and to avoid regulatory scrutiny.
• Signs of narrative control include: consistent negative framing, omission of positive facts, discrediting the opposition, as well as coordinated messaging across a variety of platforms.
• Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) is a commonly used tactic where negative headlines, alarming predictions, and worst-case scenarios are repeatedly emphasized to shake confidence, to create anxiety, and for the ultimate objective of influencing investors to sell their stock.
• Most financial media is demonstrably biased, cynical, and dishonest when reporting about GME and GameStop.
• This behavior of pushing negative sentiment about GameStop is beneficial to the faction that has a financial interest in the share price of GME going down.

During heightened levels of enthusiasm and social media activity in 2021, GME investors were digging deep into stock market research to understand the events and the aftermath of the January 2021 Sneeze.

Among the discussion was the topic of naked short selling, an illegal practice perpetrated by some financial market participants. Many GME investors have suspected that naked short selling has been a significant contributing factor in GME's curious circumstances.

On June 4, 2021, Melissa Lee from CNBC accidentally blurted out "naked shorts, yea," in response to the comment "there are a lot of short sellers borrowing stock that they didn't have." This incident appeared to have been a blunder that affirmed the discussions being had at the time by GME investors.

A few days later, CNBC put out a segment specifically on the topic of naked short selling, but failed to address any notion of naked short selling of GME stock. This is an example of narrative control, where the financial media is talking about the subject at hand creating the impression that they actually talk about these things, while deliberately avoiding specific sensitive points of the discussion.

In a segment from September 2021, CNBC invited Anthony Chukumba of Loop Capital to talk about GME. In an emotion-filled rant, while directly addressing "the folks who are on Reddit", Chukumba tells GME shareholders to "sell the stock now and ask questions later".

This segment was one of numerous in which Anthony Chukumba went on CNBC to denigrate GameStop and its shareholders, demonstrating that the narrative continued to be in conflict.

Here is one of many discussions had on r/superstonk about this incident.

On August 23, 2022, a GME shareholder called in to Jim Cramer's Mad Money, claiming he was going to talk about some other stock, in order to make a statement about GME. The caller, "Victor from California," said that because of Jim Cramer, he bought more shares of GameStop, followed by the statement "shorts never closed, boom!."

The situation was obviously awkward for Jim Cramer, who immediately understood that he was being pranked. Cramer invalidated the claim, and immediately pivoted the conversation away, clearly uninterested in discussing GameStop.

On August 29, 2022, there was an awkward situation on a CNBC segment where they immediately ended a segment after the guest mentioned "shorts covering." This was obviously noticed and discussed by the users of r/superstonk.

The very next day, CNBC put out a short segment specifically addressing these discussions that were happening on r/superstonk, in defence of themselves.

The segment was titled "Reddit and Weep; Abrupt Goodbye Triggers Conspiracy Theories." This incident was another demonstration of the ongoing conflict over the GameStop narrative. Investors on social media continue to scrutinize the misleading and cynical reporting on GME and the stock market, and outlets such as CNBC are observing those discussions of them that are happening on Reddit.

Yet, curiously, while they acknowledged that these kinds of conversations were happening on "Reddit," they never mention specifically where on Reddit these conversations were happening, even though they were happening on the largest GME subreddit, r/superstonk.

This incident therefore is evidence of CNBC's awareness and contempt for GME shareholders on r/superstonk, even though they continue to intentionally omit mentions of the name superstonk.

On February 3, 2023, on a Mad Money segment with Jim Cramer, Nathan from Florida asked Jim Cramer: "As we saw with GameStop a few years ago, big firms have the power to shut down trading if they're losing money... how is that less rigged than crypto?"

To which, Cramer replied: "It was totally rigged. It's okay. It was rigged. I called it out. In one of those movies I called it out. I don't want any touching that. I like great American stories. I don't like the hokum."

This confession from Cramer about GME is additional evidence of his awareness of the existence of an ongoing conflict pertaining to GME. Previously, on July 6, 2022, Cramer tweeted: "When asked about Gamestop i just say it is a controlled stock and not more than that. The haters know exactly what i mean"

In March 2024, GameStop reported fiscal year 2023 results, demonstrating full-year profitability for the first time in 6 years, despite decreasing revenue. This was a significant achievement and a demonstration of the reality of GameStop's improving financial health.

Any fair and neutral reporting on these earnings results would make clear that GameStop's bottom line was positive, even in the face of reduced revenues. While it was a true negative fact that GameStop's revenue was down, it was also a true positive fact that GameStop's net income was significantly up, and positive even.

Yet, most of the reporting on these earnings results failed to mention the fact of GameStop's profitability at all. The headlines were highly bearish, and emphasized the true negative facts of GameStop's shrinking legacy business while ignoring true positive facts of GameStop's financial health.

Of the financial media articles reporting on GameStop's earnings, more articles omitted mention of GameStop's full-year profitability than articles that did report it. An unsuspecting news reader would likely be left with the impression that GameStop's financial outlook was bad, which was the intended outcome of this reporting behavior.

Failing to mention GameStop's positive bottom line is a deliberate decision. It goes beyond simply reporting true negative facts about GameStop. It demonstrates a clear negative bias in the media's reporting on GameStop.

When GameStop reported fiscal year 2024 results one year later, it was more difficult for the media to ignore the undeniably significant improvements to GameStop's profitability, though the media reporting continued to push negative sentiment despite these profits.